MSI has announced 10 revised AMD 300-and 400-series motherboards that come with support for AMD's Ryzen 3000-series processors right out of the box. You can tell these new boards from the original versions by their MAX suffix.
Chipset | Motherboard |
A320 | A320M-A PRO MAX |
B450 | B450M-A PRO MAX |
B450M PRO-VDH MAX | |
B450 GAMING PLUS MAX | |
B450M PRO-M2 MAX | |
B450M MORTAR MAX | |
B450 TOMAHAWK MAX | |
B450-A PRO MAX | |
X470 | X470 GAMING PRO MAX |
X470 GAMING PLUS MAX |
Earlier this month, MSI started rolling out updated firmwares for numerous AMD 300-and 400-series motherboards so they could support the recently released Ryzen 3000-series CPUs. Many of the motherboards are using 16MB BIOS chips with limited capacity. Therefore, MSI made a few compromises, such as removing the eye candy from the BIOS interface while eliminating support for RAID arrays and A-series and Athlon Bristol Ridge APUs.
The MAX motherboards reportedly feature 32MB BIOS chips, so MSI was able to restore the snazzy "Click BIOS 5" interface and RAID functionality. However, they still lack support for Bristol Ridge chips, which shouldn't be a big deal since we doubt many will be pairing a three-year-old APU with one of these modern motherboards. MSI has also promised support for any future AMD processors.
And while the original motherboards officially housed DDR4 memory modules up to 3,466 MHz, the latest MAX motherboards can support memory speeds up to 4,133 MHz. As usual, the motherboards are equipped with MSI's DDR4 Boost technology, and you can configure your memory kit to run at its advertised speed with the A-XMP function.
Unfortunately, MSI didn't list the availability for the MAX motherboards. However, the motherboard manufacturer has already listed a few of them on its website, so we expect the motherboards to hit the market very soon. It's unclear if the MAX variants will be more expensive than their non-MAX counterparts.