AMD Unveils 16 AM4 Motherboards, X300 And X370 Chipsets, And 17 Full Systems
AMD's long path to bringing its hotly anticipated Ryzen chips to market accelerated at CES 2017 as the company revealed a full suite of sixteen AM4 motherboards from multiple partners. The company also debuted 17 systems from various integrators and a few compatible cooling solutions, which indicate the Ryzen chips are finally poised to launch in Q1 2017.
AMD already filled us in on the B350, A320, and Z/B/A300 chipsets that will power the mainstream, essential, and small form factor motherboards with the AM4 socket, but it brought the new X370 and X300 chipsets into the light at the show.
The X370 serves as the flagship chipset for enthusiasts, with overclocking and multi-GPU support, along with a generous helping of I/O connectivity; the X300 slots in for mini-ITX form factor. The new chipsets feature dual-channel DDR4 memory, NVMe, M.2 SATA SSDs, USB 3.1 Gen 1 and 2, and PCIe 3.0. We don't have the lane allocations or other hard technical data yet, but we have a series of meetings in the coming days where we hope to flesh out the details.
The MSI motherboards include the A320M Pro-VD, X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium, the B350 Tomahawk, and the B350M mortar.
The ASrock motherboards include the X370 Taichi, AB350 Gaming K4, X370 Gaming K4, and the A320M Pro4.
Biostar launched its X370GT7, X350GT5, and X350GT3.
Gigabyte debuted its GA-AX370-Gaming K5, GA-AX370-Gaming 5, AB350Gaming 3, and Gigabyte A320M-HD3.
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ASUS also announced its B350M-C, but we await pictures and further details.
AMD also had numerous systems in its suite from several vendors, including Caseking, CSL-Computer, CyberPower PC, Cybertron PC, Icoda (Korea), Ibuypower, iPason Wuhan, Komplett , LDLC, Maingear, Mayn Wuhan, Medion AG, Mindfactory, Oldi (Russia), Origin PC, Overclockers UK, and PC Specialist. It's notable that many of the systems are from boutique vendors, but we expect more announcements soon from larger industry players.
Finally, AMD also brought out a cadre of supported cooling solutions to round out the supporting hardware. The Corsair Hydro H110i, H60, and H100i cover the water-cooled bases, whereas the Noctua NH-L9x65, NH-U12S, and D15 offer more traditional air cooling alternatives.
We expect much more information on the new chipsets and motherboards as we visit with AMD and the other motherboard vendors at the show, so more info will come forward in the coming days.
Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.
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JimmiG Not a huge fan of all the unnecessary heatsinks and decorations which are only there for looks and don't actually enhance the performance or reliability. Still it's nice to see AMD feeling confident in aiming for the enthusiast or "gamer" market, where performance and the number of blue LEDs are crucial.Reply -
synphul The boards look like an improvement from the older am3+. It's nice to see they're catching up with all the latest features, pcie 3, usb 3.1 etc. It's also nice to see so many with decent vrm heat sinks, they look like they're taking cues from intel's motherboards. Not to mention the pch vs the previous north/south bridges. That should help divert some of the heat away from the socket.Reply
At first glance they look like intel's boards aside from the zif socket instead of the lga. Not all but a fair chunk of previous am3/3+ boards were somewhat cheap and outdated in terms of design and features.
Maybe this combined with the lower tdp of ryzen will circumvent the previous issues especially notable when overclocking of pairing the cpu with a cheap low end board and suffering overheated vrm's. The vrm sinks do actually serve a purpose, especially when overclocking and if moving away from top down air cooling or worse, water cooling leaving the vrm with little to no local cooling (outside of cryorig's a40 type coolers with included fan on the block). -
chicofehr will there be a 390 or 370 the highest model? They must be copying intels naming scheme again.Reply -
CarbonK You know, I don't think I've ever seen a Cyan/Black color scheme before. Unique, but still cool looking.Reply -
Rogue Leader 19108711 said:Not a huge fan of all the unnecessary heatsinks and decorations which are only there for looks and don't actually enhance the performance or reliability. Still it's nice to see AMD feeling confident in aiming for the enthusiast or "gamer" market, where performance and the number of blue LEDs are crucial.
Looking at the boards the only heatsinks they have are on the VRMs, and those are hardly only for looks. If the previous AM3+ generation has taught us anything its that VRM cooling is extremely important both for stock chips that are high clock, as well as any serious overclocking.