What motherboard to get for threadripper 3?

Kirika

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What moherboard to get for threadripper 3 that is reliable and can hold 128 gb of ram?

Feeling somewhat burned with Supermicro after my current rig stopped working in Windows after 5 years when the bios battery died and can't figure out what bios setting it was to fix it.

I had Asus board and Supermicro dual processor boards before my current rig that both lasted till I wanted to retire them.

Don't really think a dual processor board is worth it anymore if I can get 24 or 32 cores on a threadripper.
 
What moherboard to get for threadripper 3 that is reliable and can hold 128 gb of ram?

Feeling somewhat burned with Supermicro after my current rig stopped working in Windows after 5 years when the bios battery died and can't figure out what bios setting it was to fix it.

I had Asus board and Supermicro dual processor boards before my current rig that both lasted till I wanted to retire them.

Don't really think a dual processor board is worth it anymore if I can get 24 or 32 cores on a threadripper.

I'm still running a socket 2011 sandy bridge e5-1650 v1 in my SuperMicro board.

Rock solid 24/7 now since the chip came out. I think 7 years solid uptime minus one cross country move and some dust down maintenance periods for an hour or 2.
 
I'm going with the Asus Zenith II

The first Zenith was the best. It was the only TR board that didn't crap itself overclocking in my experience. The Aorus would die all on its own rebooting lol. I went thru 3 of those before renaming it Gigafail.
 
I suspect low end will be 299 to 399, mid range 599, top end 799 to 999.

Expect a little higher than x570 prices in each tier.

Is there even such a thing as a "low end" Threadripper board?

I figured the two categories would be "ultra high end", and "slightly less high end" :p
 
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Is there even such a thing as a "low end" Threadripper board?

I figured the two categories would be "ultra high end", and "slightly less high end" :p

Yes there is plenty of low end Threadripper, i.e. less power stages, less features, no 10gig or 5 gig, no wifi etc....But yeah I get what youre saying :)

Dont look at the prices. Those are just whack because of Newegg doing external vendors like Amazon does.

Low end:
upload_2019-11-11_21-43-11.png


Mid range:
upload_2019-11-11_21-43-43.png


hi end:
upload_2019-11-11_21-44-36.png
 
Yes there is plenty of low end Threadripper, i.e. less power stages, less features, no 10gig or 5 gig, no wifi etc....But yeah I get what youre saying :)

Dont look at the prices. Those are just whack because of Newegg doing external vendors like Amazon does.

Low end: View attachment 199172

Mid range:View attachment 199173

hi end: View attachment 199174

Hmm.

Interesting.

I wonder if there will be any barebones boards with great power stages but without all the other fluff.

I don't care about 10 (or 5) gig ethernet, because in my setup I need fiber anyway, so I am pretty much married to my dual intel 10gig fiber card.

I also don't care about on board sound, because I use an external DAC for most things, and have a discrete sound card for everything else.

I'd like a minimalist board with as many PCIe slots as possible, and as good overclocking potential as possible.

I'm hoping someone makes this, but I have my doubts.

Second best would be a workstation version of the baord with dual on board 10gig SFP+ slots
 
Which one you pick seems to be more oriented toward if you want 2x slot spacing on the x16s or not. Even the ones with "weak" vrms use pretty good components, the TRX40 Creator has 8 90 amp power stages and 16 60 amp ones on asus.

Ones with:
Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Xtreme
Gigabyte TRX40 Designare
Asrock TRX40 Creator

The rest have single slot spacing for the 2nd x16 slot or huge gaps for the asus boards.

