AMD Gigabyte X399 Designare EX Motherboard (AMD Ryzen Thread Ripper TR4/ATX /3x M.2/WIFI/Front & Rear USB 3.1/Dual Intel LAN)

I didn't buy this board from Amazon, but bought from a local vendor. Here is some piece of warning to all of you who are planning to buy x399 boards.Some of the CPU sockets made by FOXCONN (used in Designare Ex and few other vendors) have defective screws that is used to tighten the processor lid. I guess the problem is with the length of the screw, but not sure. You may find it extremely difficult to tighten the screw with CPU in place. For me, the screw#1 just did not thread at all. Take out the CPU and screws are perfect. I wasn't sure of how much pressure I should put on it without damaging processor pins on the board.I finally took the board to a GIGABYTE service hub. They had a video call with their colleagues and finally pushed the socket lid down really hard to tighten it.Otherwise board is good, well loaded with features. I am giving only three star for the board because of all the sweat I had to wipe out from my forehead while installing processor, and associated confusion and inconvenience.Here is one of few links where this issue has been discussed.https://community.amd.com/thread/219286

I initially held off reviewing this motherboard because I was unable to get the on-board RAID working with 2 x Samsung 970 PRO 512GB NVMe PCIe M.2 SSDs. It took a BIOS update and a lot of fiddling to get it working but now it's rock solid and blazing fast.I have no real significant complaints about this board but have docked it two stars for the following:- Very weak Bluetooth antenna: With regards to the Bluetooth, I have been unable to successfully pair my iPhone XS Max unless it's literally at the back of the case right beside the IO shield making it completely useless. I have also tried and was unsuccessful at pairing a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.- No 10Gbps Ethernet. This is clearly a workstation board for designers, video editors, programmers, etc. Basically people who generally will be working with large files across the network. The lack of 10Gbps Ethernet is significant and while you can add a 10G PCIe card, that's adding additional expense to an already expensive motherboard.Despite those two issues, I am very happy with this motherboard and would recommend if those issues do not matter to you.UPDATE (20190622): I do not use WiFi for this computer so I had not attached the included WiFi antenna. However, after fighting with getting the Bluetooth working it occurred to me that maybe the onboard WiFi was interfering. I attached the included antenna and then positioned it as far from the computer as possible and now the Bluetooth works great with both my iPhone and Tautronics Headphones. Incidentally, it's Bluetooth 4.2.

Love the motherboard, had it for a month and so far no issues

Disclaimer: My use case is a home server for VMs.I wish they would have designed a board without wasting so many PCIe lanes on m.2 slots. Adapters are cheap and easy to use so the 2 m.2 slots in positions 2 and 6 are wasted. Having actual PCIe 4x slots instead would have been much more practical. (And yes I tried m.2 to PCIe 4x adapters, electrically the work well but physically they interfere with the PCIe slot above them, not sure if this is bad design on the motherboard for putting the m.2 slot too close to the slot above it or bad design on the adapter for not moving the PCIe slow further down - either option has physical space to do so yet no manufacturers have done so).VM Notes:IOUMMU is supported; however, all devices from the x399 chipset (all USB ports, SATA, LAN, and the PCIe 2.0 slot) are all in one IOMMU group - so no pass through. All PCIe lanes from the CPU are in their own groups.ECC is supported (EUDIMM, tested with 16GB CT16G4WFD824A)Has a nice feature for selecting which PCIe slot is the default GPU (useful when passing GPUs through to VMs so you don't have to get clever with which slot is for the host).

