AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper processors don’t come cheap, so a race for the top in motherboards to support the platform was expected before the latest CPU series was even confirmed. Asus got to us first with its $850 ROG Zenith II Extreme, and it was only a matter of time before Gigabyte sent its own $850 entry.
The biggest advantage we can find in TRX40 Aorus Xtreme specs is Intel’s 10GBASE-T network controller, which offers users a way to get 10GbE over copper (Cat 6A) cabling in addition to 5GbE, 2.5GbE, and standard Gigabit Ethernet compatibility over the same cable. That kind of interoperability explains why Intel calls this its Converged Network Adapter and moreover, it provides two of these 10GbE connections compared to the 10Gb/1Gb Ethernet set of the competing Asus product.
Asus counters that single expensive feature with one of its own, a Gen 2×2 USB port that pairs two 10Gb interfaces over a single Type-C USB port. Yet while Gigabyte’s Type-C port makes do with a single 10Gb connection on each of its USB ports, the fact remains that is has eight ports at this speed, compared to Asus’ five.
The rest of the I/O panel is filled with a Q-Flash Plus button for firmware updates, Clear CMOS to erase custom firmware settings, a pair of antenna connectors for the semi-integrated Intel AX200 (2.4Gb/s) Wi-Fi module, a vent for the integrate voltage regulator fan, five analog audio jacks, and an optical S/PDIF output.
Gigabyte optimized its TRX40 Aorus Xtreme for four graphics cards at double-slot spacing, differing from the Asus board which has a single space between the second and third slots. While that might seem like a win for Gigabyte, moving the first slot to the case’s top position meant sliding up the DIMMs as well, which in turn limits the amount of space available for voltage regulator cooling. Heat is redirected to a second sink between DIMM slots and the I/O panel, where the cooling fan resides, via a thick heatpipe.
The mounting depth concern we had with the competing board remains in the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme; its 10.8-inch width exceeds the available space of many high-quality ATX cases. And though this 10.8-inch board is rated as EATX, that’s far less than the limit of that specification, and many ATX cases with a bit more than 10.6 inches of mounting space still exist. So be extra sure about your case clearances before buying.
One of the more annoying things about building with the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme is the number and variety of screws required to remove its M.2 covers. Another is that those covers are inseparable from the fan cover, making it less likely that builders will want to use heatsink-integrated M.2 drives. But removing those covers reveals one nice feature: four PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots.
The forward-bottom M.2 slot steals I/O pathways from SATA, reducing the number of ports from ten to six, but the competing Asus board has similar sharing that reduces its ports from eight to four. And while the Asus board supports up to five M.2 drives thanks to its M.2 riser card, one of its onboard slots steals another four lanes from its eight-lane lower PCIe card slot. Gigabyte’s TRX40 Aorus Xtreme supports one fewer drive, but since its PCIe slots are always x16-x8-x16-x8 regardless of the number of drives installed…pick your resource-sharing poison.
Front-panel audio, dual ARGB and dual RGB, Thunderbolt add-in card and Trusted Platform Module headers are found beneath all those slots, along with switches to select between two firmware ROMs and enable or disable automatic backup BIOS implementation following a crash.
Many of the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme’s front-panel headers are hidden along the forward edge, and some require custom (included) breakout cables. From left to right are supplemental power for PCIe slots, two USB 3.0 headers, ten SATA ports (two from an AMS1062 controller), a custom four-port USB 2.0 header to mate with an included adapter cable, 24-pin power, a noise sensor header for an included internal microphone used in SPL-based fan tuning, a custom front-panel header for an included button/LED/PC Speaker breakout cable, and five of the board’s available seven fan connectors.
Two more fan headers are located between the onboard power/reset buttons and twin CPU power headers, while a USB3 Gen2 front panel header is located next to the two-digit diagnostics code display.