MSI TRX40 Pro 10G https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/TRX40-PRO-10G
MSI Creator TRX40 https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Creator-TRX40
Asrock TRX40 Creator https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/TRX40 Creator/index.asp
Asrock TRX40 Taichi https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/TRX40 Taichi/index.asp
Asus ROG Zenith II Extreme https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-Zenith-II-Extreme/
Asus ROG Strix TRX40-E gaming https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-Strix-TRX40-E-Gaming/
Asus Prime TRX40-Pro https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Prime-TRX40-Pro/
Gigabyte TRX40 Designare https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-DESIGNARE-rev-10#ov
Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Pro Wifi https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-AORUS-PRO-WIFI-rev-10#kf
Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Master https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-AORUS-MASTER-rev-10#kf
Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Xtreme https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-AORUS-XTREME-rev-10#kf

Some have value adds too, like the Taichi, MSI Creator and Aorus Xtreme include a 4x M.2 card.
 
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Which one you pick seems to be more oriented toward if you want 2x slot spacing on the x16s or not. Even the ones with "weak" vrms use pretty good components, the TRX40 Creator has 8 90 amp power stages and 16 60 amp ones on asus.

Ones with:
Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Xtreme
Gigabyte TRX40 Designare
Asrock TRX40 Creator

The rest have single slot spacing for the 2nd x16 slot or huge gaps for the asus boards.

MSI TRX40 Pro 10G https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/TRX40-PRO-10G
MSI Creator TRX40 https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Creator-TRX40
Asrock TRX40 Creator https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/TRX40 Creator/index.asp
Asrock TRX40 Taichi https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/TRX40 Taichi/index.asp
Asus ROG Zenith II Extreme https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-Zenith-II-Extreme/
Asus ROG Strix TRX40-E gaming https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-Strix-TRX40-E-Gaming/
Asus Prime TRX40-Pro https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Prime-TRX40-Pro/
Gigabyte TRX40 Designare https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-DESIGNARE-rev-10#ov
Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Pro Wifi https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-AORUS-PRO-WIFI-rev-10#kf
Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Master https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-AORUS-MASTER-rev-10#kf
Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Xtreme https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-AORUS-XTREME-rev-10#kf

Some have value adds too, like the Taichi, MSI Creator and Aorus Xtreme include a 4x M.2 card.

SLI and crossfire are dead. They were never really alive. They sucked almost from the beginning. The last good implementation was the Voodoo 2.

This dual slot spacing for any other slot than the first is pointless.

I want:

Slot 1: 16x
Slot 2: Blank
Slot 3: 8x
Slot 4: 8x
Slot 5: 8x
Slot 6: 8x

The rest distributer among the chipset and m.2 slots
 
Which one you pick seems to be more oriented toward if you want 2x slot spacing on the x16s or not. Even the ones with "weak" vrms use pretty good components, the TRX40 Creator has 8 90 amp power stages and 16 60 amp ones on asus.

Ones with:
Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Xtreme
Gigabyte TRX40 Designare
Asrock TRX40 Creator

The rest have single slot spacing for the 2nd x16 slot or huge gaps for the asus boards.

MSI TRX40 Pro 10G https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/TRX40-PRO-10G
MSI Creator TRX40 https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Creator-TRX40
Asrock TRX40 Creator https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/TRX40 Creator/index.asp
Asrock TRX40 Taichi https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/TRX40 Taichi/index.asp
Asus ROG Zenith II Extreme https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-Zenith-II-Extreme/
Asus ROG Strix TRX40-E gaming https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-Strix-TRX40-E-Gaming/
Asus Prime TRX40-Pro https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Prime-TRX40-Pro/
Gigabyte TRX40 Designare https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-DESIGNARE-rev-10#ov
Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Pro Wifi https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-AORUS-PRO-WIFI-rev-10#kf
Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Master https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-AORUS-MASTER-rev-10#kf
Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Xtreme https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-AORUS-XTREME-rev-10#kf

Some have value adds too, like the Taichi, MSI Creator and Aorus Xtreme include a 4x M.2 card.


Of those, my favorites are:
MSI TRX 40 Pro 10G
Gigabyte TRX40 Designare
Gigabyte TRX40 Aourus Pro
Gigabyte TRX40 Aourus Master

Primarily because they have that additional 1x slot in addition to the 4 16x slots.

I really wish someone would make a board with one 16x slot and four 8x slots though, and dispense with all of the foolish RGB nonsense.

