Hello,
I have for a week a Asrock ThaiChi Mb for testing and i love it.
I’m planning to buy now Fatality, cause it has soundblaster and ten gig nick card.
However there is also GIGABYTE X399 AORUS Gaming 7.
Which one to pick ?
It should be rather atx factor then eATX and have good support for linux and unraid.
I would like to use it also later for zen two in future.
This highlly depends on which particular cpu you might have plans to upgrade to.
TR gen 1 boards are generally fine for the 180W tdp cpu’s
But as soon as you want to go with a 250W tdp cpu’s like the 2970WX or the 2990WX.
Then its better to go with a gen 2 motherboard with an upgraded vrm. like the Msi meg creation or the Gigabyte X399 Aorus Extreme.
But we are still waiting for other brands gen 2 boards to show up.
Of course a 2990WX would also work on a gen 1 board.
But the vrm might get a bit toasty on those first gen motherboards.
Especially on the Gigabyte X399 Gaming 7, which i would not recommend for that chip!
But if you go with a 180W cpu upto the 2950X, then you will be totally fine with a gen 1 board aswell.
Asrock X399 boards are generally decent choices decent vrm’s and offer a nice feature set for the money.
The Gigabyte X399 Gaming 7 or the Designare EX are basically also nice boards.
Although they do have the weakest vrm out of the bunge.
But still more then fine for 180W tdp cpu’s.
i would personally go with the Asrock board if i had to choose between those 2 particular boards.
I’m personally not a huge fan of Gigabyte’s bios.
But that is of course personal.
Just want to chime in and say that I have the Asrock Fatality X399 and it runs great. However, what @MisteryAngel said is quite true with regards to the proposed chip/TDP you may want to run. I would like to add to that and say that if everything I’ve read about Zen 2 is accurate, then the TDP might actually be lower for the next generation of TR chips and the Gen 1 Threadripper boards may do just fine with those CPUs when they come out. Of course this is only speculation because we don’t know exactly what is coming.
Personally, I just have a 1920x because I didn’t really need all the CPU horsepower as much as I wanted all those PCIe lanes.
Wow thanks for all replays!
This --> GIGABYTE X399 AORUS XTREME looks insane, but also beats fatality feature wise it seems.
I have Vive VR headset and it has a special VR “port” … fatality does not have it.
I’m planning to use this board for a very long time, so i hope this extra power will prove useful.
I have no need for “wx” parts but would like to have some decent overcloking capabilities.
From asrock i don’t like their “RGB” environment in taichi and fatality. I had to have a different SW for RAM, MB, and cooler which is too much 
While GIGABYTE X399 AORUS XTREME has aurous sw which is like whole exocystem for rgb + this gen2 vrm cooling, 2 nic + 10 gig and ect looks insane! I would only say it’s missing sound blaster, but i already have a pcie card for that.
How is linux support for GIGABYTE X399 AORUS XTREME ? what about iommu groups and pice pass through?
Msi meg creation has limited m.2 on board and i don’t like to waste space for pcie card to be able to put addtional m.2.
Thoughs opitions ?
I would need to mod my test case to fit eATX tho before i find a case for it.
@wendell could probablly tell you a littlebit more about the Linux support,
and iommu groupings on that board.
But overall its a great board, and i´m pretty sure that Gigabyte nowdays has improved on their bios allot.
Well one of the major downsides of the Msi board is,
that it indeed lacks a bit in terms of connectivity features.
I definitelly agree on that.
There should have been an 10gb/e on it for that price.
And maybe a bit more m.2.
it looks like meg would be better option after all… i jus tneed ioomu groups for it
u decided to give it a go with a refubrisehd Especially on the Gigabyte X399 Gaming 7 from newegg. I will check if it works at all and how it behaves.
I would love if asrock would come forward with their rev2 i would prrobably go with those
Mu testing of g7 finished and I have sent it back for a refund :*
My board keeps flickering with rgb many times. It also had some strange issue that rgb was cut off and then it was coming back…
I had to use crazy Voltage to drive my Cpu to the same values as on asrock. It was crashing way to many times…
Not sure now what to do… its either wanting for Asus and asrock to come with 2nd gen motherboards or go with mega creation…
Zenith is 460 and creation is 590… Any suggestions ?
