At the very end of the 3-page article it has this comment:
"The real rivalry here is between the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme and ROG Zenith II Extreme. And not only are these boards fairly close to each other in price, but also performance and feature value. But, the difficulty we faced in getting CPU overclocking adjustments to “stick” causes us to lean slightly toward Asus, though we could understand if someone else chose the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme for its superior network controller and PCIe slot arrangement."
For nearly 15 years I have been a supporter of ASUS motherboards and never considered a Gigabyte board, mainly because of their warranty practices. The biggest reason I was looking at the Gigabyte MB now was because of the equally spaced 4 double-wide PCIe slots. ASUS has one, the Zenith Extreme, but it is a generation behind the Gigabyte with a TR4 socket, not an sTRX4 socket required for a TR 3970X CPU.
Before I go any further, I would like to know if anyone has used this particular board and had any problems with it, other than getting the CPU overclocking adjustments to “stick” while changing the BIOS settings.
If you experienced anything good about this particular motherboard, I'd be interested to know that, too.
No need for mb's with lots of sata ports, this one card will handle 16 all you need is a way to hook up the power to the gpu's because a metal or even wood frame would let you run a tone of them.
At the very end of the 3-page article it has this comment:
"The real rivalry here is between the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme and ROG Zenith II Extreme. And not only are these boards fairly close to each other in price, but also performance and feature value. But, the difficulty we faced in getting CPU overclocking adjustments to “stick” causes us to lean slightly toward Asus, though we could understand if someone else chose the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme for its superior network controller and PCIe slot arrangement."
For nearly 15 years I have been a supporter of ASUS motherboards and never considered a Gigabyte board, mainly because of their warranty practices. The biggest reason I was looking at the Gigabyte MB now was because of the equally spaced 4 double-wide PCIe slots. ASUS has one, the Zenith Extreme, but it is a generation behind the Gigabyte with a TR4 socket, not an sTRX4 socket required for a TR 3970X CPU.
Before I go any further, I would like to know if anyone has used this particular board and had any problems with it, other than getting the CPU overclocking adjustments to “stick” while changing the BIOS settings.
If you experienced anything good about this particular motherboard, I'd be interested to know that, too.
I do not have first hand experience with that specific Gigabyte board, but I have ran every generation of Threadripper on a variety of different boards from ASUS, ASRock, ASRock Rack, and MSI. By far the most functional and pain free have been the ASRock boards.
A little off-topic of your question, but I have been running the ASRock TRX40 Creator 24/7 with a 3960X since just after release. Everything on this board just works. Here are a few highlights and some things that are not present or not fully functional on other TRX40 boards:
ATX form factor
4x dual slot PCIe slots
Auxillary PCIe power connector
10GBASE-T - Aquntia drivers have been in-tree and stable on Linux for years
ECC - Fully functional ECC UDIMM compatibility and monitoring via rasdaemon
PCIe Bifurcation - All slots have working and proper bifurcation options x8x8, x8x4x4, x4x4x4x4 (options will vary depending on which slots are populated)
IOMMU - Fully functional and sane IOMMU groups. Important if you are looking to pass hardware through to VMs
FWIW the Threadripper boards that have had the most issues, at least for me, have been the ASUS boards.
these days i don't think there's a big argument for going with TR (non-pro) over EPYC. the platform is functionally dead.
you just get so much extra and less restrictions with EPYC.
