Motherboards - Page 16

Intel has caught a lot of heat for the tactic of refresh after refresh of virtually similar CPUs. Just to making minuscule changes such as TIM to solder change and minor clock speed bumps as demonstrated by the initial X299 CPUs 7XXX to 9XXX series parts. Users have scoffed at the 14nm+++++++++++++++++++ as many have put it due to Intel struggling for years with the 10nm node.

Well, today, Intel's complacency and practices may have come along to bite them in the ass thoroughly. As seen on Intel's own support article page the inclusion of the new microcode for support of the new Cascade Lake-X parts will remove compatibility for the dual channel X299 based bretheren, the Kaby Lake-X.

Kaby Lake-X has moved to EOL awhile back, but it's worth putting out a PSA about this as many users have them in hand. If users are judicious about their BIOS updates, they could be met with a machine that no longer posts if they were to flash this firmware without knowing.

The internet has been ablaze with the recent update from AMD in regards to both the 3950X and the upcoming third-gen Threadripper, or Threadripper 3000. We know that the top end AM4 CPU consisting of 16 cores and 32 threads, along with the HEDT platform of Ryzen 3000 Threadripper reaching an unknown, but potentially 64 cores on a single package will see the official light of day coming in November which is a mere month away.

The eagle-eyed among enthusiasts such as the team from Videocardz noticed an update from MSI on their promotional review program page. It has been recently updated to list a new model in the register for eligible products for the promotion, the Creator TRX40.

One takeaway from this listing is that the "Creation" moniker which was applied to Z390, X570, X399, and X299 seems to be going away. It looks like the "Creation" label will be pitched aside as the new Creator X299 and TRX40 show that they may be trying to clear up the marketing and targeting message to ensure users understand these boards are made for content creators.

Intel's recent announcement of Cascade Lake-X processors and the coming massive price drop, you can bet there will be a much higher HEDT demand this time around. With the 18 core unit dropping from $2000 to sub $1000, you can bet that the X299 platform just became far more obtainable for a large part of the enthusiasts market.

GIGABYTE has released the newest in their X299 lineup, labeled the X299X series. Don't let the name fool you; all of the same parts are still in place with the chipset backbone being X299. Beyond that, GIGABYTE worked to improve connectivity and capability of their X299 based parts in the new X299X offerings.

All of the X299X offerings feature the same 70A power stages for power delivery to ensure you can push all of the new Cascade Lake-X CPU's to the limit of your cooling. These boards also enhance the memory capability and support in lockstep with the new CPU's supporting up to 256GB DDR4.

MSI has created some amazing boards over the past few chipset generations. Like most board manufacturers, MSI has also ramped up the RGB game in the process to ensure relevance with enthusiasts users and industry demands.

Until now, one of the few board models to go sans RGB has been the 'Dark Series' by EVGA. MSI noticed the desire by many enthusiasts to build custom rigs based on powerful overclocking friendly boards without the need or want for RGB.

Enter the MSI MEG X570 Unify which comes out of the gate sporting some powerful specs such as 2.5G wired LAN and 802.11 AX for equally speedy wireless networking. On top of this, MSI also employs a 14 phase power design (real or doubled phases is unknown at this time). For the most part, the MEG X570 Unify model board seems to closely parallel the popular MSI MEG X570 ACE motherboard.

We know it's coming -- but GIGABYTE, did you have to fire off the flares like this? Intel's next-gen Comet Lake (and still on 14nm) CPUs are on their way, and with it will come new 400-series motherboards.

GIGABYTE is preparing 8 new Z490 series motherboards, 10 different B460 motherboards, and 6 different H410 boards. We are to expect a bunch of them in full-sized ATX as well as right down to the micro-ATX offerings -- all supporting the first non-HEDT 10-core processors from Intel in the form of the new Comet Lake family of CPUs.

The new information is coming from GIGABYTE submitting its range of Z400-series motherboards to the Eurasian Economic Commission registration process.

