Gigabyte has prepared its X399 Aorus Xtreme motherboard in anticipation of AMD's upcoming Threadripper 2000-series processors. As its name suggests, the X399 Aorus Xtreme is a motherboard that comes with all the bells and whistles and then some.
The motherboard's exterior takes inspiration from Gigabyte's Aorus branding. The overall black theme is accentuated by metallic-looking heatsinks and its fair share of RGB lighting.
Gigabyte boasts that the X399 Aorus Xtreme is the perfect soulmate for AMD's 2nd generation Threadripper processors, which are slated to drop on August 13, in particular the 32-core Threadripper 2990WX monster that carries the scary 250W TDP (thermal design power) tag. The motherboard's power delivery subsystem features a 10+3 phase design that utilizes digital PWM Controllers and PowIRstage MOSFET that are capable of supporting up to 50A per phase for a combined total of 650A. The cooling solution for this area consists of heatpipes that make direct contact with the components to transfer the heat to the fins-array heatsink. The Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer claims that this unique design improves thermal performance greatly. The motherboard even has a pair of 30mm fans hidden under the I/O armor to provide extra cooling when necessary. As for power delivery, the processor feeds from two eight-pin EPS connectors. With its eight DDR4 memory slots, the X399 Aorus Xtreme can house up to 128GB of memory with speeds as high as 3,600MHz through overclocking.
Threadripper 2000-series processors have a generous amount of PCIe lanes, 64 to be exact. Gigabyte has developed a design that fully utilizes 100 percent of 48 PCIe lanes. As a result, the X399 Aorus Xtreme motherboard sports four PCIe 3.0 x16 slots to support up to four graphics cards in an SLI or CrossFire configuration. The slots are reinforced with Gigabyte's exclusive Aorus PCIe Armor and double-locking brackets to prevent the graphics cards from sagging. For good measure, Gigabyte implemented an additional six-pin power connector to supply energy to the graphics cards.
Storage options on the X399 Aorus Xtreme include six SATA III connectors and three M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slots to take advantage of the latest NVMe SSDs. The motherboard also supports RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 10 arrays. In terms of internet connectivity, there are two normal GbE ports from the Intel I210-AT controller and a 10GbE port from the Aquantia AQC107 controller. The included wireless module provides support for Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity. As expected, the X399 Aorus Xtreme has a cocktail of USB ports that include one USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port, one USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A port and eight USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports. The motherboard's audio solution is centered on Realtek's ALC1220-VB codec ,accompanied by an ESS 9118 SABRE HiFi DAC and high-end Nichicon audio capacitors.
Gigabyte hasn't revealed the pricing or availability for the X399 Aorus Xtreme.
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
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mapesdhs "As a result, the X399 Aorus Xtreme motherboard sports four PCIe 3.0 x16 slots to support up to four graphics cards in an SLI or CrossFire configuration."Reply
Please cite a single article which shows the utility of SLI/CF using more than 2 GPUs in any modern title. Devs aren't bothering so much with such support these days.
And hardly perfect, took seconds to spot that with a longish GPU in the bottom slot, the debug LED display would be blocked (had that issue with ASUS boards way back). The display should be elsewhere, typically top right, or better still fit two of them which display the same info.