What motherboard to get for threadripper 3?

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.

Ah. I didn't know to look out for that.

How can you tell by looking at the listing?
 
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

Yeah, on my current board I have Dual x520 which is all I use for networking. One of the ports goes to the switch, which is how I get out to the internet. The other port goes straight to my storage/VM server which has another dual x520, set up the same way. I have the on board ports disabled. I plan on doing the same thing once I do the upgrade.

One thing to keep in mind. I just noticed that some of these TR boards are actually XL-ATX, larger than E-ATX. This includes the Designare, and the Aorus Extreme. Make sure you have a big enough case! :p
 
  • Like
Reactions: mikeo
like this
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?
You would have to pay an entrance fee of $440 for anything b-die for 64gb (4 dimms)

I certainly understand why the option you suggested would be enticing.

Alternately if you are curious/perhaps a bit crazy they do have 32gb x4 kits now. Corsair currently offers them and Gskill just announced they will be releasing their kits soon. It would be prohibitively expensive though. Around $560 for basic 2666 kits. They do however OC well.
 
You would have to pay an entrance fee of $440 for anything b-die for 64gb (4 dimms)

I certainly understand why the option you suggested would be enticing.

Alternately if you are curious/perhaps a bit crazy they do have 32gb x4 kits now. Corsair currently offers them and Gskill just announced they will be releasing their kits soon. It would be prohibitively expensive though. Around $560 for basic 2666 kits. They do however OC well.

What does B-die even mean?
 
Sooo... Why is MSI using a picture with an old Mac Pro on their product page for the TRX40 PRO 10G? :p


upload_2019-12-4_20-1-55.png


Did they hire some interns or something?
 
If anyone is wondering the trx40 designare supports bifurcation of all 4 pcie slots down to x4x4x4x4 for the 16s and x4x4 for the 8s.
 
Thank you for all the replies.

Still trying to figure out which motherboard to get. No luck getting a 3960x so far. Considering going dual epyc maybe instead but threadripper clocks higher for photoshop and lightroom performance. Although dual epyc would be better for Maya and video encoding. May spend the extra for a 3970x if that becomes available first.
Requirements.
1. must be able to take 128 gb of ram preferably ECC. upgradable to 256 later
2. Dual Ethernet ports (for virtual machines)
3. At least 3 m.2 slots prefer 4 ( Windows boot, OSX Boot, project/vms, scratch) rather have them on motherboard and not have to use a card.
4. At least 4 pci-express slots, video card, areca raid card, black magic card, elgato.

Leaning towards Asus since my Asus ps2b-ds and PC-DL motherboards still work even after all these years. Asus seems to carry a huge price premium for the Zenith 2 Extreme but it fits all my requirements but it cost more then the dual CPU boards that are usually $500-600. Guess I could settle for Asus Rog Strix TRX40 gaming and lose a m.2 slot.

Gigabyte reliable? Never bought anything from them. Gigabyte TRX40 Designare seems really attractive for thunder bolt 3 and the daughter card for more m.2s but how reliable are they some people are calling them gigafail?

MSI I won't touch with a 10 foot pool. I remember MSI as the bargain basement Chinatown PC shop brand before they switched to Foxconn boards and I hear horror stories of how bad they are can't install windows updates or reinstall windows and just die after only a little over a year. Friend bought an MSI gaming laptop and it died after a year and a half so not confident in buying from them.

Not sure about Asrock. None of their boards meet my requirements anyways.

Learning towards the Asus Zenith 2 Extreme but the Gigabyte TRX40 Designare has feature I like but not sure on their reliability.

What boards did people end up getting?

Also is there a decent air cooler for threadripper 3? Do not intend on over clocking and don't trust water coolers.
 
I've got the noctua for my 3970x with two fans setup, probably the best air option for TR right now.

https://noctua.at/en/nh-u14s-tr4-sp3

Also went with the trx40 designare if you have any questions on that board / setup.

Thank you.

What did you go with for your set up?

How is the mounting the scews for the gigabyte designare board is it another pain in the neck drill and tap new holes like it was for super micro boards?
 
Thank you.

What did you go with for your set up?