-8ch memory
-cheaper RDIMM support (only RDIMM support)
-much higher memory capacity
-BMC/IPMI/LOM
-better PCIe expansion (can run 6-7 GPUs at full bandwidth without bifurcation/adapters)
-cheap CPUs (used market)
the only advantage for TR always seemed to be overclocking, faster UDIMM memory (with size/speed limits) and more dummy-proof BIOS interface (more similar to consumer board UEFI). but you couldn't OC all that much without astronomical power and cooling requirements. i just think you get so much more for your money with EPYC.
the only EPYC downside is that the motherboards *can* be more expensive. but personally i bought all of my EPYC boards Naples/Rome compatible boards (Asrock Rack EPYCD8, Supermicro H11DSi) for less than $400 each, and Rome chips are all very reasonably priced these days. tough to beat EPYC Rome in $/performance these days. Milan will require a Milan capable motherboard (Asrock Rack ROME series, Supermicro H12 series) which are more expensive. My ROMED8-2T was considerably more expensive at ~$600, but that's not too far away from, or even less than, what some of these manufacturers are trying to charge for TR and TR-Pro boards.
I do not have first hand experience with that specific Gigabyte board, but I have ran every generation of Threadripper on a variety of different boards from ASUS, ASRock, ASRock Rack, and MSI. By far the most functional and pain free have been the ASRock boards.
A little off-topic of your question, but I have been running the ASRock TRX40 Creator 24/7 with a 3960X since just after release. Everything on this board just works. Here are a few highlights and some things that are not present or not fully functional on other TRX40 boards:
ATX form factor
4x dual slot PCIe slots
Auxillary PCIe power connector
10GBASE-T - Aquntia drivers have been in-tree and stable on Linux for years
ECC - Fully functional ECC UDIMM compatibility and monitoring via rasdaemon
PCIe Bifurcation - All slots have working and proper bifurcation options x8x8, x8x4x4, x4x4x4x4 (options will vary depending on which slots are populated)
IOMMU - Fully functional and sane IOMMU groups. Important if you are looking to pass hardware through to VMs
FWIW the Threadripper boards that have had the most issues, at least for me, have been the ASUS boards.
Interesting TICTOC, and thank you for giving your honest opinions.
I've been a fan of ASUS motherboards for more than 15 yrs, that was the only brand of board I bought. And with the ASRock boards being a takeoff of ASUS, I just thought that they would be a second rate board. I do know that they've come a long with since their start, but still... I will look into ASRock and be more diligent with them.
I've also been a bit leery of getting into an EPYC system because I'm a bit more comfortable with the 'consumer' boards & chips. But this may change. It's about time I broadened my search a bit.
I've been a fan of ASUS motherboards for more than 15 yrs, that was the only brand of board I bought. And with the ASRock boards being a takeoff of ASUS,
A pc shop owner told me that ASRock makes Asus boards for them and came up with a slightly different spec board of their own to make even more money as they knew how to make MB's. I bought an early ASRock board that had problems and then the company refused to honor the warranty because I didn't use a 'company' to build my pc. I buy them now when it comes with something I want but otherwise buy Asus, GigaByte or MSI MB's not in exclusively in that order.
Hi everyone! To those in the
)
I'm considering a Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Xtreme sTRX4 motherboard with an AMD Treadripper 3970X CPU.
This review by Tom's Hardware shows a fairly in-depth review of the motherboard.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gigabyte-trx40-aorus-xtreme-review-battle-for-threadripper-supremacy
At the very end of the 3-page article it has this comment:
"The real rivalry here is between the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme and ROG Zenith II Extreme. And not only are these boards fairly close to each other in price, but also performance and feature value. But, the difficulty we faced in getting CPU overclocking adjustments to “stick” causes us to lean slightly toward Asus, though we could understand if someone else chose the TRX40 Aorus Xtreme for its superior network controller and PCIe slot arrangement."
For nearly 15 years I have been a supporter of ASUS motherboards and never considered a Gigabyte board, mainly because of their warranty practices. The biggest reason I was looking at the Gigabyte MB now was because of the equally spaced 4 double-wide PCIe slots. ASUS has one, the Zenith Extreme, but it is a generation behind the Gigabyte with a TR4 socket, not an sTRX4 socket required for a TR 3970X CPU.
Before I go any further, I would like to know if anyone has used this particular board and had any problems with it, other than getting the CPU overclocking adjustments to “stick” while changing the BIOS settings.
