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ASUS Prime X299 Edition 30

Black Haru

Black Haru

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The ASUS Prime X299 Edition 30 is a celebration of 30 years of design innovation by one of the world's most prominent hardware manufacturers. Featuring active VRM cooling, 16 Vcore power stages, an OLED display, and a new Smart Control Console, can this flagship stand up to 30 years of high expectations?

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Hmm...

There's some weirdness with the 'stage' count.

In the writing and VRM close up you speak of 16 stages or 8 phases, but the Asus spec at the front talks about the CPU having 18 stages(I refuse to endorse their chosen 'phrasing').

Also I would really appreciate it being pointed out right away, not the free pass until the vcore section.

Beyond that...

It's a great review, disappointing that the external module needs two micro-usb to connect. That VRM sink looks capable and covered in nice fins, but they killed the performance with that covering... Form killing function right there.

Oh, could it be possible to measure temps from the backside of the PCB under the VRM?

Nice review despite my VRM snobbery... LoL
 
Buying products such as this only encourages stupid pricing across all segments in the coming not so distant future.


Avoid.
 
The "thank you" card is ASUS thanking you for being enough of a sucker to pay $750 for this overpriced tat.
 
too bad for all intents and purposes it's basically impossible to find the 10980xe and its neighboring SKUs
 
Ouch. It looks like a really nice board but it sucks to be buying x299 these days. I mean, what is the point of making anything new for x299 in the last 2 years?

x299 is a complete failure if assessed as a product launched today. It had reasonable success against 1st-gen Threadripper but as of 2018 the entire platform - CPUs and all - were muscled out of the market by better architecture from both AMD and Intel themselves:
  • Up to 18 cores vs AMD's 64 cores? Obsolete platform.
  • Skylake-X IPC vs Coffee Lake refresh IPC? Obsolete platform.
  • Spec-ex vulnerabilities vs Intel's half-patched or AMD's mostly-immune? Obsolete platform.
  • 44 Gen3 lanes vs 88 Gen4 lanes? Obsolete platform.
  • Up to 24.75MB cache vs up to 256MB cache? Obsolete platform.
  • AVX-512 limited to 2.8GHz so x299 isn't even the AVX king anymore. Obsolete platform.
Why didn't Asus celebrate 30 years by using a z490? At least that's a 2020 product for a 2020 processor that has a reason to exist, even if it's a desperate last gasp for Intel's 14nm
 
Last edited:
Chrispy_ said:
Ouch. It looks like a really nice board but it sucks to be buying x299 these days. I mean, what is the point of making anything new for x299 in the last 2 years?

x299 is a complete failure if assessed as a product launched today. It had reasonable success against 1st-gen Threadripper but as of 2018 the entire platform - CPUs and all - were muscled out of the market by better architecture from both AMD and Intel themselves:
  • Up to 18 cores vs AMD's 64 cores? Obsolete platform.
  • Skylake-X IPC vs Coffee Lake refresh IPC? Obsolete platform.
  • Spec-ex vulnerabilities vs Intel's half-patched or AMD's mostly-immune? Obsolete platform.
  • 44 Gen3 lanes vs 88 Gen4 lanes? Obsolete platform.
  • Up to 24.75MB cache vs up to 256MB cache? Obsolete platform.
  • AVX-512 limited to 2.8GHz so x299 isn't even the AVX king anymore. Obsolete platform.
Why didn't Asus celebrate 30 years by using a z490? At least that's a 2020 product for a 2020 processor that has a reason to exist, even if it's a desperate last gasp for Intel's 14nm
Click to expand...
That a $4k CPU you're comparing with a $1k... and though I disagree with some assertions, it's a no brainer for most. But that said, so few need this platform and more than 18c/36t... this blurring of the lines between HEDT and Xeon as they did with Mainstream to HEDT, makes choosing difficult.

I mean, does AMD offer Zen 2 at 18c/36t for $1K?? You can go 3950x mainstream for 16c/32t for $200 less, however. But you lose quad channel RAM and the PCIe lane count advantage shrinks dramatically (though pcie 4.0 can be a selling point for some).

