Gigabyte’s X399 Designare EX is a spiffy looking motherboard for Threadripper

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.

Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).

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