I don't even feel like I need or want any SATA on mine. I don't use SATA for clients anymore.


It's kind of nuts to me that Asus decided to make a workstation board for x570 (Pro WS X570-ACE) and have neglected to announce an equivalent model for Threadripper, the actual HEDT platform...

Give me a TRX40 version of that "Pro WS X570 Ace" with solid power phases for good overclocking, and all the PCIe slots it can handle, and I'm in.
 
The first Zenith was the best. It was the only TR board that didn't crap itself overclocking in my experience. The Aorus would die all on its own rebooting lol. I went thru 3 of those before renaming it Gigafail.
Not sure about the difference at Asus between Prime and Zenith apart from the design, the leds, the slick heat spreaders. X399 wasn't really for OC and TRX40 won't be. Rather put 128GB (8x16) of 2666 ECC RAM, don't overclock it and it will stay alive forever. Just think at the OCed CPU temperature, the need for monstrous watercooling and how many hundreds of watts the VRM will need to support for something around 5% speed improvement at best.
All the Aorus/Gigabyte motherboards had problems on X399 and also AM4. MSI is still MSI, cheaper but with cheap design, Asrock is always using ultra-low material, even when they advertise for some japanese elements, and Supermicro is ultra-expensive but made in China and doesn't care for the chinese communist party to meddle into your BIOS (you never know when they will read your data on your behalf). It has been found that inside the EU Commission China has spied on plenty of little people using the kind of Huawei or Xiaomi phones and all their brands and turned them by using little private secrets to serve the chinese communist party goals. You think you are safe, but you're not. You may be a leverage for an uncle or a cousin working on sensible matters. Stay away form anything related to China and don't buy it especially when there is networking involved. However, I'm pretty of sure Asus is still making it's high end boards in Taiwan. Gigabyte does. MSI makes all of them in China. And Asrock is a spin off company of Asus, based in China, conceives and manufactures in China. So not many options : it's rather Asus or Gigabyte, made in Taiwan. And no problem, I wasn't very careful neither, but I am now.
 
SLI and crossfire are dead. They were never really alive. They sucked almost from the beginning. The last good implementation was the Voodoo 2.

This dual slot spacing for any other slot than the first is pointless.
They're designed for GPU compute applications not for gaming, the xtreme is the only "gamer" focused one that has that spacing there.
 
I mentioned Asrock made in China... but it seems Asrock has moved pretty most of it's facilities to Vietnam, Malaysia and is still based in Taiwan for design. Asrock makes only it's top end motherboards on par with competition on the quality of materials side. So you really need to buy the expensive ones like the Taichi. The less expensive have few layers, support is slim (you can bend it easily) and with low end components and the electronic design is simple.
 
They're designed for GPU compute applications not for gaming, the xtreme is the only "gamer" focused one that has that spacing there.

Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks for clarifying.

I feel like I keep seeing Crossfire and SLI mentioned in the specs for these Threadripper motherboards though...
 
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Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks for clarifying.

I feel like I keep seeing Crossfire and SLI mentioned in the specs for these Threadripper motherboards though...
There is no interest left in SLI or Crossfire. What is very odd is that Nvidia starts providing SLI with RTX 2070S and above.
The SLI solution is a poor man solution. The double 2080Ti SLI is just about having issues without real benefit.
So there is only one explanation for having 4 high end graphics card on a TRX 40 : using them as compute power. No need for SLI then.
In fact the most usual SLI use will be if you buy a X470 or Z390 motherboard with high end desktop CPU and a RTX 2070S and later, you want to upgrade the graphics and get another 2070S instead of replacing it with a 2080Ti.
 
Gigabyte tr40x master hands down for me. They use actual true 16 individual power stages and no doublers.

I hate MSIs stupid looks and Asrock dumb ass transmission gears graphics looks stupid.

Asus you have to pay a tax for it to say ROG.

But it's an opinion not a judgement.
 
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Gigabyte tr40x master hands down for me. They use actual true 16 individual power stages and no doublers.

