ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme Alpha Motherboard Review With AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX – The Alpha Predator of The X399 Series

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990X Processor - Cooler Performance and Temperatures

For cooling, I used the Corsair H115i Pro AIO liquid cooler which is fully compatible with the Ryzen Threadripper processors and TR4 socket. These coolers come with a larger surface area that makes full contact with the huge IHS on the Threadripper chips. This huge contact allows for better heat transfer to help cool the processor effectively.

Following are the results of various Ryzen Threadripper CPUs in thermal benchmarking along with the VRM temps on each respective motherboard. Note that I set the active cooling option enabled through the BIOS so that it remained operational even when the temperatures were under 60C. It made for some slightly higher noise output but the VRM temps themselves were lower than all of the X399 boards I had tested so far.

In general, the Ryzen Threadripper processors are based on the 12nm process from Glofo which offers slightly better temperatures and power efficiency numbers compared to Intel's 14nm based offerings. While Intel went with a solderless design, the Ryzen Threadripper chips come with liquid metal thermal paste on each of the four dies that are featured on the chip interposer.

This refined thermal interface offers much better heat transfer than Intel's TIM and the Indium based solder design means that all air gaps are removed and the chip itself is tightly packaged so that the IHS can fully unload the heat from the dies and pass it straight to the cooler itself.

Furthermore, the dies feature gold plating on the back to ensure proper thermal cycling which adds to the thermal qualities of this impressive chip. You can check out the full delidding of Ryzen Threadripper processors by renowned overclocker Der8auer over here.

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9.9

WCCFTECH RATING

At $699 US, the ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme Alpha packs so many features, an incredible power delivery system and lots of IO, making it the ultimate X399 motherboard that you can buy for AMD's disruptive Ryzen Threadripper processors.

Pros

• 16+4+4 Phase IR Digital PWM Power Supply (60A MOSFETs)
• Dual 8-Pin Power Connectors For Unrestricted Power Delivery to CPU
• Proper Aluminum Fin Based heatsinks with heat pipe interconnection
• Dual Fan Active Cooling For VRMs with Idle Fan Tech (Finned Aluminum heatsink)
• Supports Up To 128 GB of DDR memory with speeds of 3600 MHz+ OC
• Matte Black Finish on the entire board + dual backplates
• ROG DIMM.2 With Dual M.2 ports (Includes Heatsink / Heatpad)
• ROG Fan Extension II Hub with 6 additional fan ports, 3 RGB and 3 Thermal sensor ports
• Impressive AURA Sync RGB Capabilities With Good Software Support
• Aluminum cover for PCIe and M.2 slots (includes heatsink for M.2)
• Full I/O cover with aluminum heatsink + Aura Sync + OLED Live Dash
• Metal Shielded PCIe Slots
• Metal Shielded DIMM Slots
• Metal Shielded M.2 Slots
• Integrated Intel 802.11 ac Wireless capabilities
• 10G Ethernet Port (Aquantia) + 1 Gigabit LAN ports
• SupremeFX 8 Sound (Superb onboard sound capabilities)
• Tons of USB 3.1 Gen 1 and Gen 2 ports on rear panel IO
• Pre-mounted IO Shield
• Internal USB 3.1 Gen 2 Header
• Dual BIOS for easy tuning if anything goes haywire

Cons

• Extremely High Price ($699.99 US)
• Can consume a lot of power when CPUs (especially the WX models) is overclocked beyond 4 GHz
• OLED Live Dash is very clunky and often unresponsive

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