ASRock has one of the highest-end motherboards its ever made about to launch, with its new X570 Aqua motherboard powered by AMD's new X570 chipset and ready for the Ryzen 3000 series CPUs.

The new ASRock X570 Aqua is "completely water cooled" apart from its DIMM slots, PCIe slots and a few other places on the board exposed. The company says the custom water block it has made is "skillfully designed to ensure the heat of the CPU, VRM, and chipset can be dissipated efficiently".

We have PCIe 4.0 connectivity courtesy of the X570 chipset, as well as a 14-phase power design that should allow for some great overclocking on the CPU. ASRock also includes 10GbE network connectivity, Wi-Fi 6, and Thunderbolt 3.

Biostar has just announced its new Racing X570GT motherboard, with the mATX board supporting both AMD's second- and third-gen Ryzen CPUs.

It has 4 x DDR4 DIMMs that will support up to 128GB of RAM, 1 x iron-reinforced PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, 1 x M.2-2280 slot for an SSD over PCIe 4.0 x4, 2 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots for add-in cards, and 4 x SATA connectors.

There's an active cooling fan keeping the X570 chipset cool, while for connectivity we have 1 x GbE, 4 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports, 2 x USB 2.0 ports, a single PS/2 port, HDMI and D-sub video out, and 7.1 audio connectors (thanks to the Realtek ALC887 codec). Biostar also includes an RGB 12V LED header and Digital 5V LED header that can take control of your RGB LED goodness.

ASUS is reportedly preparing two new motherboards based on AMD's unannounced and so far unofficial X590 chipset.

The new rumor is from VideoCardz and their exclusive sources, which said the "PRIME X590-PRO and ROG STRIX X590-E are being mentioned in confidential documents that we have seen".

We don't know what to expect with the new X590 chipset, with previous rumors pegging it to have more PCIe 4.0 lanes than the current X570 boards. Another thing to remember is that AMD is soon launching its Ryzen 9 3950X, a beasty 16C/32T chip that would launch perfectly with the new X590 chipset.

ASUS has just unleashed some big fighting words against its motherboard competitors in GIGABYTE and MSI over the newly-released X570 range of motherboards. VideoCardz has the scoop with some very controversial marketing slides for the new X570 boards, and how ASUS dominates.

ASUS claims that both GIGABYTE and MSI have failed with their new boards in comparison to the superior products ASUS has across the board, and then AMD reportedly reached out to ASUS and "suggested" the slides be removed. Well, it seems both tech-focused companies forget how the internet works and that anything on the internet, is there forever.

Just like these slides.

ASRock has just unleashed its next generation X570 based motherboards that are ready for AMD's new Ryzen 3000 series CPUs and the unleashing of a totally next generation PCIe 4.0 connectivity.

We have new X570 motherboards from ASRock in their famous Taichi and Phantom Gaming families, with some boards rolling out with a huge full-coverage aluminum heat sink that keeps those next-gen PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs cool. Considering PCIe 4.0-capable NVMe SSDs can do up to 5GB/sec, you're going to need to keep those things cool.

It wouldn't be a new ASRock motherboard without some awesome RGB effects, so ASRock has included a bunch of RGBs and 3-pin addressable RGB headers joined by traditional 4-pin RGB LED headers that let you plug up other RGB lighting to your ASRock X570 motherboard.

AMD is about to usher in the PCIe 4.0 era with its new X570 chipset (and the purported even higher X590 chipset) alongside its next-gen Zen 2 CPU architecture and Navi-powered Radeon RX 5700/RX 5700 XT graphics cards, and now we're hearing about PCIe 6.0.

Yes, PCIe 6.0 - the successor to PCIe 5.0 which we should see Intel adopt in late-2020 and more 2021 and beyond, will roll out with an incredible amount of bandwidth. PCI-SIC, the group behind the PCIe standard said that PCIe 6.0 will have up to 64GT/s of bandwidth providing a PCIe 6.0 x16 slot up to an incredible 256GB/sec of bandwidth.

