MSI Creator TRX40 Motherboard Review

MSI Creator TRX40 – TRX40 Chipset
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X (3.8Ghz) 24 Core 24 x 512KB L2 Cache 8x 16MB L3 Cache
Custom Waterr Loop 280mm Radiator w/ Heatkiller Block
1x nVidia RTX 2080 Super
4x Ballistix Elite PC4-32000 8GB (18-19-19-39)
Crucial MX500 500GB SSD
HP dvd1260i Multiformat 24x Writer
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

EVGA X299 Dark – X299 Chipset
Intel Core i9 7900x (3.0Ghz) Ten Core 10 x 1MB L2 Cache 13MB L3 Cache
Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme
1x nVidia GTX 980Ti
4x Corsair Vengeance LPX  PC4-21300 16GB DDR4 (15-17-17-35)
Crucial  MX300 750GB SSD
HP dvd1260i Multiformat 24x Writer
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 10 Pro

MSI MEG Z390 ACE – Z390 Chipset
Intel Core i7 8700k (3.7Ghz) Hex Core 6 x 256KB L2 Cache 12MB L3 Cache
Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme
1x nVidia GTX 980Ti
2x GSKill TridentZ PC4-27700 8GB DDR4 (16-18-18-38)
Crucial BX300 240GB SSD
HP dvd1260i Multiformat 24x Writer
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

Our motherboard testing suite has been compiled to subject the system to a variety of different scenarios that help uncover some of the subtle differences in motherboard design.  Normally these differences are driven by the processor and BIOS programming but with the advent of an IMC and PCI Express moving to the CPU we have discovered that raw performance numbers are virtually identical across the systems.  

Our new approach is to look at total system performance and minimize the variances.  The results will tell us how the system responded as a total package and also give us something to use in our comparisons.