AMD shows AM4 motherboards and Ryzen systems
AMD, together with its partners, presented the ecosystem for its next generation Ryzen processors in Las Vegas. In addition to sixteen motherboards from five manufacturers, AMD also showed seventeen systems built around the CPUs from the Zen architecture.
The motherboards from Asrock, Asus, Biostar, Gigabyte and MSI that were shown are built around the new AM4 socket and new ‘chipsets’: the X370, A320 and B350. With the Ryzen processors, the chipset is largely integrated into the processors and no real chipset needs to be placed on the motherboard. The former chipset is intended for high-end motherboards with normal atx dimensions, while the B350 chipset is intended for mainstream systems. The A320 is more for budget systems and than the X300 chipset is for compact itx motherboards. With Ryzen, AMD makes the switch to DDR4 memory and the processors with integrated chipsets have support for nvme SSDs in m.2 slots. In addition, the onboard chipsets offer USB 3.1 gen 2 connectivity, a function for which Intel still needs third-party controllers with its Series 200 chipsets.
The processor chipsets, like other chipsets, use PCI lanes for interfaces to USB, SATA and M.2 connectors. The video card interface uses PCIe 3.0 lanes. Asrock has released four motherboards with the X370 Taichi, X370 Gaming K4, AB350 Gaming K4 and A320M Pro4. Asus has only released one board, the B350M-C, so far and Biostar announced three boards, the X370GT7, X350GT5 and X350GT3. Gigabyte is introducing four boards featuring the GA-AX370-Gaming K5, GA-AX370-Gaming 5, AB350-Gaming 3 and A320M-HD3, and MSI showed off the A320M Pro-VD, X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium, B350 Tomahawk and B350M Mortar.
In addition to the motherboards, AMD also showed some coolers for the AM4 socket, which included Noctua and EKWB. In addition, several system builders have announced PCs based on Ryzen processors, with AMD indicating that the ecosystem around the Ryzen processors is ready for an introduction. However, when those processors based on the new Zen architecture will actually be introduced has not yet been officially confirmed, but that will probably be in the first quarter of this year.