ASUS Opens Pre-Orders On AM4 Motherboard SKUs Ahead Of AMD’s Ryzen CPU Launch

With some of the details finally coming out from AMD over its latest and most anticipated CPU launch since Athlon 64, its partners are already offering up pre-orders on the new AM4 socket and motherboard platform to go with the Ryzen launch. One such partner is ASUS.

After some four years, AMD is replacing its AM3 series sockets and updating its core architecture to take advantage of all the latest advancements in interconnects and I/O, finally bringing them up to parity with Intel’s boards. AM4 is as much an overhaul to the motherboard as Ryzen is an overhaul to AMD’s CPUs.

ASUS has already started to list some of its motherboards with three different series denoted by chipset, including the budget A320, mainstream B350, and the enthusiast series X370. We’re talking native support (no expansion or third-party chips) for x16 PCIe 3.0 lanes, 10Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 2, DDR4 memory, quad-lane M.2 sockets for NVMe SSDs, and lots of SATA ports with RAID configuration.

The flagship ROG Crosshair VI Hero is probably what a number of our readers will be ogling at, along with the Prime X370-Pro. These are the two main enthusiast boards where most of the cool tech is in action. RGB headers, multi-GPU, lots of fan control, and look at those prices!

One of the big fears was whether or not the motherboards would inflate the price of the system build when the CPUs were marked quite cheap (when compared to Intel’s). It’s safe to say that the prices here are not too shocking. For the most part, they are on-par with ASUS’s Intel boards. The Prime board is near enough the same price as the Z270-A version (the Intel board also includes Thunderbolt 3).

While the Crosshair VI is what we expect from a flagship board, it’s likely the Prime board that will be flying off the shelf. Save $90 for near enough the same core feature set, while still keeping the ability to overclock.

However, one thing should be considered is that these are all launch prices. We expect high demand, so there is a good chance the prices will be higher shortly after launch, but then should slowly come back down again.

The Crosshair VI board is targeted at modders with dual RGB headers and AURA support, 3D printed mount points for the SLI cover, 24-pin connector and name plate replacement. It also comes with some high-power fan headers for water pumps and AIO coolers, as well as tachometer sensor pins for water flow and extra temperature sensors. What’s missing is the display adapters on the rear… not that you’d likely pop an APU into this board (remember, AMD’s CPUs and APUs will now use the same socket moving forward, instead of split like AM3 and FM2).

The Prime X370-Pro is much the same as the Crosshair, but without the I/O shroud, extra audio and missing an RGB header. Both go with a black/silver color scheme, but supporting AURA lighting. One good thing as well is that both boards also make use of Intel NICs for networking, rather than Realtek, unlike the more mainstream B350 models.

As mentioned before, the back of the prime board also has Display adapters (HDMI + DP) if you decide to use an A-Series or Athlon APU with Radeon graphics.

The two mainstream B350 boards are good entry-level designs for ATX and m-ATX, even at the sub $100 price point, and it all comes down to one of the big decisions AMD decided to make with the Ryzen launch; every Ryzen CPU can be overclocked. As such, what are normally business or entry-level boards, can now overclock too.

It does make the designs of the boards a bit different from what we expect from Intel, as they’ll likely comes with more power phases, but we would still advise caution. Just because you can overclock, doesn’t mean you should. These boards might still surprise though, so we’ll see.

If we look at an entry-level Ryzen system with the ATX-based Prime B350-Plus and AMD Ryzen 1700, plus 8GB or DDR4 RAM, we’re talking $450-$500, or a total system price if you include something like an RX 480 GPU, SSD, Chassis, PSU, etc, we’re in the $850 range for a brand new 6-core 12-thread system… that can overclock.

Other motherboards may come out later at a lower price point, but the price for (expected) performance is definitely intriguing. ASUS’ two X370 boards carry with them nearly all the same features as their Intel boards, but with a similar price to boot. We think that the added advantage of any CPU can overclock, will put a lot of pressure on budget overclock motherboards.

We’ll wait and see what other board partners have to offer soon enough, from the likes of MSI and GIGABYTE.