ASRock Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming Motherboard Review

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Feature Testing: ASRock RGB LED

Feature Testing: ASRock RGB LED

Click on image to enlarge​

If you're not a fan of RGB LED lighting, the Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming might just be the motherboard for you. The ASRock RGB LED feature on this motherboard is essentially limited to few RGB LEDs placed under the chipset cooler. However, if you want to expand that there are two RGB headers on which you can plug 5050 RGB LED strips up 12V/3A (36W).

These RGB LEDs can be controlled using the ASRock RGB LED or even a special section in the UEFI BIOS. The lights can be adjusted to a number of different colours and customized to create cool lighting effects. The presets can cause the LEDs to change shades breathe, strobe, cycle through all the colours, fade in and out, flash on and off, just statically display one colour, and more. You can also adjust the speed at which these LEDs turn on and off.

Click on image to enlarge​

With only four onboard LEDs you obviously aren't going to be witnessing any magical light shows on this motherboard. However, the LEDs are bright and colourful, and they certainly add a little something extra to a system. Those wanting more definitely have that opportunity thanks to the onboard headers.

Here is a little live action look at RGB LED feature on the ASRock Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming:

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Feature Testing: Onboard Audio

Feature Testing: Onboard Audio

Since fewer and fewer consumers seem to be buying discrete sound cards, the quality of a motherboard's onboard audio is now more important than ever. As such, we figured that it was worthwhile to take a closer look at just how good the analog signal quality is coming out of the onboard Purity Sound 4 audio subsystem that is implemented on the Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming. As mentioned earlier, this model features the modern Realtek ALC1220 codec, one Texas Instruments op-amp, Nichicon Fine Gold audio capacitors, and a PCB-level isolation line.

Since isolated results don't really mean much, but we have also included some numbers from the plethora of motherboards that we have previously reviewed. All of the motherboards that we have included are feature onboard audio solutions that are built around the Realtek ALC1150 or ALC1220 codecs, but feature different op-amps, headphone amplifiers, filtering capacitors, secondary components and layouts.

We are going to do this using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, since sound quality isn't really something that can be adequately explained with only numbers. To do the quantitative portion, we have turned to RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA), which the standard application for this type of testing.

Since all modern motherboards support very high quality 24-bit, 192kHz audio playback we selected that as the sample mode option. Basically, what this test does is pipe the audio signal from the front-channel output to the line-in input via a 3.5mm male to 3.5mm male mini-plug cable, and then RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA) does the audio analysis. Obviously we disabled all software enhancements since they interfere with the pure technical performance that we are trying to benchmark.

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As you can see above, this ASRock X399 Pro Gaming posted some downright excellent numbers. In fact, this motherboard just barely failed to topple our previous record holder, the ASUS STRIX Z270I. It literally came within a hair of being the best motherboard that we have ever tested with RMAA.

As we always mention, we aren't experts when it comes to sound quality, but at this high level we suspect that just about anyone should be satisfied. We listened to a variety of music and spoken word content using a mix of Grado SR225i and Koss PortaPro headphones, Westone UM1 IEMs, and Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speakers, and the playback was clean and loud. Although it doesn't affect sound quality, we also love the fact that this motherboard is the first one that we've seen to offer an angled front-panel audio header, which means that you can occupy the lowest PCI-E x16 slot with a dual-slot expansion card and still be able to hook up your case's headphone audio jack.

 

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Feature Testing: M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4

Feature Testing: M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4

When compared to AMD's mainstream AM4 X370 platform, the TR4 X399 has significantly improved the availability of high-speed storage interfaces. Whereas the mainstream platform is limited to one NVMe M.2 slot running straight off of the processor, ThreadRipper processors natively support three full-speed PCI-E 3.0 x4 M.2 slots. By comparison, very few Intel X299 motherboards have identical high-speed M.2 connectivity since it requires leeching PCI-E lanes from the processor since the chipset has a limited (but still high at 24) number of PCI-E lanes available and it needs to supply every bit of onboard I/O. Overall, this is a huge win for AMD's HEDT platform, since not only do you get ample high-speed connectivity but it has no negative effect on the capabilities of PCI-E slots.

