I wanted to ask if there is any user feedback for Sapphire’s AM5 mainboards and UEFI.
They are kind of a new entry to the global market (outside China) and I’m interested in buying from them.
Specifically, how is their UEFI? Is there anything wonky?
How’s the Linux experience on Sapphire’s MBs?
Here are some links to get you started; unfortunately, no Mainbaord overview with all SKUs on the website:
I would treat Sapphire like I do Biostar, for now. That is, trust them about as far as I can chuck 'em. … Wait, I can chuck those tiny motherboards pretty far… Ehm nvm
More seriously though, since Sapphire are pretty new in the motherboard arena, I expect them to take a couple of chipset iterations to get everything in order.
At the same time, if their motherboards are anything like their GPUs, Sapphire has the potential to bring some A-level stuff into the game. So while I would not risk a main build on them for now (simply for being too new), I’m definitely open to try them on something less impactful and I feel there is a lot of potential for greatness.
Probably well-reasoned caution.
Still, in China, Sapphire seems to be established. There must be some coverage by Chinese media outlets to gauge their track record (which is hard to find?).
After all, these AM5 SKUs have been selling in China for longer, afak.
I’m sure AMD have reference board designs, the chipsets are all the same and sapphire surely have board layout experience that would translate from GPUs which IMHO are probably more demanding with the high speed GDDRx memory and higher power delivery.
Hey man, Biostar is the only company doing PCI and ISA on modern boards! Be nice D:
@Yumasheta Sapphire has a record of good trace design, to the point of doing work for other companies sometimes. The first shot out? See what reviewers say. I have used boards that should not have worked, so it will be impressive if they screw it up.
In Europe, they just hit availability and are priced competitively to ASRock’s offerings.
They’re not premium, sure. But could be a nice alternative to ASRock in the lower price range, where there is not much else to be had.
From what I can find, their BIOS seems fairly well documented and pretty standard, although the options for overclocking are not written out fully in the manual.
HIt and miss depending on the model, same as all other brands. See HUB’s VRM testing on B850 boards:
Apparently the Sapphire Pulse has a 150W hard limit which can’t be removed, so some model chips will see reduced performance if used in that board. The Sapphire Pure tested fine at least… I looks like the Nitro didn’t make it into the roundup.
So I sprung for the SAPPHIRE PURE B850M WIFI.
I’ve been using it for my Fedora Linux Desktop since a couple of weeks, and I haven’t encountered any issues yet.
If you want some detailed info about IOMMU or similar, just tell me what commands to run and I’ll serve happily.
On a different note, I tried the siomon tool that Wendell is working on rn.
Seems to work, except for the obvious label issues with the MB, and the cpu tmp/voltage data might be weird or missing. (but my sapphire 9070XT shows up perfectly).
I’d like to contribute with the labels what I can for this sapphire board at least, but I’m not sure where/how to start.
I’ll try to figure it out in the next days…
