MSI TRX40 Pro WiFi Review

Overclocking

Plumbing in our usual settings of 4.35GHz and 1.325V vcore sadly saw our system freeze under load, which was mildly concerning, but thankfully heading to the EFI and applying a modest amount of loadline calibration solved the problem and the system passed our stress test as well as a full run of benchmarks without a hitch.

Performance Analysis 

At 509 points in Cinebench's single-threaded test, performance here isn't amazing given its sibling managed 518, but this didn't seem to manifest itself in other benchmark scores. The multi-threaded score sat in the middle of the pack and the Blender time was on par, too. The only somewhat slower-than-average result was Time Spy, but only by a fraction compared to the rest of the field. Once overclocked, it sat more level with the competition, with the Cinebench score rising to 14,479.

The audio performance was excellent, though, with results of -115dBA and 115dBA noise and dynamic range sitting at or near the top of the graphs. M.2 speeds were again on par with no mild slowdowns like we saw on the Gigabyte boards. Power consumption was a mixed bag, though, with the lowest load power draw of any board on test, but stock-speed idle draw that was the highest. Still, the latter was only 6W more than the Gigabyte TRX40 Master, so isn't a deal-breaker.

Conclusion

If you just want a solid motherboard to handle the likes of the Ryzen Threadripper 3960X, which is ultimately our favourite Zen 2 HEDT CPU, then the TRX40 Pro WiFi is an excellent choice. It has the cooling ability to have to two of its M.2 ports hammered with data courtesy of its expansion card, keeps itself cool and quiet under load, and offers a minimal fuss solution to owning a TRX40 motherboard at a reasonable price compared to others. Most of the similarly-priced competition have fewer, less well-cooled M.2 ports, so if you have several PCIe 4.0 SSDs you need a home for and want to plough your cash into your storage and CPU budget, MSI's effort here is a slightly plain but highly-compelling option.