A Fast Have a look at Seven Merchandise

With the discharge of AMD’s Threadripper CPUs into the HEDT market, board companions have launched new motherboards primarily based on the X399 chipset. Customers are going to see quad channel reminiscence, native 4-Approach SLI and Crossfire capabilities, extra full-speed M.2 slots, added 10G community ports, and extra on the brand new platform. We’re taking a fast take a look at every of the motherboards that the distributors are selling out there, in addition to just a few upcoming teasers.

Associated Studying

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Wants a Mom(board)

An enormous takeaway from our AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1950X assessment is the rise in CPU linked PCIe 3.0 lanes. A full 60 lanes can be found to the PCIe slots and M.2 drives, whereas 4 lanes head off to the chipset the place it is muxed for USB, SATA, low-level I/O, and different options. The rise in CPU PCIe lanes is ready as much as enable for lots extra flexibility connecting units utilizing PCIe bandwidth.

The 4 main gamers, ASRock, ASUS, GIGABYTE, and MSI, have launched X399 motherboards for Threadripper. These boards equip the large 4094-pin socket with eight DIMM slots to cowl the 4 reminiscence channels after which differentiate themselves in PCIe configuration, IO, styling and software program assist.

Not like Ryzen, the bottom processor shouldn’t be a real SoC because the time period has advanced over time. With the intention to get the praise of SATA and USB ports, every Threadripper CPU must be paired with an X399 chipset. So except for the CPU PCIe lanes, the ‘new’ X399 chipset additionally will get some IO to play with:

Not like mainstream platforms which have a number of chipsets to select from that adjust in functionality and price, the AMD high-end platform solely has a single chipset, much like Intel’s X299. As we have realized over the previous few months, some parts of the motherboard base price, such because the socket, can price a fairly penny to the board producers, which in flip shall be forwarded on to the person. These motherboards seem to start out someplace round $249-$299, with the highest board to this point set at $549. Guess which one AMD despatched us for our CPU assessment.

The Underlying Block Diagram

When PCIe is the sport, it turns into time to play with controllers and ports to see what matches. All of it begins with the underlying diagram for Threadripper and X399:

AMD’s advertising and marketing on the left is got down to clarify that every product within the Threadripper and X399 line shall be ‘absolutely enabled’ – not one of the chips shall be restricted in PCIe lane counts or DRAM for the sake of segmentation. AMD is blissful at this level to maintain segmentation restricted to cores, frequency, and L3 cache.

The diagram exhibits the 2 hubs for every little thing to hook up with: the CPU and the chipset. The CPU has 60 PCIe lanes, offered in 3 or 4 PCIe root complexes at x16 every (the diagram above suggests x16/x8/x16/x8). These will usually go in direction of the primary PCIe slots to assist add-in playing cards like GPUs, or they may very well be partitioned off for RAID controllers or quick ethernet if required. In complete, AMD has acknowledged that the platform can assist six GPUs most. The CPU additionally helps eight USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) Sort-A ports, quad channel DDR4, and assist for as much as three PCIe 3.0 x4 storage drives for 3-way NVMe.

Threadripper CPUs reserve 4 PCIe lanes for the chipset, which much like Intel acts like a PCIe swap for extra IO – though AMD solely presents just a few lanes right here in comparison with Intel’s 24 PCIe 3.0 x4 lanes.

From the chipset there are eight PCIe lanes, which AMD right here has recommended reserving two for gigabit Ethernet, 4 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, 4 USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) Sort-A ports, one USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) Sort-C port and two USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports with applicable redrivers. In a change to what we usually see on Intel motherboards, AMD lists SPI and Audio options as coming from the CPU relatively than the chipset.

AMD Suggests Variants

As a part of the launch, AMD is wanting to advertise the other ways by which an X399 motherboard may very well be organized relying on the workload necessities.

Every of those potential configurations would run into a number of thousand {dollars} a bit for a full construct – the M.2 drives have been recommended at 512GB minimal, with the SATA drives in RAID configurations as properly. AMD is making no joke; they need to be the premium platform.

New Controllers for X399

With every of those motherboard overviews, we prefer to cowl just a few of the newer controllers to hit the market that motherboard producers would possibly make the most of. Given the current X299 launch on the Intel aspect, not a lot has modified since. The large components to enter the patron house are Aquantia’s multi-gigabit ethernet controllers.

Aquantia launched two ethernet controllers: the AQC107 which helps 100MB, 1G, 2.5G, 5G and 10G, and the AQC108 which helps 100MB, 1G, 2.5G and 5G, all via commonplace RJ45 connectors. Motherboard producers can use these controllers straight on the boards, or bundle them in add-in playing cards just like the AQN107 and AQN108 above. We have seen playing cards from ASUS and GIGABYTE already hit the market primarily based on these controllers, whereas ASRock and MSI want to combine them direct.

The second controller value mentioning is the up to date ASMedia ASM3142 controller, offering USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) performance to motherboards that want extra USB 3.1g2. Initially we noticed the ASM1142 single lane controller, whereas the ASM2142 built-in a twin lane design such that every one the ports had peak bandwidth when a number of ports are in use. ASM3142 is a low powered model of the ASM2142, however nonetheless supporting all of the ports at peak bandwidth.

Third is the up to date Realtek ALC1150 audio codec, often known as the ALC1220. The ALC1220 improves peak SNR whereas including new performance. ASUS run a personalized model often known as the ALC1220A, which removes a few of the extra operate for a stripped down model distinctive to them however configured in a partnership with Realtek.

The Motherboards

The seven motherboards we have now to debate are:

• The ASRock X399 Taichi
• The ASRock X399 Skilled Gaming
• The ASUS X399 ROG Zenith Excessive
• The ASUS Prime X399-A
• The ASUS Strix X399-E Gaming
• The GIGABYTE X399-Gaming 7
• The MSI X399 Gaming Professional Carbon
• The MSI X399 SLI Plus

Added on 9/19: The GIGABYTE X399 Designare EX

Added on 10/10: The MSI X399 SLI Plus