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
Power Delivery Specifications & Comparison
One of the most discussed aspects on motherboards is the power delivery, with users generally favouring those with good specifications and efficient designs. The AMD X570 chipset heralded some appreciated improvements to its desktop range, but with AMD's 7 nm architecture stretching to the HEDT side of things , these improvements are expected of the higher-specification TRX40 models. The TRX40 chipset is similar in design to that of X570 with 'spare' PCIe 4.0 lanes designed to allow manufacturers to implement its own unique mixture of specifications through extra USB 3.1 G2 connectivity, and more PCIe 4.0 M.2.
Please note that this information is self-reported, so until we can review any given TRX40 board, we're operating on the honor system, trusting vendors to supply honest and upfront information. As we review the hardware we will be checking, and we will be keeping this page up-to-date as more information becomes available.
Note: We reached out to ASUS about its PWM controller, and they stated that it doesn't have a part number and is made exclusively for them. As we find out more information on this, we will update the table below.
| TRX40 CPU Power Delivery Comparison | |||||
| Motherboard | Controller | H-Side | L-Side | Chokes | Doubler |
| ASRock TRX40 Creator | ISL69247 (8+0) |
ISL99390 (8) |
8 | - | |
| ASRock TRX40 Taichi | ISL69247 (8+0) |
ISL99390 (16) |
8 | ??? (8) |
|
| ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme | Undisclosed (16+0) |
TDA21472 (16) |
? | - | |
| ASUS ROG Strix TRX40-E | Undisclosed (?+?) |
TDA21472 (16) |
? | - | |
| ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro | Undisclosed (?+?) |
TDA21462 (16) |
? | - | |
| GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Xtreme | XDPE132G5C (16+0) |
TDA21472 (16) |
? | - | |
| GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Master | XDPE132G5C (16+0) |
TDA21472 (16) |
? | - | |
| GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Pro WIFI | XDPE132G5C (12+2) |
TDA21472 (12) |
? | - | |
| GIGABYTE TRX Designare | XDPE132G5C (16+0) |
TDA21472 (16) |
? | - | |
| MSI Creator TRX40 | XDPE132G5C (16+0) |
TDA21472 (16) |
? | - | |
| MSI TRX40 Pro 10G | ISL69247 (6+0) |
ISL9939 (12) |
? | ISL6617A (6) |
|
| MSI TRX40 Pro WIFI | ISL69247 (6+0) |
ISL9939 (12) |
? | ISL6617A (6) |
|
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gavbon - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
We tested the 3970X and 3960X in our review (https://www.anandtech.com/show/15044/the-amd-ryzen...In the power testing, our chips hit 280w without issues, especially the 32-core. Which the definition of TDP is up for question, the CPUs seem bang on the power figures we saw
Hul8 - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
At least one reviewer got ~285 - 295 W power consumption testing Threadripper 3rd at stock, until they realized they had memory overclocked to 3600 MT/s.With the RAM also at stock (3200 MT/s), the power consumption ended up between 279 - 280 W, so just within the given TDP.
tamalero - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Also, doesn't some motherboards (Particularly ASUS and Gigabyte) do minimal overclock by default on the "recommended settings" ?eek2121 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
TDP != power consumed. TDP is thermal design power. The type of cooler itself can change the TDP formula in some cases (due to being part of the formula), and AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel all have different ways of calculating TDP.eastcoast_pete - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Thanks Gavin, interesting article. Question: Your initial mentioning of the chipset says it's made on GloFo's 12 nm node, but it's 14 nm a bit later in the article. Can you clarify? Thanks!jeremyshaw - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Since the last page has a picture of the chipset saying Made in Taiwan, it's probably either TSMC or UMC... unless if packaging somehow counts as "made in."msroadkill612 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Good spotting & there may be more to t than u think.Dunno, but others may?
I recall reading that the exciting new IO chip on Zen 2, & the TR chipset, are ~"cut an pastes" of each other - one is made by tsmc & the other by glofo.
This may be the source of the confusion?
Bccc1 - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Thanks for this writeup. I'm currently drawn to Gigabytes TRX40 Designare and TRX40 Aorus Xtreme. Does the "40GB/s GC-Titan Ridge add-in card" work on any board?Any info on bifurcation support? Gigabyte is quite clear about that and offers x4x4x4x4 for the x16 slots and x4x4 for the x8 slots. Sadly no 8x4x4 or x8x8. MSIs manual explains the BIOS option "PCIe SlotX Lanes Configuration" with the sentence "PCIe lanes configuration for MSI M.2 XPANDER series cards/ Other M.2 PCIe
storage card." which sounds like x4x4x4x4 bifurcation to me, but is quite vague.
Is x8x8 and x8x4x4 supported on any board?
msroadkill612 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Bifurcation obfuscation?eek2121 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
I can't speak to the current MSI offerings, but my x399 Gaming Carbon (off the top of my head, I don't use this feature, however) supports x4x4x4x4 and x8x8. Other modes may be possible, but I haven't looked.