Frankly, I'm thrilled with the board. It may bear "gaming" in the name, but that's a misnomer: it's a powerful workstation board with wide-ranging gaming options. And I'm quite thankful for the built-in 10Gbit ethernet when there is only a single PCIe slot for extra cards (besides the 4 16x GPU intended ones).
Also, the fan options on HW montior tab are already like that on my current Z79 board, so I'm not sure if AsRock changed it after that and returned with the X399, or the reviewer is unfamiliar with AsRock motherboards in general.
(Also, yes, I did not think the comment through... yes, you definitely need more than a 1x for a 10G, so you'd have to waste a 16x port for 10G if the board didn't have it integrated)
I can live with a 10 Gbps NIC using a 1x PCIe port, jumping from 1 Gbps to ~7.5 Gbps effective transfer rate is a huge improvement for a home user. Also PCIe 4 is coming, it will be more than enough for a 10 Gbps NIC.
Can you live with either >>$1,000 for a small port count managed switch, or else ~$300-$600 for a literal 4 or 6 port unmanaged switch?
No soho routers with 10g right now. Maybe when broadcom releases some silicon with it built in will we see the usual suspect start to release practical soho routers.
My house is wired. I'm sure most enthusiasts wire their homes. But I would simultaneously argue that most home wiring jobs, even for advanced gamers and semi-professional usage still leverage retail soho routers, either for the NAT/router functionality (eg to get internet access piped to all of the devices), and/or for the wifi. You might use a 2nd router as an access point or some multiport switch to expand the wired functionality.
But are you ready to spend the anywhere from the same to 3x the price of this high priced motherboard to even use the 10G?
If the goal is future proofing, my response is:
wait until the future is here and then just buy a new system with 10g at a lower price/better incorporation.
While I would like 10 GB Ethernet, the MSI X399 Carbon features a 10+3 VRM design, which can easily push 4.1 GHz or 4.2 GHz depending on the chip. 4.2 GHz passed Prime95 at 1.45V on my chip and 4.1 GHz passed at 1.325. I have even been able to run benchmarks at 4.3 or 4.4 GHz, though Prime95 fails. Also 4.3 and 4.4 GHz required some obscene voltage, which unfortunately degraded my chip slightly.
I can't wait to RMA my board ( broken/crushed pins, but they only charge $45 to replace.) Currently I am on an ASUS X399-E and haven't been able to get it past 4.0 GHz. Likely due to the 8+3 VRMs and 8+4 EPS connectors (the MSI was 10+3 and 8+8).
Why, except for a transient bit of fun, would anyone overclock Ryzen? It already clocks itself exceptionally well. If you override those features you're just throwing power away, with no perceptible gain in daily use.
"However, with a price tag of $440, the X399 Professional Gaming also is one of the most expensive Ryzen Threadripper motherboards available."
And yet, the title of the article says it's "for all".
Also, Threadripper is a rather poor choice for gaming. Even if you're streaming, you don't need that many cores. Threadripper is really good is you massively edit photo or edit video or do 3D rendering and few other specialized things. But not for much else. This is not a criticism, with today's CPU one has to carefully weigh whether they need more cores or faster cores, depending on their usage patterns. There no universal solution like there was back in the single-core CPUs day. (And even then, if you didn't need FPU performance, a much cheaper AMD CPU could have been the better pick.)
It's "10G For All", the for all is attached to the 10G ethernet support, meaning it's a thread-ripper board with 10G for both gaming and work station use. It's more expensive than general use boards of either category because the 10G controller is still seriously expensive. If you don't need 10G ethernet, it's probably not the board you want because of the price premium attached for it.
I would have to disagree there. Windows has hundreds of thousands of processes running in the background and when Threadripper is set up properly it performs great with gaming. Even if you do able 8 of the cores you can easily beat out the 1800X from an IPC perspective thanks to lower cache latencies (Threadripper has similar cache latencies to the 2700X). The higher XFR boost (4200hz), slightly better IPC, quad channel memory, and more cores means a better gaming experience than the 1800X...if you can afford it.
My guess is that a 10GbE port adds ~$30. I'd be very interested to know what prosumer use cases would benefit from 10GbE. I would be great if Anandtech did a test with, e.g., some kind of 4K video rendering farm that makes use of 10GbE enabled PCs / switches / NAS /... (I know: easy to ask, hard to do).
I have the z370 gaming professional version of this board that also includes 10gbe. I have a direct connection between my desktop and my file server. It's really nice being able to transfer backups and video files between the two computers at much higher speeds. I usually read and write at about 600 megabytes per second, with it being limited by the 8x8tb wd reds. I think it is one of those things where once you have it, it sucks not having it. Like nobody needs internet faster than 10 megabits per second but it sure is nice having gigabit internet.
