MSI CREATOR TRX 40
A board worthy of the most powerful desktop CPUs.
“If you’re contemplating making the jump to the mega performing Threadripper platform, you’ll need a board worthy of all that grunt. ”
If you’re a professional or creator who’s decided to upgrade to the new Threadrippers, then you’ll no doubt be looking at a motherboard to suit. The MSI Creator TRX40 is a serious motherboard positively packed with features. But is this board, with its steep $1,279 asking price, worth the money? Actually it’s far from the most expensive. With many X299 and TRX40 motherboards coming in at well over $1,000, things are a bit worrying.
Looking over the Creator TRX40 reveals some interesting things, notably MSI’s almost utilitarian design approach. It’s far from the flashy bling oriented gaming boards the company is typically known for. This is a board that focuses on performance, connectivity and expandability ahead of an overwhelming laser light show. There’s a little bit of RGB above the rear I/O heatsink, but just a little bit! Note that it’s an EATX board, so not all cases will be compatible.
It’s great to see the return of genuine finned heatsinks and heatpipes that are functional as well as aesthetic. And they’re certainly needed when powering a 280w+ TDP CPU. Each of the Creator TRX40’s phases can deliver 70a, and there’s 16 of them, plus three for the SoC. That’s a lot of wattage capability. Two 8-pin power connectors provide the juice to the CPU.
The Creator is pretty much loaded with everything you’d expect from a board at this price. 10G Aquantia LAN, Wi-Fi 6 and four full length PCIe slots for multi-GPU. We’re really happy to see plenty of USB ports on the rear panel. It’s always a bit of a head scratcher to lose half of your Type-A ports once you use a keyboard and mouse, even on some of the premium boards, so it’s nice to see MSI include nine ports plus a Type-C. MSI includes an add in card that provides an additional four M.2 slots, for a total of seven! Nice!
As the first TRX40 board we’ve tested, we can’t say how it performs relative to other boards in its class, however, when partnered with a 3960X the Creator TRX40 absolutely smashes the Intel i9-10980XE. Given that motherboards usually perform within a percent or two of each other, we don’t think we’re going out on a limb to suggest that the MSI will perform similarly to other TRX40 boards.
If you’re contemplating making the jump to the mega performing Threadripper platform, you’ll need a board worthy of all that grunt. The MSI Creator may just fit the bill. It’s packed with connectivity options, it features a powerful PWM design that will be needed for the upcoming 64-core 3990X and MSI’s BIOS continues to be one of the best in the business. $1,249 is a lot of money though, and its hard to ignore the competition from MSI’s own TRX40 Pro 10G, which isn’t all that different, yet costs a good $350+ less. Of course if you’re dropping all that cash on a CPU, you may well have little trouble rationalising a splurge on a top quality motherboard like this one.
Verdict
This MSI is very good indeed, but the company’s own TRX40 Pro 10G is strong competition.