An Infineon XDPE132G5C drives sixteen core phases along the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme’s top edge, with another three phases on a separate controller behind the rear DIMM bank for CPU SOC. All phases use 70A, TDA21472 VR MOS.
A light diffuser for front-edge RGB LEDs is sandwiched between the back of the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme’s circuit board and a steel back brace and secured via three screws. Four additional screws and standoffs support the rest of the brace farther back, and two more screws secure the factory-installed I/O shield to the brace. The brace also contacts the rear of the voltage regulator through a thermal pad, thereby adding heat dissipation to its functionality.
Included in the retail box are the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme motherboard, a manual and two quick installation guides, custom breakout cables for USB 2.0 and front-panel button/LED/PC Speaker connections, a USB thumb drive with included drivers and applications, the AORUS Gen4 four-M.2 to PCIe x16 add-in-card adaptor previously described in our X299X Designare 10G Review, two Wi-Fi antennae, six SATA cables with braided sleeves, an internal microphone lead for SPL-based fan tuning, two RGB extension and two ARGB adapter cables, two Velcro cable ties, two thermistor cables, and a G-Connector front-panel button/LED/PC Speaker bundling block for which the function is already built into the custom front-panel breakout adapter.
Gigabyte’s App Center is a central launch point for most of the firm’s included software, with added functionality including a few shortcuts to Windows settings and a software downloader with updater. When using the updater, be careful to assure that any unwanted freeware is manually deselected.
Gigabyte @BIOS allows users to update or save firmware from within Windows, and even includes a utility to change the board’s boot-up splash screen.
Gigabyte EasyTune worked well for changing clocks and voltage levels, but its automatic overclocking program only pushed our 3970X to 4.0GHz at 1.38V. We can do better manually.
Clicking the little heart monitor icon in the lower-right corner of EasyTune brings up a Hardware Monitor menu on the right edge of the screen. We split that and put the halves side-by-side so it would fit into this image box.
Hardware Monitor is part of Gigabyte’s System Information Viewer, so that clicking its return icon brings us here rather than back to EasyTune. After running a fan optimization test upon first use, users can choose a fan profile, configure their own, set system alarm levels, and log many of the stats displayed in Hardware Monitor.
Gigabyte RGB Fusion lighting control software worked with its board, our memory, and our graphics card, for the most part. While many of the settings operated synchronously between all components, the program could not address wave (rainbow wave) mode on our DRAM unless we set these items asynchronously, and reverted to the former synchronous setting (or turned memory LEDs off) when we switched from the memory menu to another menu with memory set to “default” (rainbow wave). That still leaves a bunch of non-wave lighting patterns to choose from.
Firmware
TRX40 Aorus Xtreme firmware defaults to its Easy Mode interface, but remembers the chosen UI from which the user last saved so that if you leave from Advanced Mode, you’ll return to Advanced Mode.
The Tweaker menu from advanced mode let us set a stable 4.20 GHz CPU clock at 1.35V under load, but the way we got there was a little convoluted: After first setting “High” VCore Loadline Calibration within the CPU/VRM Settings of Advanced Voltage Settings, we gradually dropped the CPU VCore setting from 1.35V to 1.325V until it no longer overshot our desired voltage.
The reason we didn’t try a lower VCore Loadline Calibration setting is that every time we adjusted the Loadline or CPU multiplier, the board would reset CPU voltage to stock. And, it wouldn’t show that change in settings, so we were left guessing, reconfiguring it, and rechecking it at the next boot.
The TRX40 Aorus Xtreme has a complete set of primary and secondary memory timings to play with, along with advanced controls and even a menu that displays SPD and XMP configurations. We reached DDR4-4200 at 1.352-1.354V on our voltmeter, though getting there required us to set 1.34V within the Tweaker menu and it was displayed as 1.356V by firmware.
The generically named Settings menu includes a very limited PC Health page plus Smart Fan 5 settings. Having said that, the Smart Fan 5 popup can be accessed from any menu simply by pressing the keyboard’s F6 function. Six of the fan’s headers can be controlled independently here, using the tuner’s choice of PWM or voltage-based RPM control.