How is the mounting the scews for the gigabyte designare board is it another pain in the neck drill and tap new holes like it was for super micro boards?

Still waiting on a few parts but mounting it was easy.
 
I got the Asus Strix board and so far am extremely pleased with it. It's been extraordinarily robust and stable - well built and so far, for me, entirely glitch-free. The little OLED display shows POST codes on boot in a very useful way, I thought, and the board has virtually everything I could want other than onboard 10GbE which I planned to add via a card at a later date anyway.

The two m.2 slots beneath the first PCIe slot get hot (with a GPU next to them) but I think that is par for the course with most of these boards? Other than that, it's a great system.
 
Just got my Gigabyte Aorus Master today, and damn, it is one heavy, sturdy board that exudes a sense of quality.

Still hate the fact that it has on board wifi though...

And the EPS power connector locations are different than I am used to. Hopefully everything will still fit nicely.

I am concerned that the weird 90 degree atx power connector will interfere with my reservoir :(
 
Just got my Gigabyte Aorus Master today, and damn, it is one heavy, sturdy board that exudes a sense of quality.

Still hate the fact that it has on board wifi though...

And the EPS power connector locations are different than I am used to. Hopefully everything will still fit nicely.

I am concerned that the weird 90 degree atx power connector will interfere with my reservoir :(
I just got the x570 Master and it is also one hefty mofo.
 
The two m.2 slots beneath the first PCIe slot get hot (with a GPU next to them) but I think that is par for the course with most of these boards?

Apparently, the flash memory ICs themselves like to run hot, but the controllers don't (being processors and so on). Some boards come with M.2 coolers and you can buy dedicated ones if it's a problem, and you can also just glue / tape a small heatsink to the controller IC itself. It's not a big deal overall.
 
You would have to pay an entrance fee of $440 for anything b-die for 64gb (4 dimms)

I certainly understand why the option you suggested would be enticing.

Alternately if you are curious/perhaps a bit crazy they do have 32gb x4 kits now. Corsair currently offers them and Gskill just announced they will be releasing their kits soon. It would be prohibitively expensive though. Around $560 for basic 2666 kits. They do however OC well.


Well, I hope the 16-19-19-39 aren't too bad.

I went shopping around for any that were 3600mhz and 16 across the board (except the last number) and I just can't find any at any price.

Maybe if I give them a little more voltage they will be happy at something like 16-16-16-36.

We'll see.
 
Are there any Threadripper boards with more then 4 slots? Forgot that I needed the wireless card for osx so need 5 slots. (video card, black magic card, elgato, wifi card, areca. I guess I can dump the Areca raid card and buy more nvme drives and just use the motherboard raid 1 for data.
 
Are there any Threadripper boards with more then 4 slots? Forgot that I needed the wireless card for osx so need 5 slots. (video card, black magic card, elgato, wifi card, areca. I guess I can dump the Areca raid card and buy more nvme drives and just use the motherboard raid 1 for data.

The only ones I've seen with 5, have had 1 extra 1x slot.

The Gigabyte Aorus Master I bought is like this.
 
Well, I hope the 16-19-19-39 aren't too bad.

I went shopping around for any that were 3600mhz and 16 across the board (except the last number) and I just can't find any at any price.

Maybe if I give them a little more voltage they will be happy at something like 16-16-16-36.

We'll see.
You'll be good. You could try tightening the timings/OCing if you wanted for the RAM, but honestly you'd probably be just as well leaving it at XMP. RAM OCs tend to be a bit more tricky to test for stability. 16-19-19 @3600 is great ram anyway so enjoy
 
Apparently, the flash memory ICs themselves like to run hot, but the controllers don't (being processors and so on). Some boards come with M.2 coolers and you can buy dedicated ones if it's a problem, and you can also just glue / tape a small heatsink to the controller IC itself. It's not a big deal overall.

I found my MP600 getting hot enough to de-rate performance, despite its huge heat sink, due to thermals in that slot. Moving it to the vertical M.2 connector was a 20C improvement in thermals.
 