If you experienced anything good about this particular motherboard, I'd be interested to know that, too.
Proud member of the Old Farts Association
Here you go Ian&Steve your
)
Here you go Ian&Steve your dream come true but hurry as it's at Woot Closeout
https://computers.woot.com/offers/syba-16-port-sata-iii-to-pcie-3-0-x4-non-4?ref=w_cnt_wp_0_21
Not sure why you think I want
)
Not sure why you think I want this lol.
_________________________________________________________________________
Ian&Steve C. wrote: Not sure
)
No need for mb's with lots of sata ports, this one card will handle 16 all you need is a way to hook up the power to the gpu's because a metal or even wood frame would let you run a tone of them.
I’m also confused why you
)
I’m also confused why you think GPUs connect via a SATA connector. That’s for storage (HDDs and SSDs)
_________________________________________________________________________
Ian&Steve C. wrote: I’m also
)
Yeah I was overthinking it and confused myself!! Maybe for your Squid Station then?
GWGeorge007 wrote:I'm
)
I do not have first hand experience with that specific Gigabyte board, but I have ran every generation of Threadripper on a variety of different boards from ASUS, ASRock, ASRock Rack, and MSI. By far the most functional and pain free have been the ASRock boards.
A little off-topic of your question, but I have been running the ASRock TRX40 Creator 24/7 with a 3960X since just after release. Everything on this board just works. Here are a few highlights and some things that are not present or not fully functional on other TRX40 boards:
FWIW the Threadripper boards that have had the most issues, at least for me, have been the ASUS boards.
these days i don't think
)
these days i don't think there's a big argument for going with TR (non-pro) over EPYC. the platform is functionally dead.
you just get so much extra and less restrictions with EPYC.
-8ch memory
-cheaper RDIMM support (only RDIMM support)
-much higher memory capacity
-BMC/IPMI/LOM
-better PCIe expansion (can run 6-7 GPUs at full bandwidth without bifurcation/adapters)
-cheap CPUs (used market)
the only advantage for TR always seemed to be overclocking, faster UDIMM memory (with size/speed limits) and more dummy-proof BIOS interface (more similar to consumer board UEFI). but you couldn't OC all that much without astronomical power and cooling requirements. i just think you get so much more for your money with EPYC.
the only EPYC downside is that the motherboards *can* be more expensive. but personally i bought all of my EPYC boards Naples/Rome compatible boards (Asrock Rack EPYCD8, Supermicro H11DSi) for less than $400 each, and Rome chips are all very reasonably priced these days. tough to beat EPYC Rome in $/performance these days. Milan will require a Milan capable motherboard (Asrock Rack ROME series, Supermicro H12 series) which are more expensive. My ROMED8-2T was considerably more expensive at ~$600, but that's not too far away from, or even less than, what some of these manufacturers are trying to charge for TR and TR-Pro boards.
_________________________________________________________________________
tictoc wrote: I do not have
)
Interesting TICTOC, and thank you for giving your honest opinions.
I've been a fan of ASUS motherboards for more than 15 yrs, that was the only brand of board I bought. And with the ASRock boards being a takeoff of ASUS, I just thought that they would be a second rate board. I do know that they've come a long with since their start, but still... I will look into ASRock and be more diligent with them.
I've also been a bit leery of getting into an EPYC system because I'm a bit more comfortable with the 'consumer' boards & chips. But this may change. It's about time I broadened my search a bit.
Proud member of the Old Farts Association
GWGeorge007 wrote: I've
)
A pc shop owner told me that ASRock makes Asus boards for them and came up with a slightly different spec board of their own to make even more money as they knew how to make MB's. I bought an early ASRock board that had problems and then the company refused to honor the warranty because I didn't use a 'company' to build my pc. I buy them now when it comes with something I want but otherwise buy Asus, GigaByte or MSI MB's not in exclusively in that order.