In case you missed it, AMD added another Threadripper CPU to its lineup over the weekend, the 1900X priced at $549. That is also the price of AMD's flagship ROG Zenith Extreme, one of three new socket TR4 motherboards the company announced for Threadripper systems.
Not all motherboards for Threadripper are going to cost north of $500. The reason this one does is because it's decked out with just about everything Asus could think of, all of which comes stuffed onto a large size Extended ATX (E-ATX) motherboard.
You can install up to 128GB of DDR4-3600+ (OC) memory on the ROG Zenith Extreme, which isn't really trendsetting among competing boards. Where this motherboard starts to separate itself is with 4-way SLI and CrossFire support, rather than stopping at 3-way support.
"All of our X399 motherboards support three-way SLI and CrossFireX setups, and the Zenith Extreme can call upon a fourth card for record-setting benchmark attempts or an extra jolt of compute power," Asus says. "To protect your investment, SafeSlot reinforces the graphics slots against damage from increasingly heavy GPU coolers."
It has four PCIe x16 slots in all, along with a x4 slot and a x1 slot. And to make use of all those PCIe lanes that Threadripper supports, the ROG Zenith Extreme also can accommodate M.2 and U.2 storage options.
Internet and network connectivity is kicked up a notch on this board with onboard 802.11ad WiGig, a GbE LAN port, and an included ROG Areion 10Gbps networking card.
Other amenities include six SATA ports, several USB 3.1 ports (both Type-A and Type-C), and RGB lighting.
The ROG Zenith Extreme will be available in August, though you can preorder one now.
If you're not looking at spending $550, Asus also announced a couple of lower end options, ROG Strix X399-E (no price mentioned) and Prime X399-A ($350). Both are E-ATX motherboards with shared features such as one-touch overclocking and RGB lighting.
The ROG Strix X399-E and Prime X399-A support 3-way SLI and Crossfire configurations. Onboard 802.11ac Wi-Fi is included on the Strix variant, though not the Prime SKU. The other main difference is the onboad audio—Supreme FX on the Strix and Realtek on the Prime board.
Both of these will be available in August as well.
