Designed for the growing community that defines the gaming scene, the Strix X399-E channel’s ROG’s pedigree to help gaming PCs exceed expectations. It will be available in late August in the US and Canada with pricing to be announced closer to its release. An oasis in a market flooded with gaming everything, the Prime X399-A dresses Threadripper in more professional attire while maintaining a stylish edge. It’s the most logical choice for a do-everything workhorse that plays to Threadripper’s strengths without spending too much of the budget on extras.

With support for three double-wide graphics cards and three NVMe SSDs, the Strix X399-E Gaming can easily scale up or down to meet your needs. There’s enough breathing room to run dual 2.5-slot cards like our Strix GTX 1080 Ti–and at a full 16 PCIe lanes per card. Primary M.2 drives get cooling from the chipset heatsink, while secondary SSDs poke out of a vertical slot with that can benefit from chassis airflow. Each of these potential configurations would run into several thousand dollars a piece for a full build - the M.2 drives were suggested at 512GB minimum, with the SATA drives in RAID configurations as well. AMD is making no joke; they want to be the premium platform. New Controllers for X399

Threadripper CPUs reserve four PCIe lanes for the chipset, which similar to Intel acts like a PCIe switch for more IO - although AMD only offers a few lanes here compared to Intel's 24 PCIe 3.0 x4 lanes. Three SafeSlots offer plenty of capacity for multiple graphics cards, and you still get a fourth slot linked to the CPU. Each of those has a dedicated connection, with no sharing between them, and the same is true for the PCIe pathways for storage. The primary M.2 slot shares a heatsink with the chipset to lower drive temperatures under load, and the secondary slot protrudes outward near the DIMM slots, where drives can be cooled by airflow from adjacent system and radiator fans. Factor in the U.2 port, and you’ve got a solid recipe for future SSD expansion or loading up from the start. The silicon is lithographed using the advanced 14 nm FinFET manufacturing process with stapled transistors (also known as 3D transistors). The striking scale reduction has resulted in more space becoming available on the CPU die, and the size of the Threadripper CPU enables the integration of a total of 8 MB L2 Cache and a full 32 MB Level 3 Cache at the heart of the processor. Due to the smart control of the cache buffer and "Smart Prefetch" algorithms for highly-efficient jump predictions, Ryzen is a byword for fast and smooth data processing under all usage scenarios - ranging from gaming and virtual reality to cloud computing and virtualisation. Liquid adornments are complemented by comprehensive fan speed controls capable of managing a full system’s cooling through a single intuitive interface. Our FanXpert intelligence can now adjust each fan’s speed based on the hottest input from a group of configurable sensors, including the GPU diode on compatible graphics cards. This allows the cooling to react to a range of different workloads, like gaming binges that turn your graphics card into a space heater, and complex rendering that lights up all the cores on your CPU.

AMD's marketing on the left is set out to explain that each product in the Threadripper and X399 line will be 'fully enabled' - none of the chips will be limited in PCIe lane counts or DRAM for the sake of segmentation. AMD is happy at this point to keep segmentation limited to cores, frequency, and L3 cache.All-new for this generation, the Zenith Extreme is the flagship of ROG’s AMD motherboard lineup. It comes with all of our latest features, including innovations available only on a select group of top-of-the-line models. With each of these motherboard overviews, we like to cover a few of the newer controllers to hit the market that motherboard manufacturers might take advantage of. Given the recent X299 launch on the Intel side, not much has changed since. The big parts to enter the consumer space are Aquantia's multi-gigabit ethernet controllers.

AMD X399 Ultra Durable motherboard with Dual Intel GbE LAN, Triple M.2 with Thermal Guard, 120dB SNR ALC1220, Front & Rear USB 3.1 Type-C, RGB FUSION 2.0, Intel Dual Band 802.11ac WiFi+BT4.2, Base Plated & I/O Shield Armor When PCIe is the game, it becomes time to play with controllers and ports to see what fits. It all starts with the underlying diagram for Threadripper and X399: Gaming is more than just playing. There’s a whole world of streaming and broadcasting that has turned it into a form of entertainment watched by millions. A product of this new regime, the Strix X399-E Gaming brings Threadripper’s horsepower to bear on high-quality streaming and complex post-production while keeping one foot firmly planted in hardcore gameplay. Bandwidth ripples across every inch of the processor. The PCI Express 3.0 controller boasts 64 individual lanes, 60 of which are available for graphics cards, NVMe SSDs, and other peripherals. To put that into perspective, Ryzen has just 20 open lanes, or a third of the peripheral bandwidth inside Threadripper.The second controller worth mentioning is the updated ASMedia ASM3142 controller, providing USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) functionality to motherboards that need more USB 3.1g2. Originally we saw the ASM1142 single lane controller, while the ASM2142 integrated a dual lane design such that all the ports had peak bandwidth when multiple ports are in use. ASM3142 is a low powered version of the ASM2142, but still supporting all the ports at peak bandwidth.

Ready for cooling in any form, the diverse collection of liquid and fan headers lets you run everything from off-the-shelf AiOs to custom loops. With eight 4-pin headers in total, there’s enough capacity to cover an entire build. They’ve churned out a smart cooling set up to cope with different temperature ranges. There are plenty of fan headers on board and you have complete control over them via Total Fan Control. We’ve observed impressive thermals of 26 degrees C at idle and 40 degrees C under load for the VRM. A big takeawayfrom our AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1950X review is the increase in CPU connected PCIe 3.0 lanes. A full 60 lanes are available to the PCIe slots and M.2 drives, while 4 lanes head off to the chipset where it's muxed for USB, SATA, low-level I/O, and other features. The increase in CPU PCIe lanes is set up to allowfor a lot more flexibilityconnecting devices usingPCIe bandwidth. AMD X399 Gaming motherboard with RGB Fusion, Digital LED strip support, Triple M.2 with Thermal Guard,120dB SNR ALC1220, Killer E2500 Gaming Network, Front & Rear USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C, Intel Dual Band 802.11ac WiFi+BT4.2

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Bandwidth is a huge part of Threadripper’s appeal. The mother lode of PCI Express lanes stands ready for the multiple high-end graphics cards required for truly cutting-edge gaming and VR experiences. All of our X399 motherboards support three-way SLI and CrossFireX setups, and the Zenith Extreme can call upon a fourth card for record-setting benchmark attempts or an extra jolt of compute power. To protect your investment, SafeSlot reinforces the graphics slots against damage from increasingly heavy GPU coolers. If you’re interested in other chipsets, don’t miss our motherboard guide for Intel’s similarly extreme X299 platform. We also have guides for standard desktops, including the Intel Z270 and AMD AM4 platforms. Ryzen gets ripped This is a powerful step up from the previous X399 GIGABYTE Aorus 7 motherboard to make up for its shortcomings with a more beefy VRM set up of 10+3 with a load of features increased to a certain degree compared to its predecessor. There are four PCI-e slots, a bunch of M.2 drives, 8 DIMM slots, integrated WiFi, RGB, and many more. It would have been better if they boarded the latest WiFi on it, still, it is not a fatal blow to the worth. On the upside, it has a pair of Gigabit Intel NICs and a 10 gigabit LAN Aquantia, it improves your internal networking for your router and whatnot, which comes pretty costly if you buy it separately