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While a few SSDs exist that can reach the 3.5-3.6GB/s real-life limit of this interface, we settled on one that can crack the 2000MB/s barrier: the Samsung SSD 950 PRO 256GB. Despite now being usurped by the SSD 960 PRO, this high performance NVMe PCI-E SSD combines Samsung's powerful UBX controller with its industry-leading 3D V-NAND and is capable of sequential read speeds of up to 2,200MB/second and write speeds of up to 900MB/sec.

One of the ways that we will be evaluating the performance of a motherboard's M.2 interface is by verifying that is capable of matching or exceeding these listed transfer rates. The other is by checking to see whether the M.2 slots performs as well as when we install the SSD 950 PRO onto a ASUS Hyper M.2 x4 expansion card plugged directly into a PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot. While both methods utilizes the same PCI-E lanes coming the processor, it is still worth checking to see whether the PCI-E lane splitting and switching has been properly implemented.

M.2 #1 vs. M.2 #2 vs. M.2 #3 vs PCI-E​

As you can see the performance of the three M.2 slots was excellent, and they perform essentially identically to the PCI-E adapter. All three slots performed as well as the next, with any small differences being well within benchmark variances.

While transfer rates are obviously an important metric, we figured that it was also worthwhile to take a peak at instructions per second (IOPS) to ensure that there wasn't any variance there either:

M.2 #1 vs. M.2 #2 vs. M.2 #3 vs PCI-​

Once again, the differences are essentially non-existent and well within the margin of error for this benchmark. Having said that, the 16MB Read results are pretty bad, achieving roughly half the IOPS results that we would expect from this SSD. This isn't related to this particular motherboard though, it is a platform/driver issue at the moment. Nevertheless, overall it is clear that no matter how you choose you install an NVMe M.2 SSD on this ASRock X399 Pro Gaming motherboard you will be achieving optimal performance... in most respects.

 

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Manual Overclocking Results

Manual Overclocking Results

While we usually call this section "Auto & Manual Overclocking Results", this motherboard currently has no automatic overclocking functionality. Usually this would be a black mark on a motherboard, but less so on this platform. First and foremost, we are dealing with processors with a default TDP of up to 180W, which is already pretty difficult to cool. Since overclocking involves increasing voltage and heat output, there is an argument that can be made that those without the knowledge to overclock manually shouldn't be doing it at all at this high level.

Secondly, as you probably already know, and as you will further see below, there isn't a ton of overclocking headroom on these twelve and sixteen core ThreadRipper processors since AMD is already shipping them at faster than optimal frequencies given the manufacturing process that was utilized. Nevertheless, squeezing that little bit of extra performance is exceptionally easy. Simply set the CPU voltage to 1.30-1.35V and start increasing the CPU multiplier/CPU frequency until it crashes in your preferred stress test, then back off a little bit. Although you cannot manually overclock the SOC/Fabric frequency, it is automatically increased when you set a higher memory speed. Specifically, the Fabric runs at half the memory speed, so DDR4-3200 means a 1600Mhz Fabric frequency. Since manual memory overclocking is still a little iffy on both of AMD's new platforms, we recommend sticking to whatever kits have been validated for your particular motherboard and just working up from whatever settings the XMP profile sets.

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While there really is no automatic overclocking feature on this motherboard, neither in the UEFI or the F-Stream utility, the closest thing that we found was this obscure 'OC Mode' setting in the Advanced tab. Strictly speaking it's not really overclocking either, since all this setting does is offer performance presets of 12 cores at 3.6Ghz, 8 cores at 3.7Ghz, and 4 cores at 3.75Ghz. None of that is beneficial, since our 1920X natively sits at 3.7GHz and can boost a few cores up to 4.2GHz in lightly threaded workloads.

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As you can see, we were able to push our twelve-core 1920X processor all the way up to 4.15GHz at a very reasonable 1.30V. This is the all-core frequency too, so quite a bit better than the default all-core frequency of 3.70Ghz, and pretty darn close to the XFR frequency of 4.2GHz (which is limited to 4 cores). We could have potentially hit a bit higher - even without any additional voltage - but temperatures really seemed to skyrocket at/past 4.2GHz. Either way, 4.15GHz is still very much at the upper-end of what these ThreadRipper processors are capable of using conventional cooling, in our case a Thermaltake Floe Riing 360 all-in-one liquid CPU cooler.

