ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme Alpha
2019Type
MotherboardPrice
$699.99 USTest Setup
For this review, I had access to the Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX flagship processor. AMD did not provide us with any equipment or processors for this review. The motherboard was sent to us by ASUS and we will be using it with our Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX sample.
The full test setup configuration can be seen in the provided list below:
ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme Alpha Test Bench:
| Processors | AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX |
|---|---|
| Motherboards | ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme Alpha ASRock X399 Professional Gaming ASRock X399M Taichi ASRock X399 Taichi |
| Memory | Teamgroup Xcalibur RGB Series 32 GB (4 x 8GB) CL16 3200 MHz |
| Video Cards | ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 Ti STRIX OC |
| Power Supply | Corsair AX1200i PSU |
| Cooling Solutions | Corsair H115i Pro AIO Liquid |
| Solid State Drive | Samsung SSD 960 EVO M.2 (512 GB) |
| BIOS Used | ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme Alpha 1901 Gigabyte X399 AORUS Xtreme F4C ASRock X399 Professional Gaming v3.20 ASRock X399 Taichi v3.20 |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit |
For overclocking, the maximum clock speeds I was able to achieve on the ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme Alpha was 4.2 GHz across all cores with a voltage supply of 1.40V.
Contents
You can find additional information about our hardware review process and ethics policy here.
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.
- 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
Pros
- 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
Cons
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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