I hate MSIs stupid looks and Asrock dumb ass transmission gears graphics looks stupid.

Asus you have to pay a tax for it to say ROG.

But it's an opinion not a judgement.


I was trying to find the details on the power delivery, but I am not well versed in this topic, so I kind of gave up.

It does look likethe closest I'm likely to get (at least of the current offerings) for my ideal no-nonsense board with the most possible PCIe slots and the best possible power delivery
 
What I don't understand is why Gigabyte is launching so many TR40x motherboards.

There seems like there might be room for two, but with their 4 options, I don't even know what the significant difference between them is. They all seem to pretty much offer the same stuff to me.
 
I'll be grabbing the processor once they drop, but will likely wait for reviews on the motherboards. Gigabyte Master is currently top of my list, but I've been burned by Gigabyte before (DPC Latency on x79-UD3). Think there rep has gotten much better since then (other than doing bios updates?). Zenith 2 is a close second, if price is no more than $100 more, then Zenith would prob get the top spot.
 
I'll be grabbing the processor once they drop, but will likely wait for reviews on the motherboards. Gigabyte Master is currently top of my list, but I've been burned by Gigabyte before (DPC Latency on x79-UD3). Think there rep has gotten much better since then (other than doing bios updates?). Zenith 2 is a close second, if price is no more than $100 more, then Zenith would prob get the top spot.
Gigabyte has been award winning lately.

They have really came up! I remember when Asus was a shit company too! Oh and MSI and Asrock. They were all shitty at one point in their history. But they have all came way up!
 
Gigabyte has been award winning lately.

They have really came up! I remember when Asus was a shit company too! Oh and MSI and Asrock. They were all shitty at one point in their history. But they have all came way up!

It's all about the RGB.

They sucked. They added RGB. Then sales went up and they started winning awards :p
 
Gigabyte has been award winning lately.

They have really came up! I remember when Asus was a shit company too! Oh and MSI and Asrock. They were all shitty at one point in their history. But they have all came way up!


I don't recall Asus sucking. Even in the late 90's they had a reputation for good hardware, but terrible support, just like they do today.

I did prefer Abit back then.
 
Btw, has anyone seen anything from AMD regarding whether or not existing TR coolers will fit on these new chips?
 
Btw, has anyone seen anything from AMD regarding whether or not existing TR coolers will fit on these new chips?
I heard new fits in old, just not pin compatible. I jumped on getting the last Heatkiller4 pure copper from Amazon last week. Arrived the other day. Heavy beast.
 
I think the gigabyte trx40 designare is the one for me, slightly cheaper than the xtreme but includes the 40g thunderbolt card. Lacking onboard 10g but intel x540/550-t2 cards are pretty cheap on ebay and I already have an x540-t2 to drop in it (used for 10g direct connection to the ZFS array)

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813145174

Which board is everyone else going with?

Anyone know if TRX40 supports pcie bifurcation?
 
I think the gigabyte trx40 designare is the one for me, slightly cheaper than the xtreme but includes the 40g thunderbolt card. Lacking onboard 10g but intel x540/550-t2 cards are pretty cheap on ebay and I already have an x540-t2 to drop in it (used for 10g direct connection to the ZFS array)

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813145174

Which board is everyone else going with?

Anyone know if TRX40 supports pcie bifurcation?


I may have mentioned this already, but I am leaning towards the Gigabyte Aorus Master.

Seemingly great power stages, many PCIe slots, and otherwise minimalistic on board features are my main criteria. This appears to be as close as I am going to get.

I was hoping that since Asus made an X570 Prime WS board, that they would make a workstation oriented board for the new threadrippers as well, but that does not appear to be happening. If I were going with a Ryzen, the x570 Prime WS is definitely the board I would have gone with. I love its no-nonsense minimalistic design and features.
 
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I'm still holding off on actually ordering a motherboard until I get that email from B&H that my pre-ordered 3960x has actually shipped.
 
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Yeah, I might just preorder from BH, as newegg raised the price of the 3970x by 100.
 