Are there any Threadripper boards with more then 4 slots? Forgot that I needed the wireless card for osx so need 5 slots. (video card, black magic card, elgato, wifi card, areca. I guess I can dump the Areca raid card and buy more nvme drives and just use the motherboard raid 1 for data.

My one disappointment with this platform is the limited number of PCIe slots. Of every PC I’ve owned/built since my first IBM PC XT, this has (a) the most slot bandwidth by a wide margin and (b) the fewest actual expansion slots. Looking at the sheer size of the CPU I’m not sure how it could have been done any differently but it’s still a disappointment.
 
Are there any Threadripper boards with more then 4 slots? Forgot that I needed the wireless card for osx so need 5 slots. (video card, black magic card, elgato, wifi card, areca. I guess I can dump the Areca raid card and buy more nvme drives and just use the motherboard raid 1 for data.

Why not use a board with bult in wifi so you don't need a seperate card?
 
Why not use a board with bult in wifi so you don't need a seperate card?

Sounds to me like he needs a specific WiFi card for some sort of Hackintosh purpose.

Personally I consider it a cardinal sin to use wifi on any non-mobile device :p

I am a bit disappointed in my Aorus Master in that it doesn't seem to allow me to pull the WiFi card. I don't want tht shit in my machine.

Hopefully it can at least be disabled in BIOS.
 
My one disappointment with this platform is the limited number of PCIe slots. Of every PC I’ve owned/built since my first IBM PC XT, this has (a) the most slot bandwidth by a wide margin and (b) the fewest actual expansion slots. Looking at the sheer size of the CPU I’m not sure how it could have been done any differently but it’s still a disappointment.

I agree. They have 64 lanes and they are being wasted by terrible board layouts.

A good workstation board would have one, and only one 16x slot for a GPU. Then wit would skip the second slot (it would be covered by a two slot GPU anyway) and then have 8x slots down the line.
 
Sounds to me like he needs a specific WiFi card for some sort of Hackintosh purpose.

Personally I consider it a cardinal sin to use wifi on any non-mobile device :p

I am a bit disappointed in my Aorus Master in that it doesn't seem to allow me to pull the WiFi card. I don't want tht shit in my machine.

Hopefully it can at least be disabled in BIOS.

it can be. only reason i never disabled mine in my taichi was so i could use the bluetooth, i just disabled the wifi portion in windows.
 
My one disappointment with this platform is the limited number of PCIe slots. Of every PC I’ve owned/built since my first IBM PC XT, this has (a) the most slot bandwidth by a wide margin and (b) the fewest actual expansion slots. Looking at the sheer size of the CPU I’m not sure how it could have been done any differently but it’s still a disappointment.
Unfortunately most people simply don't care, the old x58 and x79 boards that had all x16 slots didn't sell that well compared to the normal ones so they stopped making them.
 
While certain aspects of my Aourus Master are great (power stages, fan control, etc. it is really bugging me that there isn't a bios option to disable such features as on board sound, and the wifi/bluetooth.

The sound implementation in these is really strange. It' is on board, but instead of the usual PCIe lanes off of the chipset used for the audio chip, they used some sort of dual USB connected option with not one, but two craptastic Realtek chips, one for the front panel and one for the rear.

I have no idea why this was necessary.

it mostly works in Windows, but it is completely non functional under Linux. ALSA just will not work with this strange configuration, and confuses the hell out of the system

I am hoping eventually there will be a BIOS option to disable these unwanted features.
 
While certain aspects of my Aourus Master are great (power stages, fan control, etc. it is really bugging me that there isn't a bios option to disable such features as on board sound, and the wifi/bluetooth.

The sound implementation in these is really strange. It' is on board, but instead of the usual PCIe lanes off of the chipset used for the audio chip, they used some sort of dual USB connected option with not one, but two craptastic Realtek chips, one for the front panel and one for the rear.

I have no idea why this was necessary.

it mostly works in Windows, but it is completely non functional under Linux. ALSA just will not work with this strange configuration, and confuses the hell out of the system

I am hoping eventually there will be a BIOS option to disable these unwanted features.
Good info on the bios. Scratch this one off the list.

pavucontrol not sure if thats a fix... looking

check this
 
Last edited:
Back
Top