The AMD TRX40 Motherboard Overview: 12 New Motherboards Analyzed
by Gavin Bonshor on November 28, 2019 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- MSI
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- Asus
- TRX40
- Threadripper 3000
- Castle Peak
ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro
The last of the three TRX40 models from ASUS is the ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro. Part of its Prime series, it blends its usual white and silver aesthetic, with a more professional styling and straight-edge looks. The ATX sized PCB has plenty of features including three full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, and eight SATA ports. The Prime TRX40-Pro sits towards the bottom of its TRX40 product stack offering users the basics while remaining competitive with other TRX40 models.
Focusing on the design of the ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro, its main design consists of a silver and white color scheme, with a rear panel cover doubling up as a power delivery heatsink, and a M.2 heatsink which amalgamates into the design of the chipset heatsink. The board has three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots with two of these sitting underneath a large silver aluminium heatsink, with the other M.2 slot installed vertically; an adapter comes in the accessories bundle. This also includes eight SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1 and 10 arrays. On the PCIe front, there are three full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, with a smaller PCIe 4.0 x4 slot located at the bottom. Directly below the PCIe 4.0 x4 slot is a power button, and a two-digit LED debugger. Next to this is a
As with the vast majority of TRX40 boards at launch, the ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro has support for DDR4-4666 and 256 GB of system memory across eight slots. The CPU power delivery looks impressive for a non-enthusiast model with a 16-phase design which is controlled by an undesignated controller. We know that ASUS using teamed power stages as they did with its X570 product stack. Delivering power to the CPU is a pair of 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power connectors, with one located at either side at the top of the board. For cooling, the ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro has seven 4-pin headers which include two for CPU fans, three for chassis fans, one for an AIO pump, and another for a water pump.
The rear panel includes three USB 3.1 G2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 G2 Type-C, and six USB 3.1 G1 Type-A ports. A handily located BIOS Flashback button sits towards the left-hand side, while on the right-hand side are five color-coded 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output controlled by a Realtek ALC S1220 HD audio codec. The single networking port is controlled by an Intel I211-AT Gigabit Ethernet controller.
Although the ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro omits things like Wi-Fi 6 and uprated 2.5/5/10 GbE ethernet, it still comes with an MSRP of $450. While it may seem a little off the mark in terms of pricing, the Prime TRX40-Pro has a very subtle and professional design, with a competitive feature set, and plenty of storage support for users building a workstation using the AMD Threadripper 3000 series processors.
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plonk420 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
looks like the two ASRock and at least two, if not three of the three MSI use LOTES sockets. i expect FOXCONN to be the same trash that freaked me the f out trying to screw down the CPU cover on my X399 Designare EX (see HardOCP's Kyle having the same difficulty tightening his down, but mine seemed even worse).omasoud - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Although ASRock TRX40 Creator is classified as ATX, the last PCI slot probably cannot take a double-width card (even though the manual on page 41 talks about installing 4 SLI double-width GPUs). ATX size specification says 7 PCI slots; but 4x2=8. Am I right?Llawehtdliub - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Good review, thank you.solomonshv - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
do you guys think that the MSI TRX40 Pro would be a good candidate for a 3960X with some light overclocking? i've had multiple really bad experiences with gigafail, and if you check gigbayte x399 reviews on newegg, amazon and other places, other people did too. so gigabyte is a hard pass for me.dwade123 - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Prices are going up and up with AMD, much more than anything Intel had ever priced. Zenith II is $850 and TR flagship model is expected to be at least $4000. AMD "wins again" but will AMD fans win yet?Qasar - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
dwade123, and look what intel did to the prices before they released zen. how much were you paying for QUAD core cpus, where the performance increase over the previous gen was 10% or less. intel cant complete with amd in multi thread performance, the ONLY way intel has any performance advantage over amd, is due to clock speed, thats all..imagine where intel cpu's would be if there was NO Zen....
scineram - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
Yes.Korguz - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
dwade123 " Prices are going up and up with AMD, much more than anything Intel had ever priced " you sure about that ?? intels top end i9 chips were VERY expensive here, most of their i7 line was also expensive... but yet.. HOW was intel able to drop the prices like they HAD to do with the 10xxx series over the 9xxx series ??? people now complain that amd is priced to high, where were all of these people when intel was priced just as high, if not higher ??? it seems.. its ok for intel to do something.. but when amd does it.. all of a sudden its wrong and its a crime?? come on...intel cant compete with amd in almost everything now, the ONLY thing intel has left, is single thread performance, and even that, isnt by that much, and its ONLY cause of clock speed.. its about time amd was able to charge what they are for some of their chips, because the performance is there.. when intel catches up, intel will probably charge the same.. dwade123, you better be complaining about intels prices then as well....prophet001 - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
Why the heck would you use the same physical socket keying.Korguz - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
the socket is the same.. but the pins i think are different