Asus Reveals Four New AMD AM4 Motherboards For Ryzen
Building on the the excitement of its upcoming AMD Ryzen processors, Asus announced four new AM4 motherboards designed to support the new CPUs.
The ROG Crosshair VI Hero will be Asus’s AM4 flagship. It features superior cooling over the board’s power regulation circuitry, which should help to improve overclocking results. It also has a higher-quality audio sub-system that uses Asus' SupremeFX technology to improve sound clarity.
Asus opted not to add display connections on the ROG Crosshair VI Hero. As this is a high-end board, video ports built into the motherboard would likely have gone unused, so this was a sensible choice. All of the other new AM4 motherboards Asus announced do have video ports on board, though.
The Prime X370 Pro is also targeted at enthusiasts, but it has smaller heatsinks over the VRMs and lacks a liquid-filled heatpipe. It also has slightly lower-end audio. The Prime X370 Pro does have a DisplayPort and an HDMI port, however, which make it a better option if you plan to use one of AMD’s next-gen APUs.
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Next up is the Prime B350M-Plus, which uses the B350 chipset. Its feature set is further reduced compared to the X370 boards in that it has fewer power phases, smaller heatsinks, a less powerful NIC, and a lower-end audio codec. It also loses SLI support, as the CPU’s PCI-E 3.0 lanes are locked to a single PCI-E slot.
The last board announced, the Prime B350M-A, is also the only motherboard Asus announced today in the micro-ATX form factor. Although it technically can overclock too, it lacks heatsinks over the VRMs and will likely have poor overclocking results as a result.
All of these boards are now available for pre-order. See pricing information below.
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| Asus Ryzen AM4 Motherboards | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | ROG Crosshair VI Hero | Prime X370-Pro | Prime B350-Plus | Prime B350M-A |
| Size | ATX | ATX | ATX | MicroATX |
| Chipset | X370 | X370 | B350 | B350 |
| Memory | 4 x DDR4-2666MHz+ | 4 x DDR4-2666 | 4 x DDR4-2666 | 4 x DDR4-2666 |
| Multi-GPU | CrossFireX2 x SLI | CrossFireX2 x SLI | CrossFireX | No |
| PCI-E | 2 x PCI-E x 16 3.0PCI-E x 16 2.03 x PCI-E x 1 2.0 | 2 x PCI-E x 16 3.0PCI-E x 16 2.03 x PCI-E x 1 2.0 | PCI-E x 16 3.0PCI-E x 16 2.02 x PCI-E x 1 2.0 | PCI-E x 16 3.02 x PCI-E x 1 2.0 |
| M.2 | Key M x4/SATAKey E | Key M x4/SATA | Key M x4/SATA | Key M x4/SATA |
| SATA | 8 x SATA-III | 8 x SATA-III | 6 x SATA-III | 6 x SATA-III |
| Ethernet | Intel Gigabit Ethernet | Intel Gigabit Ethernet | Realtek Gigabit Ethernet | Realtek |
| Audio | Asus SupremeFX S1220 | Realtek S1220A | Realtek 887-VD2 | 887-VD2 |
| USB 3.1 | FrontType-CType-A | Front2 x Type-A | 2 x Type-A | 2 x Type-A |
| Display Output Ports | No | DisplayPort 1.2HDMI 1.4b | HDMI 1.4bDVI-DVGA | Yes |
| Aura LED | Chipset Heatsink2 x Strip Headers | 1 x Strip Header | N/A | N/A |
| Price | $255 | $170 | $100 | $90 |
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elbert Newegg has several motherboards for pre order.Reply
https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Description=am4&Submit=ENE -
worldbfree4me Microcenter has pre orders to, http://www.microcenter.com/site/content/AMDRyzen.aspx?utm_source=eNews Special Ed 20170222&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=E4122&MccGuid=Reply -
worldbfree4me Looking forward to building a Intel 6850 killer for 50 cents on the dollar! But I need official benchmark's first!!Reply -
nitrium I'm still using a i5 760 @ 3.4GHz (4.0 Ghz Turbo) with 16GB DDR3 1600 MHz. This system seriously dates from 2010(!). I'd be more than happy to replace it with a Ryzen, but AMD has to make it compelling.Reply -
Mike Coberly I want 16 threads on a ITX board, give me that and I will throw my money at AMD. Oh, I also need 6 SATA ports, thanks.Reply -
panathas I can understand that the lower end board have PCIe 2.0 slots but on a high end board all expansion slots should be PCIe 3.0. Also the fact that almost all (from what we have seen so far) the new AMD boards seem to have only 1 M2 slot feels somewhat strange and makes this new platform not as future proof as it should or could be.Reply -
bit_user Given rumors that AM4 has a max of 24 PCIe lanes, the x16 slots must either drop to x8 (or less), or there's a PCIe switch onboard. Which is it? For $255, I'm hoping #2.Reply
How about some details I can't just get from the Newegg product listing? -
hurnii Likely reason for only 1 M2 Slot:Reply
Given 2 slots, we'd expect bootable, chipset based RAID (at least 0/1).
If the chipset doesn't have the bandwidth for 2x 4 lane PCI 3.0 NVMe M.2 SSDs, or if the BIOS/UEFI NVMe RAID boot support isn't ready, then a single M.2 slot would be preferable to the embarrassment of of releasing crippled twin M.2 slots.
After all, we're going to need a reason to buy a new motherboard next year. -
AlistairAB Hey guys, i'm using 2 x M.2 here. Usually one slot supports pcie (ULTRA M.2) and the other supports sata (M.2), when talking about the lower end Intel models (B250 chipset). I expect the Asrock B350 models to be the same. Buy Asrock if you want 2 m.2 slots, it has nothing to do with the chipset or the cpu, it is the motherboard maker's choice, however. H270 boards support 2 x ULTRA m.2.Reply
AM4 has more lanes than Intel Z270, so stop speculating incorrectly.