Topic: Hardware
As you we'll know AMD's Ryzen processor has been dominating the news as of late, sending Shock waves within realm of technology. This is probably bigger than the very first inception of the iPhone. Well, maybe I'm being a bit overly exaggerated in my assessment on what's going, but I think you get the point. Adding to all the hyped excitement, AMD themselves just recently overclocked the Ryzen 7 1800X, crushing a new world record in Cinebench, even more impressive, the processor was able to crack the 5GHz barrier, courteous of some tweaks of course.
The highly anticipated Ryzen processor have already boasted some pretty impressive numbers courtesy of the leaks blasted online of course, but here's the deal. This AMD Ryzen processor needs to be placed on some motherboards. Good news, ASUS have a slew of motherboards prime and ready to support Ryzen, from the top shelf X370 chipset or the low-end B350 chipset.
Lets kick things off, on the top of the motherboard chain we have the ROG Crosshair IV Hero, I must say one of my favorite motherboards. Like most super highend motherboards, the ROG Crosshair IV will support both CrossFireX and SLI, this means it will handle multiple GPU's from different platforms, AMD or NVIDIA to be exact, other features included are DDR4 memory that will go up to 3200MHz via four slots, it will use the ASUS SupremeFX S1220 audio subsystem for sound output. The motherboard will come laced with Aura Sync RGB LED lighting with two additional Aura strip headers, Intel's own GbE, and USB 3.1 Type-C connectivity. On this particular motherboard there is no dedicated graphics chip, so you will have to add a graphic card, a GeForce GTX 1080Ti graphic card would make a nice addition, or how about throwing in AMD's upcoming Vega Based graphics cards.
Moving down the chain I present you with the ASUS Prime X370-Pro, I would say this motherboard is regarded as a 2nd Tier option that's based on the X370 chipset. Like its brethren the ROG Crosshair VI Hero, this motherboard also have multiple GPU options, with DDR5-2666 memory support, but it minuses the SupremeFX audio. It also lacks USB 3.1 Type-C support, and you won't get the fancy Aura lighting either. Good news, this motherboard does support onboard graphics. This means you can setup your system without the need of a dedicated graphics card, but I strongly recommend that you still purchase one if you want to enjoy gaming and other high def video content.
Then we have the ASUS Prime B350M-Plus, this particular motherboard I would consider it to be the budget option because its lacking some features that's present on the other motherboards I've featured in this post. CrossFireX is present on the B350M, but gone is SLi support. Also missing is Intel GbE for sound output, instead it gets the heavily implemented standard base Realtek solution, like seriously what motherboard don't have this sound chip. Its SATA III ports diminished down from 8 to 6, and if you're thinking about running SLi and CrossFire for dual-GPU support, you won't, it will only support CrossFire alone.
Let me throw a little bit of information at those who may not be in tuned to what's really going on here. Motherboards the run AMD processors have an embedded AM4 chipset, Intel on the other hand uses the latest 200 series chipset made for the current KabyLake processor line.