So I have had this board for almost a week now and I am pretty pleased with it.
So my previous mother board was the MSI 990FXA using the FX-8350 processor. The main problem that board had was the notoriously hot and sometimes leaky VRM. The 990FXA from msi ran 60c idle and 80c under load. It was also notorious for a bad NIC
MSI appears to have made multiple improvements in the X399 over its predecessors.
The VRM: this board's VRM runs cool at 23C idle and 35-40c under load, a huge improvement.
The NIC: The NIC has more hardware options than the one from 990FXA there are more ways to adjust performance of the card and overall seems more stable.
The sturdiness: this was noticeable off the bat, this board is 10 times heavier than msi's 990FXA and has almost no sag compared to its predecessor. There is a nice thick heavy metal backplate for the processor and every slot is reinforced with aluminum.
Stability: This board is probably even more stable than its predecessor with newer components and its improved VRM. The 990FXA even when it had fluid leak from the VRM didnt have stability issues. So that probably speaks to the quality of the x399 since the VRM on it runs so much cooler dispite that its for such a powerful processor as threadripper.
The Bios: the new bios, for the most part, has the same interface as the 990FXA's but it has the additional feature to switch between an advanced and simple interface. Along with options that threadripper supports ofcourse.
Gaming: I'm not sure whether this is the processor, the board, or windows. But I've noticed that when gaming utilization is actively deciding between using the SMT or a whole core for processing in a game. Sometimes i find two threads with the exact same graph meaning the whole core is being used for one thing and other times the threads have clearly different graphs. It seems to have no problem swapping between SMT and single core on the fly. I have also noticed that it will dedicate one dye entirely for gaming and the other dye for background tasks unless you use something extremely intensive, then it uses both dyes. In the utilization area I am extremely pleased.
The cons:
Bios: if you are doing your research you have probably seen mentions of mouse lag when using the bios. I can confirm that this is true. The lag is probably due to them making it so you can access the bios without the processor or ram installed, so the bios is likely using a physical ram and processor somewhere on the board that is likely just barely enough to run the bios with its increased resolution. I dont think any bios updates will improve the lag unless they give the bios a better sub processor and memory.
Additionally there doesn't seem to be a way to manually set the CPU ratio, you can only boost it through the readyboost option from the board or bios, although that might be a good thing because it adjusts additional settings when it boosts the clock.
Some extra info:
it seems like bios images from msi seem to fix and break things, the image my board shipped with was made in 9/15/2017 and seems to be the most stable for this board. I haven't had any stability issues with this version.
Do not get more than 2666mhz ram for this board, I know the board says it goes up to 3600 but AMD's website says that the processor only officially supports up to 2667mhz, Ive seen reviews where people have been getting bluescreens with ram that's above 2667mhz and loosing maximum ram speed after a bios update, the main reason is the processor, it doesn't officially support any memory faster than 2667mhz, if you can get it stable at a faster speed, great, but I don't recommend it.
Last note: windows task manager doesn't read the correct CPU frequency with this board, it reports 3.4 GHz regardless of bios setting, but HW-Z and CPU-Z will both report the frequency you have set in bios.
Make sure to disable IMMOU to get windows to run correctly!
Edit: 11/27/2018
I am happy to say that with almost a year of using this board my system still runs stable.
I am still using the same bios (version 7B09v15) that the board shipped with when I got this board around a year ago additionally: The issue with task manager not properly reading the core clock was resolved in windows update 1803.
I have seen that AGESA updates have been coming out from AMD and being implemented into the BIOS updates for this board. AGESA is supposed to improve memory compatibility and I may attempt to use faster ram in the future than the 2667Mhz that Threadripper is rated for. Supposedly it is possible to get 3200Mhz stable now with the AGESA updates but I have not as of yet tested that.
| RAM | DDR4 |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 2400 MHz |
| Wireless Type | 802.11a |