When it came to the memory we utilized our always trusty G.Skill Trident Z F4-3200C14Q-32GTZSW (4x8GB - Samsung B-die ICs) memory kit, which features a DDR4-3200 XMP profile with 14-14-14 timings. One of the weirder parts of this motherboard's UEFI is that you can't actually adjust memory speeds without first enabling XMP, so keep that in mind (at least until it's inevitably fixed). Ultimately, we were able to push the memory speed to DDR4-3600 16-16-16 without much fiddling at all. This was achievable without manually tweaking any of the voltages, which default to 1.368V for the DRAM voltage and 1.128V for the SOC voltage. While we could boot into Windows at DDR4-3733, and even run stress tests, we couldn't achieve satisfactory level of stability even with aggressive overuse of voltage and/or loosening of timings. That shouldn't be seen as a criticism though, since this motherboard is 'only' validated for memory speeds of up to DDR4-3600, just like the competition.

Overall, overclocking on this motherboard has been a piece of cake. It handled our overclocking tomfoolery with a lot of poise, despite us causing a bunch of intentional BSODs and just generally trying out crazy frequency and voltage settings. While the BIOS needs a little work to be as user-friendly as possible - at least with respect to being able to easily find and change the memory speed option - everything else was easy. Just remember to choose a validated memory kit if you want the least compatibility issues, just like on all modern AMD motherboards.

 

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System Benchmarks

System Benchmarks

In the System and Gaming Benchmarks sections, we reveal the results from a number of benchmarks run with the AMD ThreadRipper 1920X 12-core processor on the ASRock X399 Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming motherboard. These tests were run at default clocks, at default clocks with XMP enabled, with default clocks with Game Mode enabled, and using our manual overclock. This will illustrate how much performance can be achieved with this motherboard in stock and overclocked form. For a thorough comparison of the TR 1920X versus a number of different CPUs have a look at our "AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X & 1950X Review" article.

SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP

When running the SuperPI 32MB benchmark, we are calculating Pi to 32 million digits and timing the process. Obviously more CPU power helps in this intense calculation, but the memory sub-system also plays an important role, as does the operating system. We are running one instance of SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP. This is therefore a single-thread workload.

wPRIME 2.10

wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we're sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum. This is a highly multi-threaded workload.

Cinebench R15

Cinebench R15 64-bit
Test1: CPU Image Render
Comparison: Generated Score

The latest benchmark from MAXON, Cinebench R15 makes use of all your system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene using various different algorithms to stress all available processor cores. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. This particular benchmarking can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The result is given in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

WinRAR x64

WinRAR x64 5.40
Test: Built-in benchmark, processing 1000MB of data.
Comparison: Time to Finish

One of the most popular file archival and compression utilities, WinRAR's built-in benchmark is a great way of measuring a processor's compression and decompression performance. Since it is a memory bandwidth intensive workload it is also useful in evaluating the efficiency of a system's memory subsystem.

FAHBench

FAHBench 1.2.0
Test: OpenCL on CPU
Comparison: Generated Score

FAHBench is the official FAH benchmark that measures the compute performance of CPUs and GPUs. It can test both OpenCL and CUDA code, using either single or double precision, and implicit or explicit modeling. The single precision implicit model most closely relates to current folding performance.

HEVC Decode Benchmark v1.61

HEVC Decode Benchmark (Cobra) v1.61
Test: Frame rates at various resolution, focusing on the top quality 25Mbps bitrate results.
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

The HEVC Decode Benchmark measures a system's HEVC video decoding performance at various bitrates and resolutions. HEVC, also known as H.265, is the successor to the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding) standard and it is very computationally intensive if not hardware accelerated. This decode test is done entirely on the CPU.

