ASUS X399 Zenith Extreme Threadripper Motherboard Specs | Computex
Posted on June 2, 2017
Our initial coverage of the Gigabyte X399 Aorus Gaming 7 motherboard provided a first look at boards outfitted for AMD’s new Threadripper CPU. We’re now moving to ASUS to look at the Zenith Extreme motherboard, for which ASUS provided significantly fewer details than other motherboard vendors. Still, we were able to get a hands-on look and figure out a few of the basics.
The ASUS Zenith Extreme is AMD’s flagship X399 motherboard – pricing TBD, as AMD has not yet finalized socket and chipset prices – and will likely ship in August. As we understand it, Threadripper’s launch should be August 10th, which is around when all the motherboards would theoretically ship. Mass production is targeted for most boards in mid-August.
The Zenith Extreme board hosts a 2x 8-pin EPS12V configuration, deviating from AMD’s reference spec of 1x 8-pin + 1x 6-pin, and also features 1x MOLEX for GPU power. The board seems to run an 8+2-phase design, with yet-unspecified power components. From what Gigabyte told us, a 6-phase Vcore VRM did not provide sufficient performance, pushing the Gaming 7 to an 8-phase design for the production model. ASUS seems to agree with this for its flagship.
PCIe lane assignment has 60 lanes to use, with the remaining 4 diverging to provide a high-speed interconnect between the CPU and chipset. ASUS has assigned these lanes into an x16/x8/x16/x8 configuration for the PCIe full-length slots, with additional assignment for M.2 and U.2.
Standard buttons are present for LN2 or XOC tuners, along with your standard debug tools.
We’ll learn more about this board closer to launch.
Editorial: Steve Burke
Video: Keegan Gallick