This is double PCIe 5.0 x16 with 128GB, and 4x the speed of PCIe 4.0 x16 which will provide 64GB/sec. PCIe 6.0 is a gigantic upgrade on our current-gen PCIe 3.0 x16 slot with just 32GB/sec of bandwidth in comparison, to the upcoming 256GB/sec on PCIe 6.0 x16. We most likely won't see consumer graphics cards taking advantage of this, but storage eats up a lot of those PCIe lands and future networking technology and AI accelerators will definitely chew it up.

There have been some new leaks on the next-gen X570 line up of motherboards from ASUS by Vietnamese site NguyenCongPC.vn which has some early reviews up on the ASUS TUF X570-Plus Wi-Fi and ASUS Pro WX X570-ACE motherboards.

ASUS will position its TUF Gaming and PRIME motherboards underneath the ROG Strix branding, whille ROG sits on top of the pyramid for the enthusiasts and AAA gamers... something we've learned from the early reviews.

Starting with the ASUS ROG X570-Plus Wi-Fi we have a nearly-packaged board with a slick design thanks to its black and yellow theme throughout. It's not too much, but it is enough. We have a single PCIe 4.0 x16 slot while the other PCIe 4.0 slot is just x4 electrically, something found out in the review. Another note is that the VRMs on the board are "designed for a 12+2 circuitry but are actually being controlled by the ASP1106GGQW in a 4+2 configuration with 4 real phases, you'll find this controller on many B class motherboards".

AMD is at least 12-18 months ahead of Intel when it comes to having PCIe 4.0 connectivity on its new X570 chipset, but now we're hearing the first rumbles of the higher-end X590 chipset and it sounds like a monster.

DRAM Calculator for Ryzen creator '1usmus' shared the teaser of an upcoming ASUS ROG motherboard that teases "X590 Coming Soon". The tweet was removed, but we now know of the existence of the X590 chipset which has us excited, especially when we consider what it will bring to the table above the already great X570 chipset.

There are a few things that the purported X590 chipset could bring -- such as more PCIe 4.0 lanes, and higher-end motherboards that support even higher CPU clock speeds by default. This makes sense as we are looking at a world with the Ryzen 9 3950X (16C/32T) with huge clock speeds out of the box.

Computex 2019 - ASUS is another company that hyper-focuses on Computex 2019 and for good reason: their roots are in Taiwan, and they also have a bunch of products that ALWAYS impress. So let's start with what ASUS had to show off new in the world of ROG at Computex this year.

This is the ROG Swift XG438Q, a mammoth 43-inch 4K HDR screen with 120Hz refresh rate and AMD's FreeSync 2 HDR technology.

This is known as a Large Size Gaming Display or I guess, LSGD compared to the Big Format Gaming Displays (BFGDs) from NVIDIA that ASUS will be launching later this month... I'm really hoping to get one of each.

AMD's next-generation X570-series motherbaords will be debuting in the coming months with PCIe 4.0 technology, but current-gen boards are also seeing support for the new PCIe standard with GIGABYTE X470 and B450 boards receiving BIOS updates enabling support when paired with a new Ryzen 3000 series processor.

GIGABYTE's new BIOS updates for X470 and B450 motherboards include PCIe 4.0 support, with a post on Reddit by 'mVran' showing the F40 BIOS for the AORUS Gaming 7 Wi-Fi X470 has Gen 1/2/3/4 support. Then we have leaker Momomo_Us tweeting out that the F40 BIOS also adds PCIe 4.0 support to the B450I AORUS PRO Wi-Fi motherboard.

You will only get PCIe 4.0 support when you pair the PCIe 4.0-capable motherboard with a new Zen 2-based Ryzen 3000 series CPU. The first PCIe 3.0 slot on supported motherboards will operate at PCIe 4.0 speeds over the CPU PCIe lanes while the rest of the PCIe slots would still flow through the PCH as normal, but this will vary board to board so you will need to be careful.

