Reviews Asus ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming Review

Gorgeous board.

 

Nice enough board, horrible slot layout. Pretty good specs for the price, for a TRX40 board. To be honest, I'd take one of the old-style Gigabyte a-rainbow-vomited-on-the-PCB colourschemes if it ticked every box I had regarding slot positioning, VRMs etc.

Looks like the GPU will need to come out to do almost anything (even pull RAM) but to be honest that is pretty much standard now with how tightly packed things are.

That vertical M.2 slot, though. I can't decide whether that is a brilliant idea or a terrible one.

 

I'd say the Dimm.2 thingamajig they have on some of the more expensive boards is the far superior solution to provide accessible M.2 slots.

 

As with a lot of other "modern" MB's the bottom tabs of the RAM slot are fixed in place (quite like ITX boards). you *should* be able to access the RAM without removing the GPU.

The vertical M.2 slot is an interesting one. In theory it frees up PCB space but the implementation (with included bracket) can often look ugly as sin.

I much prefer the Dimm.2 approach from Asus.

 

I disagree - in several of the images provided in the review you can clearly see the retaining clip for one of the RAM slots open and blocking the PCI-E slot. eg:

Spoiler

Look at the RAM slot closest to the I/O back panel.

Hence my comment regarding it.

Really? Urgh.

The only problem I have with the DIMM2 thing is that it is still quite a bit of board "real estate"... and only Asus use it. And only on some boards.

I'd almost rather have all the M.2 drives on the back of the board, like mini-ITX systems.

 

Urgh, that is super dumb.

As an aside, I was so confused when I got my mITX board and there was only one moving tab per slot. I didn't notice anything when I installed the RAM but I was utterly baffled the first time I went to remove it

Edit: fwiw, I've just read the review of this board in this month's CPC and they mentioned the RAM slots being fouled by the PCIE slot. Both this review and CPC's were by the same person, so I can only imagine the lack of mention of the positioning of the RAM slots here is due to space restrictions (irony?), especially given the screenshot above looks like it was put in specifically to highlight this very point!

 

You are right! I looked at the first picture which shows the Dimm slots on the right have the fixed slots at the bottom and assumed they would all be the same. I assume they had to flip them on the left hand side due to the VRM heatsink assembly.

Only issue with M.2 slots on the rear of boards is cooling, especially if hitting a gen 4 drive hard.

 

Yes, when I saw that I asked myself if it was some sort of optical illusion because I didn't think they'd be that dumb. But indeed, it's likely because of the VRM heatsink array that caused that flip.

True about cooling for the M.2 drives if on the back. The only system I have with that setup is a little mini-ITX one. Because it's in a Raijintek Metis (first gen one without the roof cutout) the only exits for heat are the perforated side panel ("underneath" the mobo) and the PSU/GPU vents. As a result, my M.2 drive gets quite a bit of airflow over it... although it's basically by accident.