Side note, what do you guys think of this quad channel RAM kit for these new Threadrippers?

4x16GB, 3600Mhz, 16-19-19-39, 1.35v for $269.99

Seems great on paper, with a tough to beat price, and none of that gemstone LED nonsense, but I am not the best when it comes to RAM.

I know previous gens were a little picky about RAM, and this kit claims to be designed for Intel's x299, but if the new TR's are as much improved in the RAM compatibility department as the Ryzen 3000's, then this shouldn't be an issue, right?
 
Yeah, I might just preorder from BH, as newegg raised the price of the 3970x by 100.

Nice, going for the beast, huh?

Yeah, I have no idea if it is going to be as difficult to get 3960x and 3970x chips as it was to get 3950x.t
 
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I'm planning on 4x Crucial CT16G4WFD8266 ECC to start, not sure if there is a better ECC option? I always run ECC as my desktop build turns into my ZFS NAS when it gets retired. The old server is going to go from a 4 core Xeon to a 12 core X79 Xeon when I upgrade to TR.
 
Side note, what do you guys think of this quad channel RAM kit for these new Threadrippers?

4x16GB, 3600Mhz, 16-19-19-39, 1.35v for $269.99

Seems great on paper, with a tough to beat price, and none of that gemstone LED nonsense, but I am not the best when it comes to RAM.

I know previous gens were a little picky about RAM, and this kit claims to be designed for Intel's x299, but if the new TR's are as much improved in the RAM compatibility department as the Ryzen 3000's, then this shouldn't be an issue, right?

Mismatched ram = lesser die. They can still work no prob (knock on wood) but they are not as good as the matched sets. As for the compatibility I think as long as you steer clear of Corsair you are generally good.
 
I may have mentioned this already, but I am leaning towards the Gigabyte Aorus Master.

Seemingly great power stages, many PCIe slots, and otherwise minimalistic on board features are my main criteria. This appears to be as close as I am going to get.

I was hoping that since Asus made an X570 Prime WS board, that they would make a workstation oriented board for the new threadrippers as well, but that does not appear to be happening. If I were going with a Ryzen, the x570 Prime WS is definitely the board I would have gone with. I love its no-nonsense minimalistic design and features.


To clarify, by perfect trx40 motherboard would be something like this:

Design/Color Scheme: EATX or however big it needs to be to get th ejob done. Simple. Plain black, or even old school green for all I care. None of those stupid looking racer boy heatsinks or IO shield covers. Prefer some sort of fancy heatsink to make the chipset fanless.
On board LAN: Dual 10gig SFP+ optical transducer slots, no copper, no WiFi
On Board Sound: Whatever, as long as it has an optical SPDIF out that is OK. I'll never use an on board DAC anyway

AS many PCIe slots as possible. My understanding is that of the 64 pcie lanes the CPU's have, 8 are used by the chipset? That leaves 56. The following would be ideal:

Four M2 slots: Two of them 4x directly off of the CPU. The other two 4x off of the chipset. Limit them to Gen 3, if that is too much bandwidth for the chipset to support.

Slot1: 16x for GPU.
Slot2: Blank (will always be covered by GPU anyway)
Slot3: 8x
Slot4: 8x
Slot5: 8x
Slot6: 8x
Slot7 (off of chipset): 8x, shared with chipset M2 slots. If one m2 chipset m.2 slot is populated, it drops to 4x, if two are populated, it is disabled.

I wouldn't even bother with any SATA ports.

This would - IMHO - be the perfect workstation board for me.
 
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I'm planning on 4x Crucial CT16G4WFD8266 ECC to start, not sure if there is a better ECC option? I always run ECC as my desktop build turns into my ZFS NAS when it gets retired. The old server is going to go from a 4 core Xeon to a 12 core X79 Xeon when I upgrade to TR.

I was considering ECC, but it looks like the ECC sticks that are available sacrificed a lot on speed and latency :( If there were ECC Udimms in 3600mhz CL16, I'd go for that in a heartbeat.
 
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