We've reported from the current rumors just recently that AMD's next-gen Ryzen 3000 series CPUs will work on current-gen 300/400-series motherboards, but now motherboard maker BIOSTAR has confirmed this.

BIOSTAR has released a list of motherboards that will support AMD's new Zen 2-based Ryzen 3000 series CPUs, which will include all chipsets from the A320, B350, B450, X370, and X470-based motherboards BIOSTAR has on the market. BIOSTAR will have 5 motherboards that will work with Ryzen 3000 series CPUs on the lower-end A320 chipset, which confirms that the A320 chipset will indeed work with Zen 2-based CPUs.

Here's the list of motherboards BIOSTAR has announced with Ryzen 3000 series support:

It was only last October that Bloomberg ran a story claiming that super-tiny spy chips were being planted on Super Micro motherboards and that China had access to it all, including the servers these motherboards went into, and sometimes into the heights of Apple and Amazon server farms.

The problem is that there has been zero evidence of this found by independent investigators and now Super Micro is suffering through sales of certain US customers that have ties with the US government, and is now moving their production out of China to ensure these clients that nothing nefarious is going on. The company is now building its own production facilities, so that they won't need to worry about people questioning their security in future products.

China was and still is a huge player in the server-grade component production market, with the country making close to 90% of the nearly 14 million server motherboards made in China in 2017. All those servers and they're built in China, and Super Micro is accused of putting spy chips on their motherboards without proof and no one is batting an eyelid at the majority of server motherboards being made in China. Kay.

ASRock has made its new super-small but monster-packed ASRock Rack MITX EPC621D4I-2M motherboard that packs the Intel LGA 3647 socket that is capable of taking an Intel Xeon Scalable CPU.

The new ASRock Rack MITX EPC621D4I-2M board uses the C621 chipset and is the smallest C621-based motherboard on the market, the smallest board capable of taking the latest Skylake-SP and Cascade Lake-SP processors in the Intel Xeon Scalable family of CPUs. The board can handle up to 128GB of DDR4 memory at up to 2666MHz while the new ASRock Rack MITX EPC621D4I-2M motherboard packs:

The board can handle most CPUs apart from the high-end Xeon W-3175X because the ASRock Rack MITX EPC621D4I-2M supports CPUs at up to 205W, so the rest of the CPUs including other 28C/56T chips will be fine. While the Xeon W-3175X will work in the board, you'll hit that 205W TDP pretty quickly and see the CPU clocks drop quickly. I wouldn't bother.

If you didn't already know, AMD turned 50 years old on May 1 and outed its new Ryzen 7 2700X 50th Anniversary Edition and Radeon VII 50th Anniversary Edition products, while AIB partner SAPPHIRE revealed its slick yellow-themed Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ 50th Anniversary Edition, and GIGABYTE even stepped into the celebrations with its new X470 AORUS Gaming 7 Wi-Fi-50 motherboard.

GIGABYTE's new X470 AORUS Gaming 7 Wi-Fi-50 motherboard has a specially designed box with the AORUS logo embossed in a beautiful gold to celebrate AMD turning 50. The board is a special edition kit with custom overlay that sits under the 24-pin ATX power connector, which has 'AORUS x AMD 50th Anniversary" markings in the RGB LED array.

There's no difference with the actrual board and the non-50 version, so I don't see the point - especially with X570 around the corner. But again, it'll be an awesome collectors item one day. Buy it and keep it in the box.

It looks like ASRock will have a big Computex 2019 ahead of it in a few weeks time, with the company teasing its next-gen products on its official Facebook page.

The quick video gives us a very brief glimpse at an upcoming series motherboard in its Phantom Gaming range of boards, which will most likely be a new X570-based board that will be compatible with AMD's next-gen Ryzen 3000 series CPUs. AMD is poised to unveil a wide range of new products in Taipei next month at Computex 2019, something that will include the next-gen Zen 2 architecture and Ryzen 3000 series CPUs, the new X570 chipset to accomodate the new Zen 2 processors, and its next-gen Navi GPU.