>A gaming-specific NIC such as a Killer E2500 would make the motherboard more appealing to gamers, whereas the more expensive Aquantia 10G chip primarily serves other users.
That's funny, I consider myself a gamer, and yet I won't touch any board with a "Killer" NIC, I'll avoid it in favour of an Intel NIC at all costs.
Anandtech has weird love butter for Killer NICs and no substantiation for it via benchmarks. It's been that way since sometime in 2016 and a lot of us don't get why there appears to be some sort of institutionalized need to champion the dumpster fire over at Rivet Networks.
I agree... why does AT keep obsessing about Killer NICs? I pay more if necessary to avoid them for an Intel NIC. Although it is possible to create a scenario where the traffic prioritisation software on the LAN connection can help, it's so rarely impactful in the real-world. The most common real world causes of lag, like family members smashing your internet connection, aren't addressed at all by some local software prioritisation.
Agreed. Any enterprise-grade router will enhance your latency way more than some nonsense software. With vendors like Ubiquiti and Mikrotik, as well as software routers like pfSense and Sophos, there's really no good reason to spend the money on a consumer-grade router. You can have an enterprise-grade setup with a high quality access point for the same price as some of these crab-looking routers they sell at Best Buy.
Aren't the latest Killer NICs just Intel NICs with custom Killer drivers? IOW, wouldn't it be possible to just install the Intel drivers for it instead of the Killer drivers?
I'm not sure its about money. Anandtech has historically acted to avoid financial conflicts of interest and there's Purch oversight these days as well. It seems more of an interpersonal or friendship thing.
From there, it's pretty much been site-wide drum beating in every single review where a Killer NIC ends up in a product without data that backs it up, but we're badgered into thinking that because we're gamers we should have an ethernet boner over some OEM shoveling one of Rivet's rebranded NICs and pointless AOL floppy diskette style bloatware on us. I'm guessing it's just that friendships were formed and people kicked off a bromance during the office tour that's since influenced the tone at Anandtech. The part that really irks me is that we've been told before that we wouldn't understand how a Killer NIC works because the matter is too complex to explain...that's been in comments from editors too in the past when we've tried to extract some reason for the bias. I know it's possible to explain this to technically-savvy AT readers because there are articles that have tackled more complicated for that same audience. Comments from editors like those are a cop-out for never finding a way to actually show there's a measurable real world benefit that justifies why Rivet Networks even exists today beyond it providing the industry with a supposed premium ethernet and wireless brand since there's an fairly pointless up-market version of every other component. It's just a shame this happened because lots of us otherwise still believe that Anandtech is an otherwise good site with useful, in-depth articles. I just wish they'd either publish proof or turn the dial back a few notches on Killer NIC commentary.
"The design of the X399 Professional Gaming is not in any way extravagant, as one would expect from a top-tier motherboard that is almost exclusively targeting gamers. On the contrary, the aesthetic design is subtle, yet elegant, focused on simple geometric shapes."
I think it leans a lot closer to the obnoxious end of the spectrum than you do. Maybe when compared to a RGB-and-dragon/deformed bird-festooned gaming board that MSI or Gigabyte vomited up at a recent computer show it might look toned-down, but for an adult buyer, it this thing still has the stink of gamer man-child. It's only a notch or two away from the top of the volume dial thanks to someone at ASRock sticking "professional" on the box next to a has-been old guy's screen name in the hopes of catching a few workstation buyers.
This IS understated compared to practically any other enthusiast board. In fact only the extra-pointy heatsink cover could even be called flash. "The stink of gamer man-child"?? You must go insane over the truly glitzy stuff.
Since you missed it, here's where that was already noted: " Maybe when compared to a RGB-and-dragon/deformed bird-festooned gaming board that MSI or Gigabyte vomited up at a recent computer show it might look toned-down..."
What's the status of Thunderbolt appearing on AMD motherboards? Since Intel released the Thunderbolt patents to anyone interested in using it, one would have thought it would be appearing on AMD motherboards by now. Maybe even on an AMD-based "modular Mac Pro 2019", according to some rumors on certain Mac-related web sites.
And does it support ECC UDIMMS or not? That is the question. W/o ECC it's really just yet another gaming board. With ECC supports one may see if it's possible to get rid of those silly LEDs and then give it a run...
What is meant by 'comprehensive manual'? My ASRock mobo had an atrocious manual (minimalist at best). No downloadable/printable 'comprehensive manual'. There were even QR-codes that linked to nothing, meaning they still haven't written up what those options are and what they do per each firmware revision. I've ended up relying on support board postings to find out all the various nooks and crannies of the BIOS.
