Conclusion

Final words & conclusion

So you take the Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Xtreme, deduct a few features to 5 Gbps Ethernet instead of 10 Gbps, the extra M2 add-in card and really you landed at the Master edition. The TRX40 Aorus Master is an excellent motherboard, but up-to 32-core processors. I say this specifically as we ran into issues on the memory subsystem and specifically the 64-core 3990X (but not 32-cores and lower), we'll address that in a separate chapter located on this conclusion page though. The Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus master is priced much better than the extreme edition, however at $479, that is still a lot of money for a motherboard. Gigabyte offers a lovely product though, with a 5-gigabit ethernet jack from Intel. Then the AX WIFI6 solution (again Intel), and then they added an audio solution that is even to the liking of audiophiles. With four full x16 slots Gen 4 ( x16/x8/x16/x8 PCIe 4.0) and the ability to add three M2 NVMe units alongside eighth SATA3 ports, I'd say your storage needs are covered. Looking at the board itself, yeah it is fitted with the most awesome stuff and excellent features. Great to see is a  proper VRM design, among strongest we've seen thus far with 16 70A phases. The motherboard is lovely as it has very great looks and wasn't 'loaded' with RGB. Overall a very feature-rich product.

TRX40 and PCIe Gen4 all the way

The downside, of course, is that you have to purchase a new motherboard and TRX40 will not be cheap. Knowing AMD, they really have tried to keep the Gen 3 processor on X399, however, PCIe 4.0 was just not possible. So they designed a new chipset and overloaded anything and everything with PCIe Gen 4.0, including a quadruple, interconnect in-between the chipset and CPU. With that PCIe 4.0 x8 interlink, that is just unheard of and unprecedented even in the server segment. A Threadripper 3000 processor brings 64 PCIe Gen 4 lanes to the table, 8 of those have been reserved for the chipset link and then the chipset link brings in a further 24 PCIe Gen 4 links to the table with 8 reserved for that interconnect. That's 88 lanes PCIe Gen 4 lanes in total and thus 72 lanes available to the end-user. 

Stability - Memory issues with 3990X

Specifically, with the 64-core part, the memory subsystem is more complicated. It's one of several reasons why ASUS updated their Zenith II Extreme towards an Alpha version with increased power delivery (Infineon TDA21490 90A power stages). While I have tested the 64-core 3990X on MSI and thus that ASUS motherboard (also the non-Alpha) problem-free, we ran into an issue with this Gigabyte one. Especially at boot stages, we'd get an ACPI BIOS error. Lowering memory from 3600 towards 3200 MHz solved the issues mostly but not completely. And when swapping out the 3990X towards a 32-core Threadripper the problems vanished. We obviously ran with the latest BIOS and Windows updates. The problems, however, remain persistent. Be that as it may, it could also have been an isolated issue on our side of course.

However, that means that in its current state we're not recommending the 64-core part with this motherboard. We tested three memory kits at 4 DIMMs 3200/3600 and all exhibited issues. You, however, should be problem-free with a 32-core or lower-spec processor. Speaking in general. Threadripper fully supports most memory even starting at 3200, 3466, 3600 Mhz and upwards. We do recommend you to stick to 3600 MHz max with some tight timings. Also remember you now have quad-channel memory available, doubling up system bandwidth. So memory-wise you'll benefit a bit more from faster latency memory as opposed to faster frequency memory. Please do check the motherboard QVL list for recommended memory. 

Gaming 

Gaming then; at defaults, it's all pretty good really. But please do realize that there will be games out there that will not even start up with 48 or 64-threads fired off at them. The software has got no clue what it is looking at. Luckily with AMD's Ryzen Master software, you can switch to a game mode and have limited cores enabled allowing you to open up compatibility with all and any game(s). The performance itself is good, but surely not the reason why you would buy such a many-core processor. But yeah... very decent framerates. 

VRM Fan noises

The first thing you'll notice is that the PCH Chipsetfan fan has... a fan. And that one is simply put silent. We still heard an annoying noise coming from the motherboard and quickly discovered a VRM/MOS fan located in the heatsink located at the IO panel. It can be controlled, just go into the BIOS and move it's behavior to silent,  the default, however, is very noisy and not something we've experienced with the other tested TRX40 motherboards.

The Tweak

You can tweak the processor, but you will also understand the complication of running many cores in an all-core overclocked mode. That will generate heat and tremendous power consumption. Surely you are not willing to mess up that 1399 or 1999 USD processor that already runs so very fast. Yes, we're not going to recommend any overclocking. But if you want to, it'll take patience, good cooling and a lot of effort. 

The conclusion

As stated, we've had some issues with this motherboard, the DDR4 memory and the combination with the 64-core part. It's memory-related, as, with the 32-core part, it wasn't an issue. So that makes this conclusion a bit more complicated. Up-to 32-cores we can recommend the Master, sure. I also need to state that perhaps after a BIOS update the problem might be gone (and yes we did use the latest public BIOS), that or possibly an isolated issue on our side (hey we cannot rule it out at this stage). Other then that and a MOS/VRM fan configuration it's all good. We do find the defaults for BIOS fan profiles to be way too high overall. You'll quickly find yourself configuring the fans in a more silent mode in the BIOS. No biggy though. Looking at purely the motherboard then it is all very simple, it is lovely and features rich enough, has a proper nice dark design and is well built with proper components. Features wise this kit offers eight SATA 6 Gbps and 3x M2 slots, the 5 Gbps Ethernet jack (though 10 Gbps would have been the way to go with the TRX40 platform), AX WIFI, improved 7.1 channel HD audio and yeah, Gigabyte did not go over the top with RGB LEDs and did things subtle. The new architecture brings many advantages, first and foremost each and every one of the 32 cores get that ZEN2 design IPC benefit, and that makes them fast cores. More impressively, AMD managed to fire off really high base and turbo bins at these processors. Think Ryzen 7 3800X level performance quadrupled. Add to that the fact that UMA/NUMA memory configurations are a thing of the past. Meaning even gaming-wise the Threadrippers now put out very mature numbers. That said, not all games and software will like 32 cores, we had one game behaving weird, Far Cry 5, but other than that it's all been smooth sailing gaming wise.  At $479 the motherboard is priced 'okay', though we'd really like to see a sub-300 USD motherboard for the TRX40 platform, as really that already is a lot of money. We had some quirks with the 64-core part and memory compatibility, so time will tell if that'll be fixed with a firmware update. But up-to 32-cores you should be fine. We're just not sure if that is the answer you'd like to hear when spending that much money on a motherboard that is supposedly fully compatible with the entire Threadripper 3000 range. Ergo we'll leave the awards for what it is today.

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