Tuesday, May 30th 2017
First AMD Threadripper Motherboards Pictured - They Look Glorious
Here are some of the first pictures of AMD socket SP3r2 (LGA 4094) motherboards for Ryzen Threadripper HEDT processors. The socket is visibly bigger than Intel LGA2066, and is flanked by eight DDR4 DIMM slots. The other characteristic feature of these boards is that they feature up to three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots with full x16 wiring, taking advantage of the 64-lane PCIe root complex, with the fourth slot splitting away x8 lanes from the third slot. This is unlike Intel, where after you've spend $999 on their 10-core processor, you can only run up to two slots at x16.
The first motherboard on our tour is an ASRock X399 Fatal1ty Gaming 9. This board is loaded for bear with four x16 slots (all of which are wired to the CPU), eight DDR4 DIMM slots for the quad-channel memory interface, 32 Gb/s M.2 and U.2 storage connectivity, and at least four of the eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports that come directly from the CPU for the least latency. An interesting observation here is that all three boards we've seen draw power from just a single 8-pin EPS connector besides 24-pin ATX, unlike several LGA2066 boards that over a second EPS or 4-pin ATX input for the CPU VRM. Could this mean that AMD also beat Intel with HEDT energy-efficiency?
Next up is the ASRock X399 Taichi, which appears to be based on the same PCB as the Fatal1ty Gaming 9, but with white+black color scheme, and different heatsink designs. Both boards from ASRock feature 802.11ac+BT4.1 WLAN, in addition to three wired networking interfaces, one of which is 10 GbE.
Lastly, there's the GIGABYTE X399 Aorus Gaming 7. This board has a more restrained design scheme than ASRock, and gives you reinforced DDR4 and PCIe slots, besides three 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, and two wired network interfaces, 802.11ac WLAN, and GIGABYTE's highest-grade onboard audio solution, featuring ESS Sabre DAC, and the highest grade audio capacitors.
The first motherboard on our tour is an ASRock X399 Fatal1ty Gaming 9. This board is loaded for bear with four x16 slots (all of which are wired to the CPU), eight DDR4 DIMM slots for the quad-channel memory interface, 32 Gb/s M.2 and U.2 storage connectivity, and at least four of the eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports that come directly from the CPU for the least latency. An interesting observation here is that all three boards we've seen draw power from just a single 8-pin EPS connector besides 24-pin ATX, unlike several LGA2066 boards that over a second EPS or 4-pin ATX input for the CPU VRM. Could this mean that AMD also beat Intel with HEDT energy-efficiency?
Lastly, there's the GIGABYTE X399 Aorus Gaming 7. This board has a more restrained design scheme than ASRock, and gives you reinforced DDR4 and PCIe slots, besides three 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, and two wired network interfaces, 802.11ac WLAN, and GIGABYTE's highest-grade onboard audio solution, featuring ESS Sabre DAC, and the highest grade audio capacitors.
28 Comments on First AMD Threadripper Motherboards Pictured - They Look Glorious
Twice the size of a normal Ryzen chip is normal considering how Opterons where made. These are CPU's that have things in the double.
I see a whole new slew of air cooling designs and waterblocks coming.
Heat-wise we already saw, that the speculated max TDP for an announced lineup is in 125-155W range, so assuming there is no crazy OC involved, you can cool it with any existing hi-end solution.
Even something as trivial as AC Freezer 7 Pro($20 retail) is rated at 150W. Wraith was adequate enough for 125W FX-series, so it will also work for 16-core Ryzen parts.
If AMD also finishes an AIO solution, then you will have even more options to cool this monster.
Of course this is obvious to you, but what is being taken away from the ones who aren't as well versed is that the number of EPS connectors has something to do with energy efficiency, which isn't remotely true. SP3r2 board with a single 8 or 4 pin connector can max out the CPUs on AIR/AIO cooling with no issue. You'll actually see boards with this configuration soon enough - so those with PSU's that don't' necessarily have two such connectors can still use the platform.
And ~20 years ago the Socket 8 for Pentium Pro was huge.
They only low-point for all X399 so far is limited storage connectivity. It's my personal requirement of at least 10 SATA ports. Sadly even with all the PCIe lanes and all that goodness AMD also stuck with 8.
Hoping for at least one WS board surfacing here or there. Just ditch RGB for it, got it Asus? Good. Glad we understand each other. :D
A few typos in the article too..