Asus Unveils Massive Threadripper 7000 HEDT Motherboard With 36 Power Stages

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Big chips require big power

Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WIFI
(Image credit: Asus PR - TechPowerUp)

Asus has unveiled its first Ryzen Threadripper 7000-supported motherboard: the Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WiFi. The board is aimed at workstation users who don't want to shell out $10,000 for AMD's flagship Threadripper Pro 7000WX chips and features quad-channel DDR5 memory support, five PCIe x16 slots, server-grade IPMI support, and 36 power stages with enough headroom for CPU overclocking.

Asus' new workstation board is large, featuring a non-linear PCB design where the top portion is wider than the bottom. Asus utilizes the board's wide proportions to rotate the CPU socket 90 degrees, enabling the power delivery system to surround the top, left, and right of the board. In addition, the unusual CPU socket orientation also allows the four DDR5 DIMM slots to be rotated 90 degrees, improving cooling performance (via front intake chassis fans).

Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WIFI

(Image credit: Asus PR - TechPowerUp)

Asus' unique layout enables the board to come with a beefy 36-power stage power delivery system to aid CPU overclocking. Cooling the power delivery system is three sets of black and silver heatsinks, with the two silver heatsinks (flanking the CPU socket) cooled by two internal fans for extra cooling performance.

For connectivity, the TRX-50 SAGE WiFi comes with five PCIe x16 slots, three of which are Gen 5 enabled, as well as two PCIe Gen 5 capable M.2 slots, a single Gen 4 M.2 slot, and an additional Slim SAS connector for enterprise drives. Wired and wireless internet connectivity comes from two ethernet ports, a Marvel AQtion 10Gbps ethernet port, and an Intel 2.5Gbps port, paired with an unnamed WiFi 6 or 6E card.

The board also comes with server-grade remote management support in the form of an IPMI expansion card. The card lets owners remotely connect their whole system through Asus Control Center Express software or a web UI interface.

Asus' new board is designed specifically for AMD's new Ryzen 7000 Threadripper HEDT parts, featuring up to 64 cores, quad-channel DDR5 memory support, and up to 48 PCIe Gen 5 lanes. For the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7000WX series, Asus will release an SE version of this board to support AMD's more feature-rich workstation chips.

Pricing and availability are not currently known, but expect this board to be priced similarly to previous AMD HEDT motherboards of the past.

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Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

20 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Order 66
    Isn't 36 power phases past the point of diminishing returns? why is this even necessary?
    Reply
  • thestryker
    I'm really curious what market Asus is aiming at with this board. It has a lot of PCIe connectivity, but I'm curious how the 3x PCIe x16 5.0 slots work with 2x PCIe 5.0 M.2. On the other hand they have overkill VRMs, stuck with 1DPC and single 10gb LAN.

    This seems more like a board that would have existed when HEDT was really a thing, but it will cost $800 minimum with the cheapest CPU you can get being $1500 and DRAM starting at around $400 (for 6000).

    Though looking through other TRX50 boards they all seem to have weird corners cut (all different), overkill VRMs (maybe this says something about TR 7000 power delivery) and 1DPC.

    edit: totally didn't realize all Zen 4 TR were limited to 1DPC
    Reply
  • nightbird321
    Order 66 said:
    Isn't 36 power phases past the point of diminishing returns? why is this even necessary?
    My guess is to spread the load and lower the temperature for extended 100% utilization of this computer.
    Reply
  • ware451
    Thank you Thank you Thank you
    Reply
  • helper800
    thestryker said:
    This seems more like a board that would have existed when HEDT was really a thing, but it will cost $800 minimum with the cheapest CPU you can get being $1500 and DRAM starting at around $400 (for 6000).
    This board is probably more in the 1000-1200 dollar range as a minimum if I had to guess.
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    Why only four dimm slots?
    Reply
  • razor512
    It would be good to see how well the new threadripper CPUs overclock, especially considering that AMD tends to run individual cores at rather low clock speeds.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    nightbird321 said:
    My guess is to spread the load and lower the temperature for extended 100% utilization of this computer.
    Their VRM for the $1200 Intel SPR WS board is 14+1+1 (and this board is used in the majority of HWBot rankings for w9-3495X) so it's either overkill or there's something really up with TR power delivery.
    Reply
  • Gillerer
    This CPU orientation can hardly be described as "unusual" or "unique" - this is the standard orientation for servers and workstations. The reason is exactly the one mentioned: front intake fans together with funnels can be used to cool everything: CPU, memory, CPU power delivery, GPU.

    If ASUS were to rotate this socket for just the HEDT motherboard, that would be the unusual orientation.
    Amdlova said:
    Why only four dimm slots?
    Threadripper non-Pro 7000 series has 4 memory channels. Both Pro and non-Pro only support 1 RDIMM per channel.

    Note that RDIMMs can have higher capacities than desktop UDIMMs. I believe at least 256GB DDR5 RDIMMs are available.
    Reply
  • oldandcranky
    Gillerer said:
    Threadripper non-Pro 7000 series has 4 memory channels. Both Pro and non-Pro only support 1 RDIMM per channel.

    Note that RDIMMs can have higher capacities than desktop UDIMMs. I believe at least 256GB DDR5 RDIMMs are available.
    The Threadripper Pros have 8 memory channels. Isn't using only 4 of them cutting memory bandwidth by close to 50%, even when using RDIMMs? Also, don't UDIMMs have a lower latency? If the board had 8 DIMM slots (1 DIMM per channel), wouldn't there be nearly twice the memory bandwidth? Not an engineer, just asking.
    Reply