Product Showcase

  
When we place the motherboard at an angle we see socket SP3 / TR4. It will support all Threadripper processors and is actually based on the SP3 Epyc socket, this is referred to as the server class up-to 32-core processors. The cooler mounting system is the same for both. Noctua just released their NT-H1 and NT-H2 thermal paste, we'll see how that works out in this review. BTW I tend to work in a five raindrop configuration thermal paste wise with Threadripper for best results. 

Look at the beefy cooling covering the VRM area, there's some silent active cooling there as well. Very impressive. The ROG Zenith Extreme Alpha has been fitted with an 8-phase power delivery with an accumulated 16 power stages. If you follow the power delivery heatsink to the rear side cover you can spot the two 8-pin 12 V ATX power connectors which allows AMD Threadripper processors to feed on as much power as they see fit. 

 
Storage ports then -- ASUS is equipping the board with eight SATA3 ports, alongside a total of three M.2 slots (two in the DIMM2 unit) that have been tucked away and all are cooled. 

Beneath the heatsink is an internal M.2 slot. The memory DIMM slots have been reinforced with a metal strut in the middle as well. The board supports single, dual and quad channel with support for up-to DDR4 3600 MHZ (O.C.) and starts at 2133 MHz memory modules. 8 x DDR4 DIMM sockets can support up to 128 GB of system memory.

Here we are prepping the DIMM2 module that will give full bandwidth to two NVMe M.2 SSDs, as well as cooling them properly with a massive heatsink. This unit is inserted just below the DIMM slots.