LuxMark v3.1

Test: OpenCL CPU Mode benchmark of the LuxBall HDR scene.
Comparison: Generated Score

LuxMark is a OpenCL benchmarking tool that utilizes the LuxRender 3D rendering engine. Since it OpenCL based, this benchmark can be used to test OpenCL rendering performance on both CPUs and GPUs, and it can put a significant load on the system due to its highly parallelized code.

PCMark 10

PCMark 10 is the latest iteration of Futuremark’s system benchmark franchise. It generates an overall score based upon system performance with all components being stressed in one way or another. The result is posted as a generalized score. In this case, we tested with both the standard Conventional benchmark and the Accelerated benchmark, which automatically chooses the optimal device on which to perform OpenCL acceleration.

AIDA64 Memory Benchmark

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a diagnostic and benchmarking software suite for home users that provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives.

The benchmarks used in this review are the memory bandwidth and latency benchmarks. Memory bandwidth benchmarks (Memory Read, Memory Write, Memory Copy) measure the maximum achievable memory data transfer bandwidth. The code behind these benchmark methods are written in Assembly and they are extremely optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate x86/x64, x87, MMX, MMX+, 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE4.1, AVX, and AVX2 instruction set extension.
The Memory Latency benchmark measures the typical delay when the CPU reads data from system memory. Memory latency time means the penalty measured from the issuing of the read command until the data arrives to the integer registers of the CPU.

 

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Gaming Benchmarks

Gaming Benchmarks

Futuremark 3DMark (2013)

3DMark v1.1.0
Graphic Settings: Fire Strike Preset
Rendered Resolution: 1920x1080
Test: Specific Physics Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score


3DMark is the brand new cross-platform benchmark from the gurus over at Futuremark. Designed to test a full range of hardware from smartphones to high-end PCs, it includes three tests for DirectX 9, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 hardware, and allows users to compare 3DMark scores with other Windows, Android and iOS devices. Most important to us is the new Fire Strike preset, a DirectX 11 showcase that tests tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Like every new 3DMark version, this test is extremely GPU-bound, but it does contain a heavy physics test that can show off the potential of modern multi-core processors.

Futuremark 3DMark 11

3DMark 11 v1.0.5
Graphic Settings: Extreme Preset
Resolution: 1920x1080
Test: Specific Physics Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score


3DMark 11 is Futuremark's very latest benchmark, designed to tests all of the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. At the moment, it is lot more GPU-bound than past versions are now, but it does contain a terrific physics test which really taxes modern multi-core processors.

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage v1.1.2
Graphic Settings: Performance Preset
Resolution: 1280x1024

Test: Specific CPU Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score

3DMark Vantage is the follow-up to the highly successful 3DMark06. It uses DirectX 10 exclusively so if you are running Windows XP, you can forget about this benchmark. Along with being a very capable graphics card testing application, it also has very heavily multi-threaded CPU tests, such Physics Simulation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which makes it a good all-around gaming benchmark.

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark
Resolution: 1920x1080
Anti-Aliasing: 4X
Anisotropic Filtering: 8X
Graphic Settings: High

Comparison: Particle Performance Metric

Originally intended to demonstrate new processing effects added to Half Life 2: Episode 2 and future projects, the particle benchmark condenses what can be found throughout HL2:EP2 and combines it all into one small but deadly package. This test does not symbolize the performance scale for just Episode Two exclusively, but also for many other games and applications that utilize multi-core processing and particle effects. This benchmark might be a little old, but is still very highly-threaded and thus will keep scaling nicely as processors gain more and more threads. As you will see the benchmark does not score in FPS but rather in its own "Particle Performance Metric", which is useful for direct CPU comparisons.

X3: Terran Conflict

X3: Terran Conflict 1.2.0.0
Resolution: 1920x1080
Texture & Shader Quality: High
Antialiasing 4X
Anisotropic Mode: 8X
Glow Enabled

Game Benchmark
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

X3: Terran Conflict (X3TC) is the culmination of the X-series of space trading and combat simulator computer games from German developer Egosoft. With its vast space worlds, intricately detailed ships, and excellent effects, it remains a great test of modern CPU performance. While the X3 Reality engine is single-threaded, it provides us with an interesting look at performance in an old school game environment.

