Introduction

AMD has been gaining traction at a blistering pace over these past couple of years, both in the desktop and server spaces. The Ryzen line has put the company back on the map in a big way. One of the most impressive families of the now famous AMD Ryzen processors is that of the Threadripper HEDT and server chips. With the latest top models featuring up to 32 cores and 64 threads, the origin of the name isn't a mystery. The mystery that does remain is: How well does it game?

ASRock has an answer with the new X399 Phantom Gaming 6. Based on the styling of their other Phantom Gaming products and featuring the signature 2.5 Gigabit gaming LAN, the ASRock X399 Phantom Gaming 6 has a lot to offer for professionals who also like to have a little fun. The board supports Threadripper CPUs with up to a 180 W TDP, so you won't be busting out a 32 core 2990WX, which is probably for the best. Gaming applications can only take advantage of so much multi-threading, so after a point, the extra wouldn't be a good investment.

The ASRock X399 Phantom Gaming 6 I have here today boasts a full-coverage M.2 heatsink, dual Gigabit LAN, and ASRock Hyper BCLK Engine II. Not only are there three M.2 slots and eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports, but the feature ASRock is most excited to present, and rightfully so, is the new Phantom Gaming 2.5 Gb/s LAN. The new hardware ups throughput potential by a theoretical factor of 2.5 over Intel Gigabit offerings, and the software utility will let gamers prioritize gaming traffic for better latency as well. The ASRock X399 Phantom Gaming 6 is a bold take on ASRock's tried and true motherboard formula.

Specifications