W
henit comestomotherboardgroup
tests,ASRockhasoftenstolenthe
showinrecentyears,offeringclass-
matchingfeaturesforlesscashthanthe
competition.Thesameseemstobetruewith
itsnewTRX40Taichi.Thisboardhaswhatcan
onlybedescribedasa monstroussetof
featuresforthemoney.Itspricesitsatleast
£40belowthecompetition– theclosestprice
competitorsthismonthareGigabyte’sTRX40
AorusMasterandAsus’ROGStrixTRX40-E
Gaming.Withthecheaperprice,youmight
expectsomesignificantshortcomings,butwe
hardlyfoundany.
Let’sstartwiththeVRMcooling,a criticalpartof
anymotherboardthatwillneedtodealwith32-core
CPUs,andeven64-coreCPUsin thefuture.
ASROCK TRX40
TAICHI/£455inc VAT
SUPPLIER overclockers.co.ukASRock has
gone all out here, with a gigantic pair
of fan-assisted heatsinks. A pair of small fans
sits in the top side of a 54mm-tall skyscraper of
a heatsink, which has lateral fins to boost surface
area and is linked to a second large heatsink via
a heatpipe. The latter heatsink makes up the
entirety of the I/O shroud, which sits adjacent to
an integrated I/O shield.
The fans were quiet during operation, and the
VRM area was several degrees cooler under
load than either of Gigabyte’s efforts, with
similar readings to the Asus ROG Strix TRX40-E
Gaming. The top side reported a temperature
of 43°C and the rear side had a reading of 55°C
after dealing with our Threadripper 3960X for
ten minutes. The heatsinks sit atop a 16-phase
power delivery system too.
The downside to this massive heatsink,
though, is that you’ll need to be wary of large air
coolers. ARCTIC’s Freezer 50 TR, for example,
only fitted onto the board with the plastic
shroud resting gently against the heatsink.
The layout is good. There are no issues
with removing memory modules once a
graphics card is installed, as with the Asus ROG
Strix TRX40-E Gaming. Also, unlike several
other boards on test, the lowest M.2 slot has
an independent heatsink, meaning you can
remove your SSD without having to remove
your graphics card(s).
Amazingly, ASRock even manages to include
an M.2 expansion card similar to the ones offered
by MSI and Gigabyte’s super-premium boards.This card offers a
further count of four M.2 ports, which use
thermal pads that attach to the large metal
housing and are actively cooled by an included
40mm fan. The fan wasn’t as quiet as the
ones on the VRMs, though, even at half speed,
which is togglable using a switch on the PCB.
However, the noise is unlikely to be an issue
unless your system is fully water-cooled.
Your SSDs will lack the underside cooling
provided by the M.2 expansion card included
with MSI’s Creator TRX40, though, and the card
isn’t as snazzy as the one included with the
Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Extreme. However, this
feature is a huge trump card to play against the
similarly priced competition this month.
This card’s cooling setup chilled our Corsair
MP600 PCI-E 4 SSD to 43°C, while the board-
mounted heatsink saw the temperature sit at
54°C. These are both good results, with the latter
being 11°C lower than the on-board heatsinks
found on the MSI Creation TRX40 and Gigabyte
TRX40 Aorus Extreme. Of the two M.2 ports on
the PCB, only one offers both PCI-E and SATA
M.2 SSD support, though, and the expansion card
only supports PCI-E SSDs too.
The chipset heatsink sports a large 50mm
fan that was quiet during testing, although
it only really cools the heatsink and not the
adjacent M.2 heatsinks. All the fans are
exposed, so they may require cleaning toSPEC
Chipset AMD TRX40
CPU socket AMD Socket TR4X
(3rd-Gen Threadripper/Zen 2)
Memory support 8 slots: max
256GB DDR4 (up to 4666MHz)
Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 4, one 1x PCI-E 4
Sound 8-channel Realtek ALC1220
Networking 1 x Intel Gigabit LAN, 1 x
Realtek 2.5 Gigabit LAN, 802.11ax Wi-Fi
Overclocking Base clock 100-
200MHz, CPU multiplier 23-63x; max
voltages: CPU 1.55V, RAM 2V
Ports 8 x SATA 6Gbps, 6 x M.2 PCI-E 4,
2 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C,
4 x USB 3, 3 x surround audio out
Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244LABS TEST / TRX40 MOTHERBOARDS
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