According to block diagrams, both WRX90 and TRX50 have single x4 Gen4 link to CPU. Yet all 4 boards (not counting the Gigabyte because it doesn’t have this problem) from Asus and AsRock share same design principle. Gen4 SlimSAS and some of M.2s are wired to the chipset.
Multiple Gen 4 NVMe ports/slots wired to a chipset with single Gen 4x4 link?! Even old WRX80 had x8 Gen4 to the chipset.
Is that really Gen 4 or there is an error in manuals and its really Gen5, because in no way shape or form chipset can drive all Gen 4 NVMe connected at once + all USB at full tilt and SATA. Same error was in WRX80 manuals - single Gen 4x4, but on actual boards it was Gen4x8.
If in fact it’s really the case why did they do that? I find TRX50/WRX90 launch so confusing. It would be so much nicer to get 3xSFF-8643 for SATA only.
From the looks of it if I decide on purchase, I’ll have to stick to my x16 U.2 adapter to connect my Micron 7450s at full speed without chipset stifling the performance.
These platforms are really built for the PCIe connectivity. The chipset is just there to get the basic SATA & networking functionality. So, yeah, getting a PCIe adapter for U.2 connectivity is your best option.
Threadripper 7000 does support 16 → 4x4 bifurcation so you only need a bifurcating adapter, not an HBA or PCIe switch, which does keep cost down:
The Chipset is mostly used for USB 2/3 connectivity and SATA. It provides a few PCIe lanes but as far as I understand this platform, your supposed to use the CPU’s lanes for your important high speed stuff and Chipset for devices that won’t saturate the bus.
Yeah I expected both platforms to be about connectivity, but limiting chipset to only x4 link on WRX90?! They on purpose sabotaging their own products when previous generation was free from this?
So mightily disappointed.
Suddenly TRX50 is not that meh.
Gigabyte TRX50 doesn’t look so bad with only 3 slots and weakest VRM. I never OC, 1 x16 U.2 adapter, 1 4M.2 or OWC Accelsior 8M.2 and VGA for rendering. 8 SATA on-board. All M.2 wired to CPU without any shenanigans, easily convertible to SlimSAS/MCIO. TB4 built in. Pretty tempting.
I’m not sure why you are disappointed about the chipset? If anything you might be disappointed at the motherboard designers for not offering more SFF ports that are wired directly to the CPU. But in any case connecting your SSDs to CPU lanes will always be optimal in terms of performance.
And bifurcating cards that offer four x4 pcie connectors are not very expensive and offer exactly what you need? In a much less hacky way than m.2 to SFF/U.3 conversion…
Well… When I look at WRX90 and count the mountain of $ I have to spend I want 100% value for money - probably my last workstation because I cannot justify this anymore with these prices. Consider this:
For a price of single WRX90 system 7965WX/256GB RAM 4800/WRX90 board and cpu block for cooling *** with all taxes in EU that’s (equivalent of) ~7200$ and small part of connectivity is wasted because it was rigged needlessly for NVMe instead of SATA - I hope not on purpose, out of spite. Even on old X399 boards Asus/AsRock knew to wire U.2 to the CPU. WRX80 has x8 DMI so it’s not an issue.
For slightly less (~6800$) I can get TWO identical systems with 7960/Aero TRX50/cpu block and 128 GB of RAM.
That gives me 6 PCIe slots 4xGen5 & 2xGen4, 16 SATA ports and all 8 M.2 wired to CPU without lanes wasted in the chipset or slots covered by other cards. Ah and of course 4 TB4/USB4 ports that counts too. It’s crazy idea, but it’s unquestionably superbly better value for money spent and most likely also productivity-wise.
*** - I have all the drives and fittings, rads and stuff so that’s not a factor in this equation
Ah and Hyper cards from Asus. They are flimsy things. Had already 2 died on me. Using some chinese knockoffs right now without fans just with huge radiator. Very neat, but for density I’m looking at OWC Accelsior or Sonnet 8M2.
1 x Blazing M.2 Socket (M2_1, Key M), supports type 2260/2280/22110 PCIe Gen5x4 (128 Gb/s) mode*
2 x MCIO Connectors (PCIe Gen5x4 or 4 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s)
1 x SlimSAS SFF-8654 Connector (SLIM1) (PCIe Gen4x4 or 4 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s)
Chipset:
1 x Hyper M.2 Socket (M2_2, Key M), supports type 2260/2280 PCIe Gen4x4 (64 Gb/s) mode*
1 x SlimSAS SFF-8654 Connector (SLIM2) (PCIe Gen4x4)
4 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors
So, you can attach 3 SSD straight to the CPU with MCIO/SFF and 8 SATA via the chipset. I’m not sure what you are looking for, except ranting, but that probably suffices?
Yeah both WRX90 boards technically would be fine if some of slots were converted into MCIO/SlimSAS 8i connectors. Too many slots are lost when you put more than one GPU.
WRX90 with lack of support for S3 lost a lot of appeal for me, but yeah AsRock board is interesting - more that Asus. It’s funny that AsRock wired NVMe SlimSAS to the chipset, but they wired SlimSAS/MCIO(!) with SATA breakout function to the CPU. Like WTF is this? “Yes I’ll buy 150$ MCIO cable and drive 4 SATA drives out of it.” It doesn’t make any sense to me. One word: sabotage.
If AsRock WRX90 is price competitive (because Asus TAX… and DOA reports, and AsRock UEFI is in general more sensible) I’ll consider it.
Thanks. Nice chatting with you. Certainly not ranting, AMD made worse chipset link than 4 years ago. It’s beyond obvious. That’s on them, but customers are too easily swayed by trinkets these days and swallow the hook & rod without thinking.
WRX90 with lack of support for S3 lost a lot of appeal for me
Wendell said in one of the videos that S3 is problematic since 8 channels of memory need too much power for the PSU in standby mode (in S3 the PSU fan won’t spin, etc.)
AMD made worse chipset link than 4 years ago. It’s beyond obvious. That’s on them, but customers are too easily swayed by trinkets these days and swallow the hook & rod without thinking.
This platform is clearly derived from the Epyc platform (which launched earlier and is sold in much higher volumes). The volumes of threadripper (pro) are simply not high enough to justify designing a (better) chipset; and all the usual chipset features are irrelevant for Epyc/servers. Servers will use a backpanes/storage controllers/… but not SATA/SAS from the motherboard.
At the same time, SATA is getting deprecated in the desktop space in favour of NAS. Most customers with the need and money for a 5K+ workstation will just get a NAS and 10G ethernet for their bulk storage needs.
I was thinking using the slimsas off the chipset as a pcie 4 u2 optane drive. Is there an issue with doing that? I like the idea of swapping out root drives to play with linux. (At least until I get advanced enough to play with virtual machines)
Personally i dont run drives with any data I care about off the chipset.
OS is latency sensitive, unless I’m out to lunch the chipset will add latency.
The only thing I’ll use chipset m.2 for is old slow pcie 3.0 drives for speed and latency insensitive data (one step above hdd array).
Conpletely agree with this - something with 8 channel memory and 32 cores isnt meant to be suspended.
I havent intentionally suspended a desktop in that past 6+ years