"Gamers would most likely welcome the replacement of all three NICs with just one with proven gaming performance." Unlikely... a single NIC would make this board look cheap and not professional at all, it's professional gaming motherboard after all. 2 NICs are a minimum on this kind of price tag. I would be interested to know where your "proven gaming performance" comes from cause from what I see there's virtually no difference in gaming performance between any NIC and one only comes ahead in very specific cases scenarios like Internet bandwidth limited and torrenting/streaming while playing.
The problem isn't the 10G port on the board, its the cost of the 10G switches. Unless you want to build a 10G point to point ring, 10G switch ports still haven't come far below $100 per. The cheapest 10Gbe switch is a Buffalo unmanaged @ $63 per port. $80 per port for the managed. 1Gbe switches didn't take off until they got below $40 per unmanaged port.
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nagi603 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
Frankly, I'm thrilled with the board. It may bear "gaming" in the name, but that's a misnomer: it's a powerful workstation board with wide-ranging gaming options. And I'm quite thankful for the built-in 10Gbit ethernet when there is only a single PCIe slot for extra cards (besides the 4 16x GPU intended ones).nagi603 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
Also, the fan options on HW montior tab are already like that on my current Z79 board, so I'm not sure if AsRock changed it after that and returned with the X399, or the reviewer is unfamiliar with AsRock motherboards in general.Jorgp2 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
Umm.A PCI-E x1 slot only gives you 8gbps.
Most PCI-E NICs are at least 8x.
nagi603 - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
Yeah, I have a few 2-port intel 540's that are 8x, but Asus has a cheap Aquantia-based NIC (XG-C100C) that runs on a 4x port.nagi603 - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
(Also, yes, I did not think the comment through... yes, you definitely need more than a 1x for a 10G, so you'd have to waste a 16x port for 10G if the board didn't have it integrated)AdrianB1 - Saturday, July 7, 2018 - link
I can live with a 10 Gbps NIC using a 1x PCIe port, jumping from 1 Gbps to ~7.5 Gbps effective transfer rate is a huge improvement for a home user. Also PCIe 4 is coming, it will be more than enough for a 10 Gbps NIC.monglerbongler - Tuesday, July 10, 2018 - link
Can you live with either >>$1,000 for a small port count managed switch, or else ~$300-$600 for a literal 4 or 6 port unmanaged switch?No soho routers with 10g right now. Maybe when broadcom releases some silicon with it built in will we see the usual suspect start to release practical soho routers.
My house is wired. I'm sure most enthusiasts wire their homes. But I would simultaneously argue that most home wiring jobs, even for advanced gamers and semi-professional usage still leverage retail soho routers, either for the NAT/router functionality (eg to get internet access piped to all of the devices), and/or for the wifi. You might use a 2nd router as an access point or some multiport switch to expand the wired functionality.
But are you ready to spend the anywhere from the same to 3x the price of this high priced motherboard to even use the 10G?
If the goal is future proofing, my response is:
wait until the future is here and then just buy a new system with 10g at a lower price/better incorporation.
eek2121 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
While I would like 10 GB Ethernet, the MSI X399 Carbon features a 10+3 VRM design, which can easily push 4.1 GHz or 4.2 GHz depending on the chip. 4.2 GHz passed Prime95 at 1.45V on my chip and 4.1 GHz passed at 1.325. I have even been able to run benchmarks at 4.3 or 4.4 GHz, though Prime95 fails. Also 4.3 and 4.4 GHz required some obscene voltage, which unfortunately degraded my chip slightly.I can't wait to RMA my board ( broken/crushed pins, but they only charge $45 to replace.) Currently I am on an ASUS X399-E and haven't been able to get it past 4.0 GHz. Likely due to the 8+3 VRMs and 8+4 EPS connectors (the MSI was 10+3 and 8+8).
Arbie - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
Why, except for a transient bit of fun, would anyone overclock Ryzen? It already clocks itself exceptionally well. If you override those features you're just throwing power away, with no perceptible gain in daily use.halcyon - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
You said it: fun (and curiosity/learning).bug77 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
"However, with a price tag of $440, the X399 Professional Gaming also is one of the most expensive Ryzen Threadripper motherboards available."And yet, the title of the article says it's "for all".
Also, Threadripper is a rather poor choice for gaming. Even if you're streaming, you don't need that many cores. Threadripper is really good is you massively edit photo or edit video or do 3D rendering and few other specialized things. But not for much else.
