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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109 Comments
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dan82 - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
I wish those boards had more Type C ports and dropped some of those A ports. A type C port can easily be turned in an A, but vice versa is against the spec.Also serious question: what is the reason to keep A 2.0 ports around? Are there any devices that don’t work on modern ports?
jeremyshaw - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Probably much easier to route one old and slow data pair vs 1-4 high speed data pairs.I have many devices that will likely never need more than USB 2.0 - my Mouse and KB included. USB microphone as well. The best external device I've got that benefits from USB3 speeds is my Bluray burner, and we all know how popular those are. External USB flash drives are usually limited by the cheap NAND inside, and most of my external storage is on my network.
For others, I suppose USB capture cards? Really decent USB 3.0 flash drives? Even if I connected my phone to my PC, it's still limited to USB 2.0. Maybe a decent external card reader? These boards reviewed here are all ATX, so I'll rule out USB NICs. I've got to be missing something in my list.
eek2121 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
There is still the odd device that doesn't work on USB 3.0. Also the last 2 machines I've built did not have fully functioning USB 3.0/3.1 ports in Linux, indicating lack of driver support for operating systems other than Linux. In short: USB 3.x is still a WIP despite being out on the market for quite a while.Llawehtdliub - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Plz no. Dont do an Apple. Just beczus you cant think of a reason to use doesnt mean others cant.There is a reason to leave them.
dotes12 - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Bring back PS/2 ports too? /sasmian - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
I'm a little confused by comments on the X570 boards that will probably apply to these also. With these new PCIe4 slots (and M.2 slots), is it the case that they are all completely independent and you can mix/match PCIe2/PCIe3/PCIe4 cards/drives freely at each one's maximum possible negotiated link speed? Or will putting (say) a PCIe2 RAID controller in any slot reduce all slots to the lowest common denominator, PCIe2 speed?voicequal - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
PCIe lanes are wired directly to the PCIe controller on either the CPU or chipset, so link speeds between slots are independent. PCIe 4.0 is backward compatible with previous generations 3.0, 2.0 & 1.0, so running a PCIe 2.0 card in a slot capable of 4.0 will run at 2.0 speeds and not affect adjacent lanes on other slots.Some motherboards allow you to reduce the maximum speed of PCIe lanes from 4.0 to something lower -- this can help to troubleshoot signal integrity issues. This setting sometimes does affect lanes across multiple slots. But as long as you leave it to Auto, the lanes will run at the highest compatible speed between card and controller.
WaltC - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Yes, in most cases the slots auto-configure to the device connected. Gen 3 devices should happily coexist with Gen 4 devices with each running at spec. In the case of the GPU, you can run it at Gen 3 if you prefer even if it is a Gen 4 GPU natively--there's separate switch for that in the bios, but the slots auto-configure for other devices and the GPU bios switch doesn't affect any other slots.I was surprised to see that several of the mboards had no rear clear-CMOS button on their backplates, and thought that was an interesting omission from the article--and the article also failed to mention dual-bios mboards--which the GB Aorus Xtreme & Master have (pictured mechanical switches) --one would hope they all might have them. Seems as if both these important features would be worth a mention...
dotes12 - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Is there any downsides of going to PCIe 4.0? Maybe something similar to DDR3 and DDR4 memory where the bandwidth increases, but the latency goes up too?PopinFRESH007 - Sunday, December 29, 2019 - link
not really no