ASRock X399 TAICHI sTR4 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1/3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Product Information

The diagram shows the two hubs for everything to connect to: the CPU and the chipset. The CPU has 60 PCIe lanes, provided in 3 or 4 PCIe root complexes at x16 each (the diagram above suggests x16/x8/x16/x8). These will often go towards the main PCIe slots to support add-in cards like GPUs, or they could be partitioned off for RAID controllers or fast ethernet if required. In total, AMD has stated that the platform can support six GPUs maximum. The CPU also supports eight USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) Type-A ports, quad channel DDR4, and support for up to three PCIe 3.0 x4 storage drives for 3-way NVMe. With so much bandwidth inside the platform, we had to give our X399 motherboards lots of ultra-fast connectivity to reach outside the box. For external devices, USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports provide 10Gbps links in all the flavors: Type-A, Type-C, and front panel. The Gigabit networking uses reliable Intel controllers, and that’s just the start. The ROG Zenith Extreme takes networking up a notch with not only a wired 10G Ethernet card, but also a wireless 802.11ad module. They’ve churned out a smart cooling set up to cope with different temperature ranges. There are plenty of fan headers on board and you have complete control over them via Total Fan Control. We’ve observed impressive thermals of 26 degrees C at idle and 40 degrees C under load for the VRM.

Threadripper has enough PCIe to easily connect multiple NVMe SSDs directly to the CPU. But it’s not enough to just have a bunch of M.2 slots. The fastest SSDs can heat up under heavy sustained loads, causing performance to drop when you need it the most. To improve thermals, the M.2s on all of our X399 motherboards are either covered by heatsinks or positioned so that drives are in the path of airflow. On top of that, the boards come with U.2 ports for the cabled NVMe SSDs derived from data centers. AMD X399 Ultra Durable motherboard with Dual Intel GbE LAN, Triple M.2 with Thermal Guard, 120dB SNR ALC1220, Front & Rear USB 3.1 Type-C, RGB FUSION 2.0, Intel Dual Band 802.11ac WiFi+BT4.2, Base Plated & I/O Shield Armor

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AMD X399 AORUS Motherboard with 10+3 IR Digital PWM, Dual Intel ® GbE LAN + AQUANTIA ® 10GbE BASE-T LAN, Triple M.2 with Triple Thermal Guard, ALC1220-VB + ESS 9118 Audio, Intel ® Dual Band 802.11ac WIFI, NanoCarbon Base Plated and I/O Shield Armor, RGB FUSION 2.0 Two RGB headers prime the X399-A to illuminate up to four meters of lighting at optimal brightness. The lighting on the board itself is discreet, with a gentle glow emanating from below the chipset heatsink. Even with the lights turned off, the interplay of angular lines and bare metal makes the Prime stand out. Bandwidth is a huge part of Threadripper’s appeal. The mother lode of PCI Express lanes stands ready for the multiple high-end graphics cards required for truly cutting-edge gaming and VR experiences. All of our X399 motherboards support three-way SLI and CrossFireX setups, and the Zenith Extreme can call upon a fourth card for record-setting benchmark attempts or an extra jolt of compute power. To protect your investment, SafeSlot reinforces the graphics slots against damage from increasingly heavy GPU coolers.

A big takeawayfrom our AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1950X review is the increase in CPU connected PCIe 3.0 lanes. A full 60 lanes are available to the PCIe slots and M.2 drives, while 4 lanes head off to the chipset where it's muxed for USB, SATA, low-level I/O, and other features. The increase in CPU PCIe lanes is set up to allowfor a lot more flexibilityconnecting devices usingPCIe bandwidth. Although all our X399 motherboards have four PCIe x16 slots hooked up to the CPU, only the Zenith Extreme is designed for that many graphics cards. Its slots are spaced for double-wide coolers if you want to horde GPU power to leave your mark on benchmark leaderboards. On a more practical note, adding a fourth card can further accelerate compute-heavy workloads like 3D rendering and deep learning. To combat GPU sag, we include our ROG VGA Holder, which is strong enough to keep even the heaviest graphics cards horizontal. Ready for cooling in any form, the diverse collection of liquid and fan headers lets you run everything from off-the-shelf AiOs to custom loops. With eight 4-pin headers in total, there’s enough capacity to cover an entire build.

This is a powerful step up from the previous X399 GIGABYTE Aorus 7 motherboard to make up for its shortcomings with a more beefy VRM set up of 10+3 with a load of features increased to a certain degree compared to its predecessor. There are four PCI-e slots, a bunch of M.2 drives, 8 DIMM slots, integrated WiFi, RGB, and many more. It would have been better if they boarded the latest WiFi on it, still, it is not a fatal blow to the worth. On the upside, it has a pair of Gigabit Intel NICs and a 10 gigabit LAN Aquantia, it improves your internal networking for your router and whatnot, which comes pretty costly if you buy it separately The second controller worth mentioning is the updated ASMedia ASM3142 controller, providing USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) functionality to motherboards that need more USB 3.1g2. Originally we saw the ASM1142 single lane controller, while the ASM2142 integrated a dual lane design such that all the ports had peak bandwidth when multiple ports are in use. ASM3142 is a low powered version of the ASM2142, but still supporting all the ports at peak bandwidth. With the family tree sorted, it’s time for a closer look at each board. The top is as good a place as any to start.

From the chipset there are eight PCIe lanes, which AMD here has suggested reserving two for gigabit Ethernet, four for a PCIe x4 slot, one for a PCIe x1 slot, and one for a WiFi module. Alongside the PCIe lanes are eight SATA ports, six USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) Type-A ports, one USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) Type-C port and two USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports with appropriate redrivers. In a change to what we normally see on Intel motherboards, AMD lists SPI and Audio features as coming from the CPU rather than the chipset. AMD Suggests Variants As part of the launch, AMD is wanting to promote the different ways in which an X399 motherboard could be arranged depending on the workload requirements. X399 Potential Configurations

All-new for this generation, the Zenith Extreme is the flagship of ROG’s AMD motherboard lineup. It comes with all of our latest features, including innovations available only on a select group of top-of-the-line models.