This is not a criticism, with today's CPU one has to carefully weigh whether they need more cores or faster cores, depending on their usage patterns. There no universal solution like there was back in the single-core CPUs day. (And even then, if you didn't need FPU performance, a much cheaper AMD CPU could have been the better pick.)
Myrandex - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
Eh the original single core Athlon 64 CPUs even had pretty banging FPU performance back in the day too.bug77 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
True, but the original K6 didn't ;)DanNeely - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
It's "10G For All", the for all is attached to the 10G ethernet support, meaning it's a thread-ripper board with 10G for both gaming and work station use. It's more expensive than general use boards of either category because the 10G controller is still seriously expensive. If you don't need 10G ethernet, it's probably not the board you want because of the price premium attached for it.bug77 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
So... it's not for all.eek2121 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
I would have to disagree there. Windows has hundreds of thousands of processes running in the background and when Threadripper is set up properly it performs great with gaming. Even if you do able 8 of the cores you can easily beat out the 1800X from an IPC perspective thanks to lower cache latencies (Threadripper has similar cache latencies to the 2700X). The higher XFR boost (4200hz), slightly better IPC, quad channel memory, and more cores means a better gaming experience than the 1800X...if you can afford it.bug77 - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
I didn't say it performs poorly. But perf/$ isn't the best for many workflows.Marlin1975 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
It says Creative SoundBlaster on the cover yet the description says Onboard Audio Realtek ALC1220A?This just some marketing/software so it makes it seem nicer?
tmediaphotography - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
"It supports the Sound Blaster Cinema 3 software"Realtek hardware, but anyone who is perversely attached the Creative Labs software can feel free to install and use the Cinema 3 software.
DanNeely - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
Sound blaster switched from custom hardware to just being a custom driver for other audio hardware a few years ago.tmediaphotography - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
From pg#1 "but there is no mention of circuitry/channel isolation."From pg#2 "To help achieve that performance figure, ASRock physically isolated the right/left channel audio channels on individual layers"
May want to fix this up.
Ryan Smith - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
Right you are. Thanks!PaoDeTech - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
My guess is that a 10GbE port adds ~$30. I'd be very interested to know what prosumer use cases would benefit from 10GbE. I would be great if Anandtech did a test with, e.g., some kind of 4K video rendering farm that makes use of 10GbE enabled PCs / switches / NAS /... (I know: easy to ask, hard to do).oRAirwolf - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
I have the z370 gaming professional version of this board that also includes 10gbe. I have a direct connection between my desktop and my file server. It's really nice being able to transfer backups and video files between the two computers at much higher speeds. I usually read and write at about 600 megabytes per second, with it being limited by the 8x8tb wd reds. I think it is one of those things where once you have it, it sucks not having it. Like nobody needs internet faster than 10 megabits per second but it sure is nice having gigabit internet.Gunbuster - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
Opens the ASRock support page: 2017 2017 2017, all software/drivers/prod BIOS from 2017.rtho782 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
>A gaming-specific NIC such as a Killer E2500 would make the motherboard more appealing to gamers, whereas the more expensive Aquantia 10G chip primarily serves other users.That's funny, I consider myself a gamer, and yet I won't touch any board with a "Killer" NIC, I'll avoid it in favour of an Intel NIC at all costs.
PeachNCream - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
Anandtech has weird love butter for Killer NICs and no substantiation for it via benchmarks. It's been that way since sometime in 2016 and a lot of us don't get why there appears to be some sort of institutionalized need to champion the dumpster fire over at Rivet Networks.rhysiam - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
I agree... why does AT keep obsessing about Killer NICs? I pay more if necessary to avoid them for an Intel NIC. Although it is possible to create a scenario where the traffic prioritisation software on the LAN connection can help, it's so rarely impactful in the real-world. The most common real world causes of lag, like family members smashing your internet connection, aren't addressed at all by some local software prioritisation.oRAirwolf - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
Agreed. Any enterprise-grade router will enhance your latency way more than some nonsense software. With vendors like Ubiquiti and Mikrotik, as well as software routers like pfSense and Sophos, there's really no good reason to spend the money on a consumer-grade router. You can have an enterprise-grade setup with a high quality access point for the same price as some of these crab-looking routers they sell at Best Buy.phoenix_rizzen - Wednesday, July 11, 2018 - link
Aren't the latest Killer NICs just Intel NICs with custom Killer drivers? IOW, wouldn't it be possible to just install the Intel drivers for it instead of the Killer drivers?29a - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
The logical assumption for the Killer NIC love affair would be money.PeachNCream - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
I'm not sure its about money. Anandtech has historically acted to avoid financial conflicts of interest and there's Purch oversight these days as well. It seems more of an interpersonal or friendship thing.It's in the comments of this article where AT's people met Rivet's people that seems like the starting point: https://www.anandtech.com/show/10679/rivet-network...
