Newegg is already having a preorders: Release Date: 02/05/2019
Asus Zenith Extreme and AZEA uses DIMM.2 this is much better then STRIX with this awful vertical mounts . Person who invented this dump idea should burn in iommu hell.
i went to Asus website and to my amazement they have a product page for the zenith Extreme Alpha and even further amazement they had a download available for the user manual which i downloaded and am going through it bit by bit
when i visited product pages for other asus motherboards before they were only half finished
i priced the board from a computer supplier in Germany and they were looking for over €650 excluding shipping.
so it is the most expensive motherboard i ever came across so it better be damn good
if the reviews are good i might stretch to get it
My mobo is omw to me.
Anyone else planning to get it ?
i am interested in getting it but would like to see some reviews / testing before i commit.
Let us know when yours arrive and if you don’t mind report your experiences with the board
Looking Good
I have seen some tests with that board and a 2990WX,
And surprisingly given the fact that its only an 8 phase board with 60A powerstages,
the board did surprisingly well in terms of vrm temp testings,
with the active cooling kit that Asus provides for this board.
Those little fans are probably a little bit annoying.
But it really helps this board allot.
Kinda curious what your experience is on vrm temps.
I have been reading this post with great interest. So far the general opinion is the MSI Meg Creation is the only decent motherboard manufactured for Theadripper 2, but its Bios has a lot to be desired. Have I gotten the correct impression of the general opinion on the MSI Meg Creation?
MEG Creation is a very nice a good board. The best art design IMHO.
it lacks AMD CBS options in BIOS, but you can get a community bios from overclockers. It was already tested left and right over there and gets a good MSI comunity support with moded bioses.
There are some issues with SW e.g the LED SW which is on CD (old) has more features then that one preset from DL page. It looks like they reworked it, but instead they purely downgrade it.
No active cooling on VRM means it’s quiet.
i see 16… with a huge heatink on top of it and then pipe with fans on top. This fans can be removed or unplugged with a accessible cord.
i see nice heatsink in the back of VRM with thermalpads… I don’t remeber i saw that on MEG.
Looks impressive.
Edit:
This Fans are in aluminium cage, not like in AZ under plastic cover. The whole thing is a solid piece.
The best way to describe it is “active heatsink” ?
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are the fans loud
i don’t have 2990WX. I only have 1950X. I doubt I will be able to pull enough power to move them.
If they are like in AZ then they probably spin loud for brief sec during post then they switch off.
With 1950X on AZ single fan was not audible during OC operations.
In the evening I will put everything together and start testing.
I was talking about the Asus X399 Zenith Extreme.
I thought you had that board aswell.
But i see that you actually got the Zenith Extreme Alpha (my bad) awesome board doe. 
I’m currious about the Asus Zenith Extreme Alpha,
and what it hides underneath its vrm heatsink.
It might still be an 8 phase though,
Inductor count does not really say much.
Asus also follows a trend lately by double up components on a phase.
So unless there are doubler ic´s IR3599 or IR3598´s located on the back of the board?
It could still be just an 8 phase.
Currious which powerstages they went with this time arround.
Looks cool on your test bench doe 
The Asus bios is definitelly better then Msi’s.
So yeah if you hae to choose between the Asus or Msi.
Then definitelly Asus.
Cool you have a 1950x as well. i will be really interested in your testing and results
what memory will you be using and how many GB
also what cooler will you be using to cool the 1950x
I agree with you Asus Bios is better than MSI, but the problem as I see it is Asus only has one decent X399 motherboard, the Asus Zenith Extreme Alpha, and at almost $700 dollars USD, it’s too rich for me. So I guess unless I win the lottery, I am stuck with the MSI Meg Creation.
I was thinking Asus froformy mainboard having used them for years because their EFI is great and they update frequently. I was leaning towards the Strix but I think I’ll buy once, cry once, and buy the Zenith Extreme Alpha because I am thinking of a 2970wx or 2990wx and might want even to upgrade one day to something bigger in the next generation in the late cycle when prices drop. I hope I can jsut turn off the RGB Bling when I run in Linux though sicne it isn’t supported as far as I know.
I think you are right, RGB Bling isn’t supported in Linux, at least I haven’t read any post it says it does.
You could probablly switch off the rgb stuff from within the uefi / bios.
I’ll know in a week or two…2990wx ariives tomorrow, mainboard and memory day after but AIO is 4 days out… I have a Primochill Wetbench I’ll test it on. but the primary components have to be there…jsut waiting.
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I chose my case and the optional water distribution panel for it.
The Bykski Venemo. It is an obscure aluminum case with no builds on Youtube yet but I am a sucker for an open design, especially for the heat dissipation for the VRMs with Threadripper. No one (yet that i know of) makes mono-block for the Zenith Extreme Alpha. EKWB confirmed they will not: volume on the board is too low.
Have the Asus Zenith Extreme Alpha, the 128GB 3000 Corsair memory (on the QVL for the main board), and the 2990wx. I’ll use my EVGA FE 1080ti for now. The RTX 2080ti isn’t worth the cost.
Just waiting on a Threadripper CPU cooler so I can check POST before initiating the build in the case.
Nota Bene: Don’t worry Admins, I’ll move this to a build log at this point but I wanted to wrap up the topic with the main decisions here. This was a quick phone snapshot, I’ll take better images for the build log.
[Bykski Venemo Case](
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