ASRock Rack TRX40D8-2N2T Offers Server Grade Hardware
But is it as good as the ASRock TRX40 Taichi?
Need to upgrade the server? Well ASRock may have what you are looking for.
The ASRock Rack TRX40D8-2N2T ATX motherboard is a board designed for server use and high uptime work loads. Featuring server grade VRM and networking interfaces this is a board for the data center rather than the office, but you could easily have this as the backbone of a media creation rig. The ASRock Rack TRX40D8-2N2T supports socket sTRX40 CPUs of which 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPUs are compatible, including the 3990X. But if you are hoping to upgrade your motherboard for an older Gen 1 or 2 Threadripper setup then look elsewhere as they are not electrically compatible despite being physically identical.
On the motherboard we have space for up to 256GB of quad-channel ECC DDR4 memory at 3200MHz. Storage is provided by two M-key PCIe 4.0 slots and six SATA 6 Gbps ports and can be configured for RAID 0/1/10. There are four PCI-Express 4.0 x 16 slots and a single PCI-Express 4.0 x8 slot.
Basic display output for the data center is provided via a single D-Sub 15 pin VGA port. Connectivity comes in the form of two USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports, a single USB 3.1 Gen 2 type A port and USB 3.1 Gen 2 USB C port. There is no onboard audio from the ASRock Rack TRX40D8-2N2T, in fact the port selection on this board is a little sparse.
As we mentioned before, this is a server-grade board and as such it comes with four ethernet interfaces, two 10Gbe via an Intel X710-AT2 controller, and another two 2.5GbE via Intel I225-LM controllers.
The ASRock Rack TRX40D8-2N2T is another TRX40 board from ASRock and considering that their TRX40 Taichi is the Tom’s Hardware editor’s choice we expect great things from the ASRock Rack TRX40D8-2N2T when it is released. At the time of writing there were no details on price or release date.
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Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".