Conclusion
Good points include baked-in 10Gbit/s Ethernet, great looks, integrated I/O shield, chunky M.2 cooling...The AMD Threadripper CPU has been morphed into a workstation chip with the release of the WX line. As such, there is renewed focus on the supporting chipset, X399.
Aorus sees opportunity of pushing the features and performance up by a notch over the Gaming 7 from last year. The result of that thinking is a board aptly named the Xtreme.
Good points include baked-in 10Gbit/s Ethernet, great looks, integrated I/O shield, chunky M.2 cooling, restrained lighting, top-notch audio, and a really solid backplate. Each represent meaningful upgrades over the first-gen Gaming 7.
That said, the good is tempered by some potentially bad, notably the DIMM slots being close together, last-gen Wifi, and a perfunctory BIOS. Are those subjective negatives enough to take the shine off the package? The answer is probably not in our books, and the overall feeling is that the Xtreme is a solid base for the Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX in particular.
The Good The Bad Great cooling and power potential
Reasonable price
Integrated I/O
10Gbps Ethernet
Excellent M.2 cooling Layout not perfect
Last-gen Wifi
Aorus X399 Xtreme
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The Aorus X399 Xtreme is available to purchase from Scan Computers.
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