Motherboards - Page 16

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.

MSI will be soon announcing and releasing its new X570 Creation motherboard, something that has been teased on an EEC listing.

The new MSI X570 Creation motherboard will be the enthusiast-ready from the company that will work with AMD's new Ryzen 3000 series CPUs. The upcoming MSI motherboard had an early engineering sample of an upcoming Zen 2 processor codenamed "2DS104BBM4GH2_38/34_N" as an ES1 (engineering sample) processor with 4C/8T with a 65W TDP and 3.4/3.8GHz CPU clock speeds.

We're looking at a new Ryzen 3 processor by the looks of things, as a 4C/8T chip on the 7nm node under the new Zen 2 architecture. We will see AMD release a slew of new Ryzen 3000 series processors:

AMD will be revealing its next-gen Zen 2 architecture in the coming months, which will bring big improvements in clock speeds, IPC performance, power efficiency, and much more. In this blend of announcements we will also see the new X570 chipset released, which will deliver PCIe 4.0 for the first time ever.

We've already seen some leaks of upcoming ASUS motherboards, but now it's time for a gander at the GIGABYTE range of X570 motherboards which will be led by the flagship X570 AORUS Extreme motherboard. There's also some X499 motherboards which will work with the Threadripper 3000 series processors, which will be using the Zen 2 architecture on 7nm with up to 32C/64T.

The full list of GIGABYTE X570 motherboards:

If you've got a PC with an ASUS motherboard and ASUS Live Update installed, you might want to read into this story. Security firm Kaspersky has reported that hackers have been able to get backdoor access in up to millions of PCs.

How? Through firmware updates through ASUS' own Live Update software. Live Update lets ASUS upload drivers, software, and firmware updates to compatible PCs. This includes pre-installed versions of Live Update on ASUS-powered laptops and desktops, and as a standalone downloads to countless ASUS motherboard owners.

VICE Motherboard published a story recently, which Kaspersky replied in a blog post detailing more of what happened with ASUS. The security firm said over 57,000 users of its anti-virus software have downloaded, and installed the compromised version of Live Update. Make note of that: this is for people using Kaspersky anti-virus software, there would be many magnitudes more that don't use their software, and thus weren't considered in these 57,000 people.

AMD will be launching its next-gen Ryzen 3000 series CPUs just before or during Computex, with the new X570 motherboards designed to support the new 7nm processors on the new Zen 2 architecture.

ASUS will be launching a new range of X570 motherboards with VideoCardz reporting that we are to expect a flagship ROG Crosshair VIII Formula motherboard. There are 12 motherboards in the X570 range so far, with AMD making the new chipset in-house versus using something made by ASMedia. Not only that, but the X570 will be the first chipset out to market with PCIe 4.0 connectivity.

We will know more about AMD's upcoming Zen 2 processors in the coming months, especially as we inch closer and closer to the launch of the X570 chipset and the exciting new PCIe 4.0 connectivity.

SuperMicro has made a surprising move that we might not feel for another 6+ months or so, but the company has announced plans of returning to the gaming and high-end motherboard business this year.

The company has found success over the last couple of decades making some of the highest quality motherboards on the market, filling some of the most important systems in the world. Governments and companies that require 24/7 stability and 100% uptime will look to SuperMicro's various products and technologies, and while over the last few years the company has dipped its toes into the consumer/gaming motherboard market, it hasn't made a huge splash.

That is all about to change as a journey that started in 2016 and has already provided some fruit from the seed with a few gaming-focused motherboards, but nothing to compete against ASUS and GIGABYTE. SuperMicro VP Vik Malyala recently talked with KitGuru during a recent visit to their Silicon Valley-based HQ, where Malyala said the company is focused on making gaming-class motherboards that will compete with ASUS Maximus and GIGABYTE AORUS gaming motherboards, with expansions being made to SuperMicro's engineering division so they can tackle the new market they're pushing into.

GIGABYTE is reportedly preparing to cull its motherboard workforce by 5-10% over lower motherboard sales, with shipments of motherboards dropping year-over-year.

The company is better preparing itself for 2019 to hit a sales target of 10 million motherboards, which is keeping its head above water compared to 2018 where it sold 11.4 million motherboards, 12.6 million in 2017, and down from the much larger 16 million shipments in 2016.

DigiTimes is reporting that GIGABYTE will lay staff off from its sales and marketing departments of its motehrboard division, but the VGA side of things will be left untouched. GIGABYTE's graphics card sales aren't being hurt that badly with 3.5 million graphics cards sold in 2018, the same as in 2016.

AMD will be launching its new Zen 2-based range of processors in the coming months, where we should expect a huge launch during Computex 2019 in June, and now ASRock is feeling a little cheeky with an early listing of their X570 motherboards listed with the EEC.

The new X570 chipset will feature PCIe 4.0 connectivity for the next wave of GPUs, 10GbE (and 100GbE) network controllers, new SSDs (that can hit 4-5GB/sec) and more. The big deal with X570 is that it will be the chipset that should launch side-by-side with the Zen 2 CPUs that AMD is making on the new 7nm node that will deliver some large performance improvements.

AMD's upcoming Zen 2 processors will launch as the Ryzen 3000 series, but we could expect ASRock to release these motherboards earlier, too.

CES 2019 - ASUS has chosen the Consumer Electronics Show as the time to launch its new ROG series motherboards, both prepared for respective HEDT processors from AMD in the new Ryzen Threadripper 2000 series and the Intel Core-X range.

The new motherboards are redesigned in a few ways including power delivery, but this is the first time ASUS has stepped up to the HEDT motherboard mantle with similar features on both of the X399 and X299 motherboards which is a great things to see. Both boards support up to 128GB of DDR4 and support 3-way SLI and CFX multi-GPU configurations and a boat load of connectivity, features, and other technologies.

Both of the new ASUS motherboards feature 10GbE network connectivity, and the usual slew of USB connectivity on the rear.

Supermicro isn't a name you typically find at the top of the extreme overclocking rankings over at HWBot, but today is different. Using a Supermicro C9Z390-PGW, user "Superm" submitted the highest LN2 9900K frequency world record, at 7.511GHz. While there is one score roughly 100MHz higher, that result uses Liquid Helium, which has a boiling point of -268C, which is much colder than the -196C liquid nitrogen can achieve.

The best part about this news is that the C9Z390-PGW is a six phase motherboard, without any of that twin or doubler stuff. Just six chokes (inductors) and six Infineon integrated power stages controlled by a Primarion digital PWM. If that doesn't yell quality over quantity, we don't know what does.

You can find our review of the motherboard here. The motherboard features a 6+2 phase VRM, with 6 for the CPU and 2 for the iGPU. The digital PWM controller is the Primarion PXE1610 and the power stages are Infineon TDA21232, which we figure are rated around 55A each, and then six Vitec 66A power inductors are used. While visiting Supermicro's HQ last month, I had a chance to talk with their engineers about their VRM. I was originally a bit wary of the motherboard featuring just six phases for such a power hungry S-SKU CPU, but they assured me not to worry, and when I did my review I was shocked that it handled the 9900K with ease.