ASUS ROG ZENITH II Extreme Alpha is designed for AMD’s 64-core Ryzen Threadripper 3990X

ASUS has officially revealed a new flagship TRX40 series motherboard, a quick successor to their ROG Zenith II Extreme which aims to deliver more overclocking potential with AMD’s upcoming Ryzen Threadripper 3990X processors. Meet the TRX40 ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha, the motherboard that’s designed for 64-core overclocking. 

So what’s changed? Not much, to our eye, both motherboards look identical, and as far as specifications are concerned, both motherboards are exceptionally similar. Both boards use 16-phase VRMs, offer five M.2 slots, support Wi-Fi 6 and 10 Gbps ethernet and sport a USB 3.2 Gen2x2 connection. The main differences in the original Zenith II Extreme and the Zenith Extreme II Alpha lie under the hood, with ASUS replacing the original Zenith II’s 16 Infineon TDA21472 power stages with  Infineon TDA21490 power stages.

These power stage changes and other component shifts should help the Zenith II Alpha to handle more power. Strangely, we cannot find any information on Infineon’s TDA21490 power stages on the company’s website, suggesting that these power stages are newly released models. ASUS has stated that these new power stages are rated at 90 amps, rather than the 70 amps of Infineon’s TDA21472 power stages. That gives the ROG TRX40 Zenith II Extreme Alpha a lot more headroom to work with.