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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: From the chipset there are eight PCIe lanes, which AMD here has suggested reserving two for gigabit Ethernet, four for a PCIe x4 slot, one for a PCIe x1 slot, and one for a WiFi module. Alongside the PCIe lanes are eight SATA ports, six USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) Type-A ports, one USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) Type-C port and two USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports with appropriate redrivers. In a change to what we normally see on Intel motherboards, AMD lists SPI and Audio features as coming from the CPU rather than the chipset. AMD Suggests Variants 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
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. With so much bandwidth inside the platform, we had to give our X399 motherboards lots of ultra-fast connectivity to reach outside the box. For external devices, USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports provide 10Gbps links in all the flavors: Type-A, Type-C, and front panel. The Gigabit networking uses reliable Intel controllers, and that’s just the start. The ROG Zenith Extreme takes networking up a notch with not only a wired 10G Ethernet card, but also a wireless 802.11ad module.
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.
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.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. 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 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.
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