Admittedly I was a bit skeptical at first when getting this board. It looks absolutely stellar on paper - but the paper is what marketing teams at these companies do so well at. It's the implementation that really needs to hold up for these boards to shine the way their adverts do. And I can say confidently that now the x399 Designare EX does.As EVGA says, a board is only as good as it's BIOS. And that is slightly ironic coming from them, in that the latest BIOS I had for my x99 FTW K was full of problems that led me to upgrade to this purchase. The reviews for this aren't very good and I think that's mostly down to the growing pains that any board goes through in it's early days, with the BIOS being ironed out. I can say confidently that out of the box, this board did everything it was supposed to and hasn't given me a single problem. And I ran the board out of the box with the F11 bios (am on F12e now). So it's clear to me that while this board has historically had issues, I believe they were mostly based around an immature BIOS that has been fixed up now.I am running this board with a Threadripper 1900x, 16GB of Corsair RGB Vengeance Pro RAM, a Gigabyte RX 580 8GB, a Thunderbolt Titan Ridge card and a Samsung 970 EVO M.2 drive. Of note is that I am able to run my RAM at the rated speed of 3200Mhz without any issues, using the XMP Profile #1. What's awesome about this architecture is that components like M.2 drives take PCIe lanes directly from the CPU, giving you spectacular data rates. I believe there is a total of 68 PCIe lanes available.Now, Titan Ridge: I have been building systems around thunderbolt for years now, and it is a default necessity for me. It was somewhat on a lark that I tried the Titan Ridge controller on this AMD platform after reading that some users had done it - and to my amazement it works out of the box, plugged into any lane, and the spec is fully implemented (ie hotplug and power delivery work). Note that there are no BIOS configuration options, and that authorization defaults to User Level (SL1). Gigabyte had plans for thunderbolt with this board, but for unknown reasons took mention of it out of their adverts. The GPIO still remains though, and with the card plugged into it, it is fully functional. Yes!So, with overclocking made easy with Ryzen Master in Win 10, RAM that is fully compliant with XMP profiles and runs at it's rated speed, well over 2133 (a default handicap on most x99 boards), ultra-fast connectivity with M.2 peripherals, full Thunderbolt compatibility, a wealth of PCIe lanes, and all of the other features this board comes with (RGB, temperature headers etc), it's a no-brainer. Also, this board has more of a professional polish and isn't soaked in RGB crap that would stoke the teenage masses. It has a look reminiscent of their workstation boards while still retaining some of the features that we find some guilty pleasure in some of the time : )For $299 I believe this is a steal. This board can really only be rivaled by the top-top shelf of any other manufacturer, and because the BIOS is now seeing maturity and past it's growing pains that stop many users dead in their tracks, I think it's a winner. And the best part is that upgradeability is massive here: the Ryzen Threadripper architecture is a juggernaut and I believe is here to stay, making this beast more future-proof than really any of the 2011-3 or 2066 series.Although the Threadipper chips are pricy, I'd still heartily reccomend just slamming down the cash and picking one up with this board. Flash the bios to the latest, first thing, and you should be rolling.

While I do not necessary like how the M.2. slots are positioned between the PCI-ex slots, the design actually works well. The led lights on the board are rather amusing since the are under my graphics cards. Stupid fast drive speeds. Board is rock solid after update. BIOS is a hot mess of settings and you have to search for the settings you need but the XMP worked perfectly after a BIOS update. Used Corsair CMK16GX4M2B3000C15 RAM at 3000 MHz and 16 core gen 2 Threadripper. I generally do not overclock until the board is starting to show its age. There are several reasons for this first and foremost is after several years there is a lot more information available from users and better BIOS firmware.Several other things,Disconnect any other drives besides the one you are installing your OS on. I didn't and my boot partition was placed on a second drive even though it was already partitioned. Had to start over since I am too lazy to manually move my partition using 3rd party software. This is a rookie mistake with Windows 10. I am not a rookie, just an idiot.Had some issues with the M.2. drive (Samsung 970 Pro NVMe) showing up in boot selection. Still doesn't show up but I found it under the M.2. settings in the BIOS. Weird. Still boots fine.Update the BIOS to the latest version. It is at Version 1.0 out of the box. All you need to do is put it on a thumb drive then reboot and press Delete when prompted. See your manual or google for details. Actually kinda hard to mess it up. If you are using displayport cables for your monitors and getting boot problems or blue screen it may be a problem with cheap cables.Make sure you have a powerful, stable power supply. Over 800 watts depending on your graphics card, processor combo. As of right now AMD's flagship threadripper processor coupled with a 2080 Nvidia graphics card will be using over 400 Watts. This does not take into account any other hardware. I am running a 1000 Watt EVGA and two 1080 Ti. Which for me is cutting it rather close. Fingers crossed.Check out u/-Sickbird's review here on Amazon. Good stuff in there. Especially his DOA board. Typically what he described would be a factory issue and it is doubtful he would be the only lucky soul to have the problem.