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Software, Firmware and Overclocking

We didn’t find any differences in Asus’s Ai Suite 3 from our earlier review, but the revised board did give us a different automatic overclocking result via its 5-Way Optimization algorithm. It reached 4175MHz at 1.24V CPU core, and its warning about third-party stress tests rang true when our lower-level stress test, AIDA64, crashed. Manual overclocking options are also available within Ai Suite 3, but we turn to firmware for drastic changes.

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Frequency and Voltage settings	Asus ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha	Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Xtreme	Asus ROG Zenith II Extreme	MSI Creator TRX40
BIOS	0902 (03/17/2020)	F3 (01/20/20120)	0602 (11/18/2019)	1.10 (11/18/2019)
Reference Clock	40-300 MHz (0.2 MHz)	80-200 MHz (10 kHz)	40-300 MHz (0.2 MHz)	80-200 MHz (50 kHz)
CPU Multiplier	22-64x (0.25x)	8-64x (0.25x)	22-64x (0.25x)	8-64x (0.25x)
DRAM Data Rates	1333-2666/5000/6000 (267/66/100 MHz)	1333-2666/5000/6000 (266/66/100 MHz)	1333-2666/5000/6000 (267/66/100 MHz)	1600-2666/5000/6000 (267/66/100 MHz)
CPU Voltage	0.75-1.70V (6.25 mV)	0.75-1.80V (6.25 mV)	0.75-1.70V (6.25 mV)	0.90-2.10V (12.5 mV)
CPU SOC	0.70-1.50V (6.25 mV)	0.75-1.80V (6.25 mV)	0.70-1.50V (6.25 mV)	0.90-1.55V (12.5 mV)
VDDP	0.70-V (1 mV)	0.70-9.998V (10mV)	0.70-V (1 mV)	-
DRAM Voltage	0.50-2.15V (10 mV)	1.00-2.00V (10 mV)	0.50-2.15V (10 mV)	0.80-2.10V (10 mV)
DDR VTT	Offset -600 to +600 mV (10mV)	0.375-0.833V (4 mV)	Offset -600 to +600 mV (10mV)	Offset -600 to +600 mV (10mV)
Chipset 1.05V	0.70-1.40V (6.25 mV)	0.80-1.50V (20mV)	0.70-1.40V (6.25 mV)	0.85-1.50V (10 mV)
CAS Latency	5-33 Cycles	8-33 Cycles	5-33 Cycles	8-33 Cycles
tRCDRD/RDCWR	8-27 Cycles	8-27 Cycles	8-27 Cycles	8-27 Cycles
tRP	8-27 Cycles	8-27 Cycles	8-27 Cycles	8-27 Cycles
tRAS	8-58 Cycles	21-58 Cycles	8-58 Cycles	21-58 Cycles

Since we hadn’t experienced any overclocking problems on the Zenith II Extreme, we didn’t expect the Alpha version to exceed it. Our CPU and cooler are its limiting factors. $850 competitors include Gigabyte’s TRX40 Aorus Xtreme and the ROG Zenith II Extreme from Asus, while MSI’s Creator TRX40 comes in at a slightly more wallet-friendly $700. Gigabyte’s GeForce RTX 2070 Gaming OC 8G, Toshiba’s OCZ RD400 and G.Skill’s Trident-Z DDR4-3600 feed AM’s Ryzen Threadripper 3970X in our test rig. Alphacool’s Eisbecher D5 pump/reservoir and NexXxoS UT60 X-flow radiator cool the CPU through Swiftech’s SKF TR4 Heirloom.

When paired with the ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha, our Ryzen Threadripper came up 25 MHz shy of the CPU frequencies achieved on the non-Alpha version. The CPU may be degrading over extended testing, but there’s also the chance that we didn’t find the best settings for this version of the board. We could have spent several hours searching, but such a small difference could be tough to spot even in some benchmarks. We don’t think this reflects substantively on the overclocking abilities of this revised board. There are also firmware updates to consider, and those appear to have increased the stable limit of our DRAM from a 4266 MHz to a 4333 MHz data rate.