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward Benchmark

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
Resolution: 1920x1080
Texture & Shader Quality: Maximum IQ
DirectX 11
Fullscreen

Game Benchmark
Comparison: Generated Score

Square Enix released this benchmarking tool to rate how your system will perform in Heavensward, the expansion to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. This official benchmark software uses actual maps and playable characters to benchmark gaming performance and assign a score to your PC.

Grand Theft Auto V

DirectX Version: DirectX 11
Resolution: 1920x1080
FXAA: On
MSAA: X4
NVIDIA TXAA: Off
Anisotropic Filtering: X16
All advanced graphics settings off.

In GTA V, we utilize the handy in-game benchmarking tool. We do ten full runs of the benchmark and average the results of pass 3 since they are the least erratic. We do additional runs if some of the results are clearly anomalous. The Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) is ostensibly multi-threaded, but it definitely places the bulk of the CPU load on only one or two threads.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Resolution: 1920x1080
Graphical Quality: Custom
Mesh/Shadow/Texture Filtering/Vegetation Range: Ultra
Lighting/Texture Quality/Ambient Occlusion: High
Depth of Field/Order Independent Transparency/Tessellation: Enabled

With its high resolution textures and several other visual tweaks, Shadow of Mordor’s open world is also one of the most detailed around. This means it puts massive load on graphics cards and should help point towards which GPUs will excel at next generation titles. We do three full runs of the benchmark and average the results.

 

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Voltage Regulation / Power Consumption

Voltage Regulation

Despite the fact that this is a high-end desktop platform, there is only one ThreadRipper motherboards that has onboard voltage measurement points... and the ASRock X399 Professional Gaming is not it. This is regrettable since that is our preferred method of accurately measuring the various system voltages. As a result, in this abbreviated overview, we utilized the AIDA64 System Stability Test to put a very substantial load on the system while also monitoring the stability of the all-important CPU Vcore line. This was achieved with a 60 minute stress test, and in order to increase the strain on the motherboard's voltage regulation components we overclocked our 1920X to 4.00Ghz at 1.30V (in the BIOS).

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As you can see, the CPU core voltage on this motherboard is impressively stable. Aside from the occasional little spike up to 1.308V, this critical line stayed at 1.296V for the vast majority of the stress test. We did make use of the Load-Line Calibration (LLC) settings and selected Level 1 since it gave us the voltage that was closest to 1.30V under full load. While we did this using a 'mere' twelve-core 1920X, we have absolutely no reason to suspect that this motherboard's capable VRM couldn't achieve identical results with the flagship sixteen-core 1950X part.

Power Consumption

For this section, every energy saving feature was enabled in the BIOS and the Windows power plan was changed from High Performance to Balanced. For our idle test, we let the system idle for 15 minutes and measured the peak wattage through our UPM EM100 power meter. For our CPU load test, we ran Prime 95 In-place large FFTs on all available threads, measuring the peak wattage via the UPM EM100 power meter. For our overall system load test, we ran Prime 95 on all available threads while simultaneously loading the GPU with 3DMark Vantage - Test 6 Perlin Noise.

Since this is the first X399 motherboard that we have reviewed we have nothing to directly compare these numbers with. Having said that, just by looking at the top-notch VRM components we know that this motherboard is going to be pretty darn efficient no matter the workload and/or overclock. The Aquantia 10G LAN controller obviously adds a little to the total, but honestly very little if it's not actually in-use.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

When we first installed the ASRock Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming motherboard we encountered an issue that prevented us from installing Windows 10. Quite simply, the initial installation windows just never appeared upon system boot. A little internet sleuthing led us to forum posts where other users experienced a similar issue. As we discovered, the solution was simply to disable "SVM Mode", which is essentially an enable/disable option for CPU virtualization. We aren't sure why that it interrupting the installation process, but apparently it does. Thankfully, this issue has been fixed in the very latest BIOS release (V1.80).

