VERDICT
Needstodomoretojustifyitsprice,butthe
Asushasa greatEFIandgoodlooks.AMING
+Sleek, moody design
+Plenty of fan headers
and USB ports
+Excellent EFI and
Windows softwareWORKING- Fewer M.2 ports
than competition - Most M.2 slots are
difficult to access - DIMM slot latches foul
16x PCI-E slot
PERFORMANCE
33 / 35FEATURES
22 / 35
VALUE
26 / 30OVERALLSCORE
81 %
southofthe24-pinATX connectorandis
easilyaccessible.TheothertwoM.2slots
support either PCI-E 3 or PCI-E 4 SSDs, with
their combined heatsink doing a decent job of
chilling our Corsair MP600 SSD to 47°C.
From there on, the features take a bit of a
slide compared with the ASRock board. There
are barely any overclocking and testing tools,
with just a LiveDash OLED display for reading
POST codes and a power button. You also get
USB BIOS FlashBack, but there’s few extra bits
included in the box – there’s nothing like the M.2
expansion card that comes with the ASRock.
The rear I/O panel offers some respite, as you
get 11 Type-A USB ports, seven of which support
USB 3.1, as well as a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port.
Theboarddoeshavea smatteringof
RGBlightingtoo,whichisalmostabsent
on the ASRock TRX40 Taichi, apart from its
underside. The Asus displays snazzy patterns
sitting on top of the fan grilles, as well as an
illuminated ROG logo on the I/O shroud, plus
you get a quartet of RGB headers on the PCB
for expanding your lighting system further.Performance
At stock speed, the Asus ROG Strix TRX40-E
Gaming was a little slow, posting the
slowest results in our RealBench tests, but in
contrast, it also produced the quickest results
in Cinebench. There were no anomalies
in Far Cry 5 and the M.2 SSD speeds, as
expected, sat at 5,000MB/
sec and 4,269MB/sec
respectively for read and write.
The Realtek ALC1220-based
audio, dubbed SupremeFX,
was decent enough too. The
MSI and both Gigabyte boards
had slightly better audio
performance, but there’s really
not much in it once you get to
this point.
Meanwhile, overclocking
was fruitful, with our
Threadripper 3960X’s
maximum 4.35GHz all-
core overclock being easily
achievable using a vcore of
1.325V. This overclock saw
the RealBench system score
rise from 326,828 to 362,641,
although the Asus was still
a little slower than other
overclocked boards on testinsome areas. Finally, stock speed power
consumption was average at 444W, as was
the overclocked peak load figure of 535W.Conclusion
There’s a lot to like about the ROG Strix
TRX40-E Gaming. It looks fantastic, and it
offers a solid base for building an extensively
cooled 3rd-gen Threadripper system with
plenty of NVMe storage and SATA hard disks.
Its cooling proved capable, and it overclocked
just as well as other boards we’ve tested too.
Apart from some slightly slow stock speed
figures, there are no performance issues,
and you get more USB ports and fan headers
than the ASRock TRX40 Taichi too.
However, ASRock’s offering is noticeably
cheaper, and it outstrips the ROG Strix
TRX40-E Gaming in a number of areas, most
notably with its M.2 expansion card, VRM
cooling and less troublesome layout, as well
as its overclocking and testing tools. As a
result, the ASRock is a better buy, but there
are still good reasons to consider the ROG
Strix TRX40-E Gaming, such as its excellent
EFI, useful software, abundance of USB
ports and moody aesthetics.G
+
+south of the 24 pin ATX connector and is Theboarddoeshave a smattering of in