There is no doubt it is a bit dated, but still offers a lot of performance for the dollar. If you need more, there is AMD, or Xeon as well.
 
I have ASUS ROG Strix X299-E Gaming and I'm currently moving across to X570 platform. Next-gen game consoles have NVMe 4.0 based storage.

Chrispy_ said:
Ouch. It looks like a really nice board but it sucks to be buying x299 these days. I mean, what is the point of making anything new for x299 in the last 2 years?

x299 is a complete failure if assessed as a product launched today. It had reasonable success against 1st-gen Threadripper but as of 2018 the entire platform - CPUs and all - were muscled out of the market by better architecture from both AMD and Intel themselves:
  • Up to 18 cores vs AMD's 64 cores? Obsolete platform.
  • Skylake-X IPC vs Coffee Lake refresh IPC? Obsolete platform.
  • Spec-ex vulnerabilities vs Intel's half-patched or AMD's mostly-immune? Obsolete platform.
  • 44 Gen3 lanes vs 88 Gen4 lanes? Obsolete platform.
  • Up to 24.75MB cache vs up to 256MB cache? Obsolete platform.
  • AVX-512 limited to 2.8GHz so x299 isn't even the AVX king anymore. Obsolete platform.
Why didn't Asus celebrate 30 years by using a z490? At least that's a 2020 product for a 2020 processor that has a reason to exist, even if it's a desperate last gasp for Intel's 14nm
Click to expand...
FYI, Core i9-10990XE for X299 has 22 cores, but next-gen games consoles have PCI-e 4.0 NVMe storage solution and future Nvidia GPUs have PEG 4.0. X299 is DOA.
 
XL-R8R said:
Buying products such as this only encourages stupid pricing across all segments in the coming not so distant future.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the sucker market is large. You can tell that when complete garbage like 860 QVO still sells like hotcakes when its barely cheaper than the far superior MX500.
 
I have this board, running an i9-10940X 14 Core. It is amazing.

One feature you missed in storage that they kept with the X299 chipset is VROC. With the Intel SSD Only hardware key and the right NVMe drives, you can build RAIDs via the PCIe channels from the onboard M.2 slots. Even better, grab an ASUS Hyper m.2 card like I did, and bifurcate one of you PCIe 16x to 4 NVMe. So I am running a hardware 2TB RAID 10 on 4 1TB NVMe, tapped directly to the CPU. Runs like a dream.
 
budokaZ3R0 said:
I have this board, running an i9-10940X 14 Core. It is amazing.

One feature you missed in storage that they kept with the X299 chipset is VROC. With the Intel SSD Only hardware key and the right NVMe drives, you can build RAIDs via the PCIe channels from the onboard M.2 slots. Even better, grab an ASUS Hyper m.2 card like I did, and bifurcate one of you PCIe 16x to 4 NVMe. So I am running a hardware 2TB RAID 10 on 4 1TB NVMe, tapped directly to the CPU. Runs like a dream.
Click to expand...
Do you still have to pay for that key/ability?
 
EarthDog said:
Do you still have to pay for that key/ability?
Click to expand...
Intel VROC dongle is not free.

Out of the box, if you have Intel M.2 drives, an Asus Hyper M.2, and a Skylake-X, you can build a RAID 0 partition. But if you want to enable RAID 1, RAID 5, or other RAID schemes with redundancy to protect your data, you have to buy this Intel VROC key to enable it.

Use Intel RST instead of Intel VROC for RAID 0 and other RAID configs.
 
EarthDog said:
That a $4k CPU you're comparing with a $1k... and though I disagree with some assertions, it's a no brainer for most. But that said, so few need this platform and more than 18c/36t... this blurring of the lines between HEDT and Xeon as they did with Mainstream to HEDT, makes choosing difficult.
Click to expand...

Uh, I didn't make any CPU comparisons, I made platform comparisons. X299 is a dead end with underwhelming upper limits on what CPUs you can plug into it. At 18C/36T for the i9, the closest competitor from AMD is probably still the 3950X since it has higher clocks, more PCIe bandwidth, more lanes, more cache, a better architecture for all except AVX-512, and vulnerability patches barely touch its performance, compared to Skylake-X which is now really really struggling to get anywhere near its original performance after 2 years of mitigations in software.