From there, it's pretty much been site-wide drum beating in every single review where a Killer NIC ends up in a product without data that backs it up, but we're badgered into thinking that because we're gamers we should have an ethernet boner over some OEM shoveling one of Rivet's rebranded NICs and pointless AOL floppy diskette style bloatware on us. I'm guessing it's just that friendships were formed and people kicked off a bromance during the office tour that's since influenced the tone at Anandtech. The part that really irks me is that we've been told before that we wouldn't understand how a Killer NIC works because the matter is too complex to explain...that's been in comments from editors too in the past when we've tried to extract some reason for the bias. I know it's possible to explain this to technically-savvy AT readers because there are articles that have tackled more complicated for that same audience. Comments from editors like those are a cop-out for never finding a way to actually show there's a measurable real world benefit that justifies why Rivet Networks even exists today beyond it providing the industry with a supposed premium ethernet and wireless brand since there's an fairly pointless up-market version of every other component. It's just a shame this happened because lots of us otherwise still believe that Anandtech is an otherwise good site with useful, in-depth articles. I just wish they'd either publish proof or turn the dial back a few notches on Killer NIC commentary.
PeachNCream - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
"The design of the X399 Professional Gaming is not in any way extravagant, as one would expect from a top-tier motherboard that is almost exclusively targeting gamers. On the contrary, the aesthetic design is subtle, yet elegant, focused on simple geometric shapes."I think it leans a lot closer to the obnoxious end of the spectrum than you do. Maybe when compared to a RGB-and-dragon/deformed bird-festooned gaming board that MSI or Gigabyte vomited up at a recent computer show it might look toned-down, but for an adult buyer, it this thing still has the stink of gamer man-child. It's only a notch or two away from the top of the volume dial thanks to someone at ASRock sticking "professional" on the box next to a has-been old guy's screen name in the hopes of catching a few workstation buyers.
Arbie - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
This IS understated compared to practically any other enthusiast board. In fact only the extra-pointy heatsink cover could even be called flash. "The stink of gamer man-child"?? You must go insane over the truly glitzy stuff.PeachNCream - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
Since you missed it, here's where that was already noted: " Maybe when compared to a RGB-and-dragon/deformed bird-festooned gaming board that MSI or Gigabyte vomited up at a recent computer show it might look toned-down..."vailr - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
What's the status of Thunderbolt appearing on AMD motherboards?Since Intel released the Thunderbolt patents to anyone interested in using it, one would have thought it would be appearing on AMD motherboards by now. Maybe even on an AMD-based "modular Mac Pro 2019", according to some rumors on certain Mac-related web sites.
GreenReaper - Sunday, July 8, 2018 - link
I'm not sure if "released" means "licensed along with a covenant not to sue". Sometimes "free" isn't exactly free.kgardas - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
And does it support ECC UDIMMS or not? That is the question. W/o ECC it's really just yet another gaming board. With ECC supports one may see if it's possible to get rid of those silly LEDs and then give it a run...Fujikoma - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
What is meant by 'comprehensive manual'? My ASRock mobo had an atrocious manual (minimalist at best). No downloadable/printable 'comprehensive manual'. There were even QR-codes that linked to nothing, meaning they still haven't written up what those options are and what they do per each firmware revision. I've ended up relying on support board postings to find out all the various nooks and crannies of the BIOS.Strunf - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
"Gamers would most likely welcome the replacement of all three NICs with just one with proven gaming performance."Unlikely... a single NIC would make this board look cheap and not professional at all, it's professional gaming motherboard after all. 2 NICs are a minimum on this kind of price tag.
I would be interested to know where your "proven gaming performance" comes from cause from what I see there's virtually no difference in gaming performance between any NIC and one only comes ahead in very specific cases scenarios like Internet bandwidth limited and torrenting/streaming while playing.
spuwho - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
The problem isn't the 10G port on the board, its the cost of the 10G switches. Unless you want to build a 10G point to point ring, 10G switch ports still haven't come far below $100 per. The cheapest 10Gbe switch is a Buffalo unmanaged @ $63 per port. $80 per port for the managed. 1Gbe switches didn't take off until they got below $40 per unmanaged port.withextremeprejudice - Tuesday, July 10, 2018 - link
Correction needed. No RAID 5.In article: Onboard SATA Eight, RAID 0/1/5/10
On manufacturer spec page: 8 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 10), NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug
hoohoo - Thursday, July 12, 2018 - link
The on board 10GbE is very nice. 10GbE should be the standard in general.