I’m looking for some advice with the Asus Pro WS TRX50-SAGE mobo. I’m building out a new 64 core threadripper machine with dual rtx 3080s gpus. (I work as cg artist). air cooled with a fractal design 7 xl case.
I plan to put 3 nvme ssds int the system. 2x samsung 990 pro for the gen 5 slots and and one 990 evo for the gen 4. 1 for system, 2 for caching.
i’m not dead set on samsung drives, but used them in the past and they were reliable, but anything without a heatsink can work…
I have some concerns regarding the nvme ssd temps with this mobo. i know the new gen 5 ssd-s like to run a bit hot and im worried if the mobo heatsink can take care of these drives with the dense build.
Anyone running all the ssds on a new trx50 board have some experience with ssd temps?
if everything fails im concidering makeing use of th slimsas nvme connector instead. but not sure what would be the optimal way.
The samsung 990 pro is a pcie 4 drive, not 5. It is one of the fastest drives around still, only for sequential read/write pcie 5 may have an advantage.
I think most modern motherboard heatsinks perform very similar. They should suffice for pcie 4 drives with some airflow over the motherboard. Looking at reviews the 990 pro does not seem to throttle even under heavy load if it has some kind of heatsink (mobo or the heatsink version)
You would need ample airflow any way to remove the heat of the GPUs and the threadripper. Perhaps a more airflow oriented case like the Torrent, North xl, or the Proart case of Asus is a better option for you than the define 7? That is assuming you don’t need the perks of the define, like the massive amount of drive bays…
my bad sorry. i mixed up the evo and the pro with the gens and the speed. i need to take a look at what’s exactly out there…
Thanks for the feedback about the mobo temps. this was reassuring.
Thanks for the tip about the cases. tbh i have an existing define 7 xl case and it serves all my needs. the fact that it has the 5.25" bays and plenty of room for my raid setup . i’ve moded it to have casters so its easy to move around. the airflow wasn’t a problem so far. 3 fans at the front 3 at the top. 2 more fans inside the case to push out the hot air from between the gpus. my current system has an older 3000 series tr cpu in an asus zenith extreme II mobo that has the wort pcie spacing ever (for multi gpu systems at least) and the case the temps never went over 85 under full stress test.
tbh in my current workflow there aren’t any situations where both the gpus and the cpu and the ssds under heavy load. most of the time it’s just one of these components that are “hit”. When i do overnight rendering i just open the case door and i have sufficient airflow.
Yeah that’s fair. My experience, albeit not on a TRX50 platform, is if even fairly low power PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMes are active enough for long enough, they’ll saturate motherboard armor thermal mass and exceed operating temperature ratings. It’s unclear if you have downflow or blower 3080s but downflow does provide airflow to positions like M2_3 on the TRX50-SAGE. Unless GPU fans are set to spin up in response to IO active, but not GPU active workloads, it’s unfortunately constrained to warm downflow with limited availability. I’d consider drives with 85 °C operating temperature specs (e.g. SN850X) as alternatives to the 990’s 70 °C but it really depends on the specific workloads.
Unfortunately I don’t have good data on how much GPU passthrough (or blower intake) might help M2_1 and M2_2. Alternatively, three of the TRX50 Aero D’s M.2 slots are in GPU downflow and the TRX50 WS offers a MCIO for one x4 drive placed elsewhere.
I have this question too, though a common use pattern with the Define is opening the door when running workloads. Personally I’d rather use a Meshify with quiet drives—same tooling but it’s a lot harder to forget to open the door—though if there are louder 3.5s involved then the door can be a good compromise. Personally, I wouldn’t use the ProArt here, the Norths’ shrouds aren’t great with dual GPUs either, and the Torrents have a lot of compromises. I’d probably default to Lancool III.
Yeah, if you already have the case I’d keep it if I were in your place. The money spent on a new case could probably go to a better use. The define 7 is flexible enough that you can add some fans to ensure the airflow. I see you can have up to 11 x 120 mm or 9 x 140 mm so that should suffice IMO
Regarding some tests you can find online it gets clear that most heatsinks on pcie 5 m2s are oversized and often just show.
I did not use pcie 5.0 m2 yet. But the 990 pros are never going above 48 degree.
But I only do 3D rendering, there is not so much caching happening tbh VS other applications.
