What A Creation
If there's one thing we like nearly as much as exotic cooling, its proper VRM cooling. The Skylake-X debacle taught us all a lesson in VRM cooling, but MSI is better prepared this time around. The MEG Creation features massive beefy heatsinks over the 19-phase digital power delivery subsystem, along with dual-eight-pin connectors and ten PWM fan connections. The large heatsink over the chipset conceals three M.2 slots. Yes, three.
Other accommodations include eight USB 3.0 ports, a USB 3.1 Type-A port, a USB 3.1 Type-C port, dual Ethernet LAN ports, two Wi-Fi antenna ports, five audio jacks, an optical S/PDIF out, a reset button, and a power button.
To The ROG Extreme
ASUS isn't sitting on the sidelines, either. The company's ROG X399 Zenith Extreme isn't new, but it did come with ASUS's new Zenith Extreme cooling kit. This handy kit includes a beefy heatsink for the SOC power delivery and a fan that you can attach to the VRM heatsink nearest the TR4 socket. The combination provides the board with beefier cooling capacity, which in turn kicks the eight-phase digital VRM circuitry and three-phase SOC power delivery up a notch. That should provide extra headroom for some Threadripper overclocking action, but we'll we'll have to put it to the test to make sure.
Oh, and it has LEDs. Lots of LEDs.
Fire Up, Or Cool Down, The Chiller
Thirty-two cores, 64-threads, and a rumored 250W TDP at stock settings. That sounds like a recipe for some serious heat when we start tweaking the voltage. We have our chillers at the ready: Stay tuned for our review, coming soon.