Is asus or asrock planning to release 2nd gen threadripper baord or they will skip it ?
I owned both msi hydro gpu and asus motherboard and both are working flawless.
with gigabyte I had only isuees… Never gigabyte
As long as you stick with a 180W tdp cpu, you will also be fine with a gen 1 board really.
The 250W tdp topend cpu’s need a better vrm like the Msi meg.
But yeah its still waiting for Asrock and Asus to come out with new boards.
But its pretty quiet arround that, i have not seen or heard anything concrete yet.
so what zenith or creation ?
I want to ejony RGB goodness as well… I know Asus have games integration but i am not sure about MEG.
I was watching some of Buildzoid’s videos about x399 boards and memory layouts. He has great things to say about the upper end Gigabyte boards and Asus with regards to their DIMM configurations and power phases. He also mentioned some of his predictions a few months ago about Zen 2 running hot. He says the Auros Ultra is ideal for its price.
I like the Asus Prime X399-A. I usually tend to go with Asus or ASRock for their BIOS layout, but I don’t do extreme overclocks.
Like i said both boards are basically great.
But the Asus Zenith Extreme is a gen1 board,
and only has 8 phases for vcore powered by IR3555 60A powerstages.
Which is pretty much what all the other X399 gen 1 boards have aswell except for Gigabyte…
Those boards are generally fine for 180W tdp cpu’s like i explained above.
But the Msi X399 MEG creation is a TR gen 2 board, that has,
an massive vrm implementation.
That board has 8 phases doubled to 16 phases for just vcore.
And those are powered by Infeneon (IR) 70A powerstages.
So its vrm is significantlly better then all the other X399 boards sofar.
And there for if you are looking into the 250W tdp cpu’s like the 2970WX,
or the 2990WX 250W tdp cpu´s and you want to,
have the board with the best vrm to push those chips.
Then the Msi X399 MEG basically has it all as far as the vrm is concerned.
Another gen 2 board is the Gigabyte X399 Aorus Extreme.
But this particular board has 10 phases for Vcore,
5 phases doubled to 10.
But the only use IR3556 50A powerstages.
So that is also significantlly less powerfull current capabillity wise then the Msi MEG.
Funny thing about the Asus X399 Zenith Extreme,
is that its Vcore vrm is actually weaker then what Asus,
is using on the Asus Crosshair VII Hero X470 board.
For god knows why?
Asus logic i guess lol. 
I want to be futureproof. It looks like those TR4 MBs ain’t going to go cheaper for next several years and i don’t want to be uping again soon.
Real Zen 2 ( not refresh) is probably going to keep TR4 socket.
In this way it looks like MSI is the only candidate left… or any other suggestions ? 
MisteryAngel–>
I like BIOS from ASUS and Asrock too. I think Gigabyte is underdevelop.
I have not seen MSI BIOS yet, I read some comments it’s poor ;-(
I read that watched HWunbox and Gigabyte seems to have some serious issues with powerover deliver and it’s generally not suggested.
Asus definitelly has the best bios for overclocking imo.
Asrock also has a pretty okay bios which could use some improvements here and there.
But its definitelly a fine bios that Asrock has.
Gigabyte i have personally never been a huge fan of Gigabyte´s bios,
They can be a bit wonky at times, allthough Gigabyte is also improving on it.
Msi i have not used the newest Msi bios yet, but according to wendell,
they do seem to have put allot of work and effort into their bios aswell.
But i still need to dig into the Msi bios yet.
So yeah its really a choice.
Questions according iommu groupings etc, that is something that @wendell could probablly help you a bit better with.
Another thing to watch for is what manufacturer made the socket. From what I recall, a LOTES socket is best. The FOXCONN socket has been known to have issues related to securing it.
Thank you guys for all suggestions!
I’m down to Asus zenith or Gigagbyte Creation.
I lean towards Asus cause i think it’s superior quality… but i see that VRMs are weak ;-(
I like Asus ROG integration with COD … i but think it’s going to be only one.
MSI mystic looks much more appealing 
msi’s bios
with recent update they’ve added BLCK (only thing they were really missing)
AGESA 1.1.0.2
(the MEG x399 from msi has 3 m.2 ports, but you can also use pci-e ports for it.)
what about Asus Strix… it looks like more resonable price point and does not missing many features from Zenith ?