Gigabyte’s latest motherboard for Threadripper brings the bling in a big way. The company’s new X399 Designare EX is part of a series designed to combine aesthetics with performance, which in this case entails a whole lot of armor.
Unlike Gigabyte’s Z270X Designare, which pairs silver armor with a sort of off-white PCB, the X399 Designare EX plops a heaping pile of silver onto a more traditional blackish slab. It’s actually the same PCB as found on Gigabyte’s X399 Aorus Gaming 7, it’s only other socket TR4 motherboard for Threadripper, but with a slightly different feature-set and much different look.
This is a standard ATX motherboard with what Gigabyte claims is a server-class digital power design.
“Gigabyte X399 motherboards use an all digital CPU power design from International Rectifier which includes both 4th Generation digital PWM controllers and industry-leading 3rd generation PowIRstage controllers. These 100 percent digital controllers offer incredible precision in delivering power to the motherboard’s most power-hungry and energy-sensitive components, allowing enthusiasts to get the absolute maximum performance from their new AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPUs,” Gigabyte says.
It also features server-level chokes and draws power from gold plated ATX 24-pin and ATX 12V 8-pin and 4-pin connectors.
If you have the cash and need for an ultra high-end setup, you can fill this motherboard with up to 128GB of DDR4-3600+ (OC) quad-channel memory, up to eight SATA 6Gbps drives, and three M.2 drives. It also has five reinforced PCIe x16 slots.
Wireless connectivity consists of onboard dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2. On the wired side, there are two GbE LAN ports.
The rear I/O offers up access to a whole bunch of USB ports, including eight USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports, a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port, and USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A port. Additional USB connectivity is available through internal headers.
There is no word yet on when this motherboard be available or for how much.