Recommend me an AM4 board

[TemjinGold]

Surprised I haven't seen such a thread. Excited to get my hands on Ryzen but not sure on what the best board for me is. Looked at Asus Prime B350M-A but multiple places say ram tops at 2600 (I have some 3200 ram waiting). Amazon seems to say it goes to 3200 but the other sites (i.e. Newegg and others) are making me uneasy (my brother built a Skylake with a Z270 Asus Prime last month and his system won't work with the ram set at anything other than 2133 and yes his exact ram is on their QVL).

So here is what I'm looking for:

1) No OC handicaps. I want to really play with this thing.

2) Don't need more than 1 PCI-E X16 slot. I have never and will never use more than 1 GPU.

3) I'd like my 3200 ram to work as such.

4) Must be mATX. The case I have waiting does not do ATX.

5) Have a Soundblaster Z, so the onboard audio quality is not important.

6) Prefer an Intel NIC but not necessarily a dealbreaker.

7) Would love 2 M2 slots but doesn't seem like any of these boards have that.

Willing to spend for quality but don't want to just throw money away at something that won't be of use.

Thanks!

 

[Elixer]

Problem is, since there are no AM4 boards out yet, nobody knows which one is better.
We have to wait for people to actually start using them, then, we will start to know which one is better.

 

[TemjinGold]

Fair enough.

 

[.vodka]

So far it looks like the ASUS Crosshair VI won't handicap overclocking (reports of it being 4GHz stable on 8 cores on the lower binned R7 1700, that VRM sure can handle lots of power -8+4pin-) and supports DDR4 3200 out of the box. Has intel LAN, and lots of extra stuff that could or could not be of use.

Still, the thing looks to be built like a tank. Motherboard itself at 6:50

We should wait for reviews on all the boards and especially on overclocking on the X chips, but I'd be all over a board that has the build/component quality of this and doesn't have as much bling/extra stuff that I know I wouldn't use. Sadly I don't think there will be a board that's no nonsense...

 

[Rifter]

So far the asus crosshair looks to be the best for 4Ghz+ OC's.

But as others have said we really need to wait for actual reviews.

 

[TemjinGold]

Too bad these aren't mATX...

 

[Rifter]

Too bad these aren't mATX...

Yeah both the mATX and ITX crowd look like they are going to have to wait a bit for quality boards to surface. Just like im going to need to wait for a board with good power phases but not many bells and whistles, id rather not buy the riced out asus board. I just need a good solid OC'ing board without all the crap. I found one for X58 when i built this rig im looking for a equivalent board to my P6X58D-E for AM4. Hopefully someone makes one.

 

[Valantar]

Yeah both the mATX and ITX crowd look like they are going to have to wait a bit for quality boards to surface. Just like im going to need to wait for a board with good power phases but not many bells and whistles, id rather not buy the riced out asus board. I just need a good solid OC'ing board without all the crap. I found one for X58 when i built this rig im looking for a equivalent board to my P6X58D-E for AM4. Hopefully someone makes one.

AMD said "more than 82 motherboards at launch." The current list of what we've seen is <35. Have some patience. We're still nearly a week out from launch, not to mention reviews. No-one can recommend anything without a) having tried anything, b) knowing what's available, and c) having read of others' experiences.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Keep your eyes open for X300 boards. I am thinking X370 won't make it onto mATX/ITX. I could be wrong though.

 

[tamz_msc]

^There is one from Biostar though. But I agree - X300 would be better since it won't have to demux some of the PCIe 3.0 lanes to older PCIe 2.0, so the boards should be a lot simpler. Just hoping that simpler!=missing features.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Huh. Biostar tryin to be the new Abit eh? Hey if they want X370 in smaller form factors then bring it on. It just seems like AMD is specifically targeting that market with X300, and that we'll see more in the weeks to come.

I still remember my Abit nf-m2 nview. That was a hell of a board. It pushed my x2-3600+ to 3.2 GHz, support HTT speeds well in excess of 300 MHz . . . it was great. It was such a good option for my needs that I chose it on its merits rather than any particular need for an mATX board.

 

[lukart]

So far it looks like the ASUS Crosshair VI won't handicap overclocking (reports of it being 4GHz stable on 8 cores on the lower binned R7 1700, that VRM sure can handle lots of power -8+4pin-) and supports DDR4 3200 out of the box. Has intel LAN, and lots of extra stuff that could or could not be of use.

Still, the thing looks to be built like a tank. Motherboard itself at 6:50

We should wait for reviews on all the boards and especially on overclocking on the X chips, but I'd be all over a board that has the build/component quality of this and doesn't have as much bling/extra stuff that I know I wouldn't use. Sadly I don't think there will be a board that's no nonsense...

According to Gibbo, Overclock.uk shop, he says the Crosshair VI and Taichi are the ones to go if you want to go over 4Ghz stable, I think its due to the fact these have higher power phases compared to other models...

 

[Valantar]

Keep your eyes open for X300 boards. I am thinking X370 won't make it onto mATX/ITX. I could be wrong though.

The X300 places serious limitations on I/O. It would be nigh unacceptable on mATX - there's no reason at all for an mATX board to have less features than a full ATX one. Less SATA, and not dual m.2? Sure. But no chipset USB? Only CPU-based PCIe? No way. Not happening. Of course, they could add controllers to make up for it, but what would be the point of that? It's not like the X370 chipset is so huge it can't fit on anything smaller than ATX.

For ITX, the X300 makes more sense. But the fact that AMD had yet to present it properly, and the fact that they're using the vague term "SFF" makes me wonder. Might it be for NUC-like form factors? Laptops?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Could be X300 is ITX/mobile only. We'll see. I don't think it's *that* bad but then my I/O demands are not that great.

 

[Elixer]

The X300 places serious limitations on I/O. It would be nigh unacceptable on mATX - there's no reason at all for an mATX board to have less features than a full ATX one. Less SATA, and not dual m.2? Sure. But no chipset USB? Only CPU-based PCIe? No way. Not happening. Of course, they could add controllers to make up for it, but what would be the point of that? It's not like the X370 chipset is so huge it can't fit on anything smaller than ATX.

For ITX, the X300 makes more sense. But the fact that AMD had yet to present it properly, and the fact that they're using the vague term "SFF" makes me wonder. Might it be for NUC-like form factors? Laptops?

Nobody said they can't make a ITX mobo with X370 chipset, and instead of having dual x8 PCIe gen 3 channels, to instead make them 1 x8 gen 3 for GPU, and then have 2 M.2 x4 gen 3 slots, in addition to the SATA ports and all the rest.
It does take time to design these things, and if they don't think that demand is there, they won't make them.

 

[imported_jjj]

Nobody said they can't make a ITX mobo with X370 chipset, and instead of having dual x8 PCIe gen 3 channels, to instead make them 1 x8 gen 3 for GPU, and then have 2 M.2 x4 gen 3 slots, in addition to the SATA ports and all the rest.
It does take time to design these things, and if they don't think that demand is there, they won't make them.

Actually the x300 gives you more PCIe lanes than the X370 (should be 28 vs 24) so mobo makers can do w/e they want with them.

 

[Elixer]

Actually the x300 gives you more PCIe lanes than the X370 (should be 28 vs 24) so mobo makers can do w/e they want with them.

What does that have to do with what I said? You are still limited by the number of PCIe lanes that Ryzen has available, as I mentioned above, so you have to split them up somehow...