If you're not happy with that comparison, the 3960X is at price parity with the i9 and just wees all over it in every possible way.
 
rvalencia said:
Use Intel RST instead of Intel VROC for RAID 0 and other RAID configs.
Click to expand...
Don't you lose performance without VROC on R0?

Chrispy_ said:
Uh, I didn't make any CPU comparisons, I made platform comparisons. X299 is a dead end with underwhelming upper limits on what CPUs you can plug into it. At 18C/36T for the i9, the closest competitor from AMD is probably still the 3950X since it has higher clocks, more PCIe bandwidth, more lanes, more cache, a better architecture for all except AVX-512, and vulnerability patches barely touch its performance, compared to Skylake-X which is now really really struggling to get anywhere near its original performance after 2 years of mitigations in software.

If you're not happy with that comparison, the 3960X is at price parity with the i9 and just wees all over it in every possible way.
Click to expand...
I get it...and agree with the overall sentiment...just saying some of that is hardly relevant as I addressed in that post. ;)

The 3960x costs 50% more (and has more cores and threads). A more proper comparison is what I said earlier and you posted above, a 3950x... and I said things about that too.......
 
EarthDog said:
Do you still have to pay for that key/ability?
Click to expand...

You do; between that, the very limited list of drives that support it, and patchy support, I feel like Intel really missed the boat on what otherwise is very promising tech. Especially since they've been including it in a lot of consumer boards. The last Z390 I built had the VROC option, and my X299.

That being said, the VROCISSDMOD key costs about the same as a drive, and if you do get it set up and working, it's really nice.
 
EarthDog said:
The 3960x costs 50% more (and has more cores and threads). A more proper comparison is what I said earlier and you posted above, a 3950x... and I said things about that too.......
Click to expand...

They're at parity here in Europe. €1400 ballpark including tax.

I know Intel pulled a marketing stunt and halved the price of the 10980XE to compete with Threadripper but it's a paper launch publicity stunt. Nothing is in stock across ~30 retailers at the MSRP, most of them are awaiting stock and I found preorders available at a couple for $1450.

Meanwhile, we've been buying threadripper 3rd gen for work in decent quantities at the price expected, with quick lead times.
 
Then again, don't even need more than 2.8ghz to make AMD look like a joke in the AVX side of things ;)
1586963885005.png
 
Chrispy_ said:
They're at parity here in Europe. €1400 ballpark including tax.

I know Intel pulled a marketing stunt and halved the price of the 10980XE to compete with Threadripper but it's a paper launch publicity stunt. Nothing is in stock across ~30 retailers at the MSRP, most of them are awaiting stock and I found preorders available at a couple for $1450.

Meanwhile, we've been buying threadripper 3rd gen for work in decent quantities at the price expected, with quick lead times.
Click to expand...
I went by MSRP ($400/40%) difference and pricing in the states. ;)

Marketing stunt? Or just lowered the prices to what the market supports (thank you, AMD!). So much vitriol for Intel, lulz...

It is a paper launch... but we've already said that and who cares. Stop moving the goal posts, just to chuck darts at Intel, straw man! :p

I'm on a list for it around $30 over MSRP. Outside of the paper launch, this is normal to see increased price on pre-orders and OOS items.

Can we move on......or is there something else? lol
 
rvalencia said:
Useless AVX-512 benchmark when next-gen game consoles are based on AVX 2.
Click to expand...
Who cares about game consoles? Since when was the new playstation relevant to HPC computing? I guess you'd better go back to that console of yours and stick to that, they're entirely irrelevant to the discussion.
 
Xx Tek Tip xX said:
Who cares about game consoles? Since when was the new playstation relevant to HPC computing? I guess you'd better go back to that console of yours and stick to that, they're entirely irrelevant to the discussion.
Click to expand...
Your post is irrelevant. You should stick to consoles when you actually bought them. LOL. Hypocrite.
 
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