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Stuck on getting 16 core threadripper motherboard...

Reviews high 2 of 5/Low 2 of 5
Newegg reviews X399s

ASRock Taichi ---- reviews 20- 80/20% -rating 4
ASRock Pro Gaming--------18- 89/11% -rating 4
ASUS Prime ------------------04- 75/25% -rating 3
ASUS Zenith ------------------36- 39/53% -rating 3
Gigabyte Gaming7----------29- 51/35% -rating 3
MSI Pro Carbon--------------24- 63/16% -rating 4

Had wanted Gigabyte but looks like only a 51% chance there.
Then I thought, all the review boards sent out were
the Zenith so that must be good...worst of the lot 53% bad.

Looks like the MSI and the Asrock Pro Gaming have done
the best with enough reviews to get a decent sample.

Gigabyte is supposed to come out with a NEW higher end
board this month Oct.. Think I'll wait for that one to come out
and get enough reviews and cross my fingers!

Expensive motherboards that are very picky about the
very expensive 64 (4/16s) Gigs of ram that you have to get "right".
That really makes me nervous!

The return limits on $500-$700 of high speed ram is scary
if there are "ram" problems as is so common.
And the bios updates seem to have really slowed down lately.

Will cross my fingers for the new Gigabyte Oct. motherboard.
I've always been ASUS or Gigabyte with motherboards.
Have never puchased ASRock or MSI but may not have
a better choice.

Newegg review star average is about the dumbest metric I can think of to judge a product. (sorry, brutal truth only here) Did you at least filter to verified owners only? Sure, read some reviews to get an overall feel for potential gotchas or flaws, but other than that they are basically useless noise.

Go asrock for bang/$, the tachi and pro are literally identical save the 10Gbe port and color scheme. (same pcb, they even said as much) FWIW, if you actually need fast networking go with optical 10/40 cards off ebay and save $$$ because copper 10Gb networks are a triple-fail: dead end old tech, cost more to build and use more power.

I have seen the pro at the same ~350 after rebates/promos during a few recent sales though, no reason to skip it then.

Newegg reviews, like Amazon reviews, are generally only useful if there are hundreds of reviews. I'm still amazed people take the time to put up a "review" that's basically "I bought the wrong thing" or completely attributed to user error.

Hold on out on Threadripper myself because all the boards have issues. Theres a handful of youtube videos outline these issues. Asus and Asrock had socket issues because the brackets are not closing properly. MSI boards have memory slot issues, meaning only certain slot work. Needed a BIOs update to get them all to work. etc.

I'm waiting for newer boards as well or at least a revision to the 1st generation.

The other thing to do with NewEgg reviews is look at the worst ones and actually read what they are complaining about. More often than not it's stuff that has little to do with the product (things like problems with shipping or bought the wrong thing or got a DOA part and now they have to RMA or "it doesn't overclock as much as some dood on some forum said it should"...)

I would discount those type of negative reviews and only consider reviews that talk about actual flaws in the product itself. Even then, consider whether they are describing an actual flaw or a user misunderstanding.

Newegg motherboard reviews are, to put it politely, a very poor source of objective information on the quality of a product.

I have both the ROG Zenith Extreme and Gigabyte X399 Aorus Gaming 7 here and I've used both in the course of my Threadripper testing. They are both excellent. The Asus is very expensive, but the pack-ins (a 10GbE card, for one) might make it worth it. The Aorus Gaming 7 is less expensive and doesn't need an E-ATX case. There is a wireless driver conflict on the Gaming 7 that has to be worked around on Windows installation, but it's not a big deal (disable wireless card in firmware, install Windows, update driver, reactivate wireless card.) I've used the Aorus in the majority of my testing (even with DDR4-3600 RAM) and it hasn't given me a bit of trouble. I'd heartily recommend it.

K-L-Waster wrote:

The other thing to do with NewEgg reviews is look at the worst ones and actually read what they are complaining about. More often than not it's stuff that has little to do with the product (things like problems with shipping or bought the wrong thing or got a DOA part and now they have to RMA or "it doesn't overclock as much as some dood on some forum said it should"...)

I would discount those type of negative reviews and only consider reviews that talk about actual flaws in the product itself. Even then, consider whether they are describing an actual flaw or a user misunderstanding.

When I'm looking through reviews for potential problems I tend to go for the 2-3 star bucket, as those usually have something interesting to say. If many of them over a period of time cover the same issue(s) then there might be a problem.

I thank everyone for their thoughts.

I do read through the product reviews.
And filter them in various ways.

On the ones I've checked on Amazon,
the high rated products are high on both Newegg and Amazon.
The low rated ones are low on both sites.
If there is enough smoke there is fire.

If the Zenith or Gigabyte motherboards had the MSI rating
I would have bought one of them.

I will continue to wait for the products to mature.
And sure hope the upcoming Oct. Gigabyte 399 motherboard is mature!

Thanks again.