Walletripper: $1,300 Threadripper 7000 motherboard costs almost as much as the cheapest 12-core Pro chip

Announced in October, the Asus Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE motherboard has finally gone up for preorder with an eye-watering $1,299.99 price tag, just $100 cheaper than the 12-core Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7945WX. The premium motherboard, which caters to AMD's Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-series (Storm Peak) processors, is one of the most over-engineered pieces of hardware you'll ever see.

The Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE arrives in an EEB form factor, meaning the motherboard measures 12 x 13 inches (30.5 x 33cm). It's not a huge issue considering the type of consumer that will use the Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE. Nonetheless, it's still something to consider since although E-ATX and EEB share identical dimensions, the score holes are different. While EEB motherboards will fit into cases designed for E-ATX motherboards, it doesn't necessarily mean the case has the appropriate screw holes.

Although the motherboard features AMD's sTR5 socket, it only supports the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-series SKUs. The WRX90 chipset, used on the Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE, is compatible with the non-Pro variants. Besides bringing Pro-grade features, the WRX90 chipset is superior to the consumer TRX50 chipset in many ways, including up to 148 PCIe 5.0 lanes (56 more than TRX50) and eight-channel memory support up to 2TB (as opposed to quad-channel and 1TB on TRX50).

The power sub-delivery system on the Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE has 41 power stages distributed in a 32+3+3+3 design. That's sufficient to feed even the power-hungry Ryzen Threadripper processors, including the flagship Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX with 96 Zen 4 cores. As a result, the Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE has a bunch of power connectors. Besides the typical 24-pin power connector, the motherboard has two 8-pin +12V power connectors, two 8-pin PCIe to CPU power connectors, and two 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

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The Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE is a generous motherboard in almost every aspect. It provides four M.2 PCIe 5.0 x4 slots linked directly to the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-series processor for storage. Two slots can handle M.2 drives up to 80mm, whereas the other two accommodate SSDs up to 110mm. Meanwhile, the WRX90 chipset supplies four standard SATA III ports and two SlimSAS slots supporting PCIe 4.0 x4 mode on NVMe drives. AMD RAIDXpert2 technology is always present to allow SATA and PCIe RAID arrays, such as RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10.

As for expansion, you get up to seven PCIe 5.0 x16 expansion slots, with only one of them limited to x8 electrically. Internet connectivity is lacking because there's no wireless on the Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE. The previous Pro WS WRX80E-SAGE SE WIFI II came with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Nevertheless, the Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE does have two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports based on an Intel controller and one Gigabit Ethernet port based on a Realtek controller for the AST2600 baseboard management controller (BMC).

The mix of USB ports on the Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE includes two USB4 Type-C ports provided by the ASMedia ASM4242 controller, six USB 10 GBbps Type-A ports, and one USB 2.0 port. Regarding display ports, there's one VGA PORT and two mini DisplayPort IN. The motherboard leverages the Realtek ALC1220P audio codec with two 3.5mm audio inputs.

B&H Photo Video currently has the Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE on preorder for $1,299.99. The new version is 30% more expensive than the Pro WS WRX80E-SAGE SE WIFI II, which sells for $999 at the same retailer. The expected availability for the  Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE is January 29, 2024.