The System Info tab includes a Plug in Devices menus that shows the location of each detected device, and a Q-Flash menu for updating firmware. Checking the status of devices here can help one determine whether a device that dropped out of windows did so due to a Windows fault, or a hardware fault.
Gigabyte’s TRX40 Aorus Xtreme takes on the top contenders from previous reviews, which include the $850 ROG Zenith II Extreme from Asus, MSI’s $700 Creator TRX40, and ASRock’s TRX40 Taichi. Gigabyte’s GeForce RTX 2070 Gaming OC 8G, Toshiba’s OCZ RD400 and G.Skill’s Trident-Z DDR4-3600 feed AM’s Ryzen Threadripper 3970X. Alphacool’s Eisbecher D5 pump/reservoir and NexXxoS UT60 X-flow radiator cool the CPU through Swiftech’s SKF TR4 Heirloom.
The TRX40 Aorus Xtreme achieved a solid overclock for both our CPU and DRAM, but still came up a little shy compared to the ROG Zenith II Extreme. Memory data rate showed the largest difference, but only at a mere 66 MHz.
Gigabyte didn’t need that extra 66 MHz of data rate to rule the ROG Zenith II Extreme in memory bandwidth, and we might even be willing to recommend the board to overclockers had it not reset our CPU voltage every time we changed the CPU multiplier.
While the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme had the best overclocked bandwidth in SiSoftware Sandra, it also had the lowest default overclock at standard XMP settings. Fortunately, its latency was still the best.
Though the bars on the chart move around a bit, the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme’s strongest competitor in 3DMark and PCMark appears to be the $700 Creator TRX40.
The TRX40 Aorus Xtreme sneaks past the ROG Zenith II Extreme in Ashes, but Asus returns the favor in F1 2017. We’re still not close to determining a true winner.
Asus’ lower completion times in several workloads spell trouble for Gigabyte, but MSI tops both by a miniscule margin.
Power, Heat and Efficiency
Even though it’s feature-heavy, the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme matches the TRX40 Taichi for lowest power consumption. Depending on average performance, that could prove favorable in our efficiency rating.
The TRX40 Aorus Xtreme’s voltage regulator shows higher temperatures compared to rivals, but a look at its fan ramp shows that the fan doesn’t even kick on until it reaches 85 degrees C. Our test was conducted in a 21-degree room, so the fan wasn’t on.
To assure readers that our readings were close to accurate, we attached four thermocouples to the back of the board, beneath its voltage regulator. Unfortunately, this means that our thermocouples were being cooled by the backplate, since the backplate cools the voltage regulator through a thermal pad. Gigabyte’s onboard thermistor placement appears far more ideal than any place we could find to stick our own devices.
Given that the best location for our thermocouples was compromised by integrated cooling, we retaped our sensors in a nearby location where there was no backplate contact, behind the VR Chokes. Our thermometor’s readings increased by a few degrees but remain lower than the integrated thermistor, which is likely due to its greater distance from the heat source.
While the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme wasn’t the top performer, it did beat its closest rival in our regular benchmarks and took second place overall. Moreover, the performance difference between all four boards was only 0.6%, and the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme’s relatively low power consumption gave it the top efficiency score.
Conclusion
Value seekers love a chart that shows the board with the fewest features marching victorious over its rivals, but we perceive these as mere entertainment when onboard hardware is so disparate.
The real rivalry here is between the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme and ROG Zenith II Extreme. And not only are these boards fairly close to each other in price, but also performance and feature value. But, the difficulty we faced in getting CPU overclocking adjustments to “stick” causes us to lean slightly toward Asus, though we could understand if someone else chose the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme for its superior network controller and PCIe slot arrangement.
We still have another $850 board, the Zenith II Extreme Alpha, to test. Will that model reveal itself the true leader?