The AMD TRX40 Motherboard Overview: 12 New Motherboards Analyzed

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It's been a fruitful time for AMD's CPU team over the last year, with a lot of praise heaped on its current processor product stack. The launch of the new AMD Threadripper 3970X 32-core and the Threadripper 3960X 24-core processors has brought the brand new TRX40 chipset to market, and out of all the motherboard partners, there is a new chipset and 12 new motherboards to dissect. In this article, we'll be analyzing the 12 new boards, which as a priority feature enables a PCIe 4.0 x8 link between the CPU and chipset.

The AMD TRX40 Chipset Overview: PCIe 4.0 For HEDT

One of the most important innovations with AMD's switch to the 7 nm architecture was the inclusion of PCIe 4.0. It marked the first consumer hardware to feature PCIe 4.0, which made a huge talking point during the release of the X570 chipset for the Ryzen 3000 CPUs. For the new HEDT processors, we get a new platform, and AMD's new in-house designed TRX40 chipset also integrates PCIe 4.0. This also comes with a PCIe 4.0 x8 connection between the TRX40 chipset and the new AMD Threadripper 3000 processors, quadrupling the bandwidth compared to any competitor's design.

AMD leveraged GlobalFoundries 12nm to build the TRX40 chipset, and offers 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes to the system. That being said, eight of those are used for the CPU-to-chipset connection, leaving 16 for ports and other devices. This is on top of the 64 PCIe 4.0 lanes for the CPU: 64 + 24 = 88 PCIe 4.0 lanes total, but the x8 link in each direction between CPU and chipset gives a usable 72 PCIe 4.0 lanes for the platform.

Another high point is lots of native support for USB 3.1 G2. Up to 12 USB 3.1 G2 ports are supported at the chipset level - this is a massive jump over X399 which supported just two natively. AMD's TRX40 chipset also has support for four USB 2.0, with extra USB 3.1 G1 available through additional controllers integrated into models. This is why some models opt to use USB 2.0 ports to complement the USB 3.1 G2 on the rear panel where required.

One big aspect motherboard vendors have been focusing on is the power delivery. The two new processors for launch day come in at an impressive 280 W TDP, with the newly announced Threadripper 3990X with 64 cores and 128 threads also having a TDP of 280 W. The motherboards have to be solidly built for these, so it's unlikely we will see something 'cheap' in this market space.

he biggest differences from TRX40 from the previous X399 chipset is the addition of PCIe 4.0 replacing the older PCIe 3.0. This brings extra bandwidth advantages for PCIe devices, such as M.2 drives as the PCIe 4.0 SSD controllers mature. The TRX40 chipset is based on the 14 nm process node from Global Foundries.

The high TDP was one of the caveats of the mainstream X570 chipset, due to the higher power requirements of PCIe 4.0. As a result, motherboard vendors implemented actively cooled heatsinks to help keep the chipset cool. With TRX40, we are in the same ballpark for chipset TDP, however with the beefier CPUs supported, there's going to be a variety of designs.

A big thing to note is that TRX40 based motherboards do not support the first and second generation Threadripper processors, eg, TR 1950X. TR 2990X. This means the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X, 3960X, and next years Threadripper 3990X are the only models currently compatible with the TRX40 chipset.
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