While this rocky start gave us a little cause for concern, we are happy to report that everything else was smooooth sailing and the overall experience was as good as the specs are. Speaking of which, to recap, the X399 Pro Gaming has a beefy 11-phase CPU VRM built with the some of the best components on the market, a capable VRM cooling solution, four PCI-E x16 slots with dual-slot spacing between them and support for both 4-way CrossFire and 4-way SLI, and three full-speed M.2 x4 slots that can all be RAID'd together. The best part is that thanks to ThreadRipper's 60 PCI-E lanes, all of the PCI-E x16 slots and M.2 slots can operate at the same time and at full performance. There are no limitations like you always encounter on other platforms that are more bandwidth restricted.

High-end networking capabilities are also a key selling point of ASRock's flagship X399 motherboard. First and foremost, the high speed 10 gigabit LAN port powered is obviously tremendously enticing for those who need to move around a large amount of data. And chances are, those who need either a 12/16 core processor or 128GB of RAM or four graphics cards or three M.2 slots are working with large files. What is also cool is that Aquantia ACQ107 controller also supports 5 Gbit/s, 2.5 Gbit/s, 1Gbit/s connections speeds, so it will work with a lot of the new high-end networking gear that is starting to hit the market. Not to be overshadowed, there are also two Intel-powered gigabit LAN ports, and an onboard Intel 802.11ac Wi-Fi module plugged into a M.2 E-Key slot. While the onboard Wi-Fi is nice to have, it is a slower 433Mbps 1x1 solution. At this price point, we would expect to see a higher-end 867Mbps 2x2 solution like many competing motherboards have.

A few weeks ago we tested the Purity Sound 4 onboard audio on the ASRock X299 Taichi, and it was a fantastic performer. The X399 Pro Gaming has essentially an identical onboard audio implementation, but much to our delight it achieved even better results. The differences were minor, but it was enough for this motherboard to rank as the second best that we have ever tested. We also appreciate the fact that they have added a headphone amplifier for the front-panel audio output since that is where people are most likely to be plugging in their headset/headphones/ear buds. Speaking of which, we also loved the fact that this motherboard has two front-panel audio headers, one of which is angled. This is our first encounter with this idea and it is brilliant, since it solves an age-old issue whereby any dual-slot graphics card installed in the bottom PCI-E slot would invariably cover up any upright header and make it impossible to route audio to your case's headphone jack.

While there's no RGB LED lighting baked into the onboard audio area, there are a few under the chipset heatsink, but that's about it. We do think that some LEDs should have been added to more than one location, but at least there are two LED light strip headers for those who truly care about lightning aesthetics. As usual, both the software utility and the UEFI gave us control over the lighting, but the utility definitely had an advantage when it came to easy-of-use and access to ample lighting effects and colours.

When it came time to overclock, we were a little surprised by the fact that this model had no automatic overclocking features. However, as we elaborated upon in our overclocking results section, maybe overclocking a processor with a default TDP of 180W should require a little more forethought and effort than just clicking a button. When we attempted our manual overclock, this motherboard never flinched. We were able to push our twelve-core 1920X chip to 4.15GHz across all cores at a very respectable 1.30V. On the DDR4 front we managed to push our G.Skill Trident Z DDR4-3200 32GB memory kit up to DDR4-3600, which is as high as this motherboard is validated for. While we manually set the timings, the motherboard did a perfect job self-selecting the voltages. DDR4-3733 was definitely within reach, but we couldn't quite tweak our way there. Speaking of memory speeds, the one little niggle we had was that the "DRAM Frequency" option doesn't appear anywhere until after you enable XMP. That's a little weird for those who would rather forgo XMP and overclocking the memory entirely manually. Now despite the fact that our manual overclock caused a 63% increase in power consumption, the beefy MOSFET heatsinks had no problems dissipating the heat. So high marks there too.

Overall, ASRock's flagship Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming motherboard is pretty fantastic. While its current retail price of about $660 CAD / $440 USD is quite high, there are no affordable ThreadRippper motherboards and you have to remember that the 10GbE LAN capability is a premium feature that is very expensive to implement. If high speed networking is not a priority, the ASRock X399 Taichi is otherwise identical to its big brother and costs $150 CAD / $100 USD less. It's certainly worth a look.