I am aware of the fact that the first one is a B350 board, while the other three are X370 boards, but it seems to be decent enough. I'm not fixed on these boards and I'm open to suggestions as well. Also, aside from the sounchip, is there a difference between the ASrock Killer and the ASrock Fatality (X370)?
Another thing I'm curious about is how important CPU really are in terms of overclocking and longetivity, any experience there?
As a finaly question: Is there any company you'd avoid? (I know there are some who don't think to highly of MSI and my experience with them has also been mixed.)
Well, personally I've never noticed much difference in performance when it comes to mainboards and as for Ryzen, there are benchmarks out there. Aside from that, I won't preorder it, but I do want to get it asap since my old mainboard is broken since Decembre....
It's hard to make a recommendation on hardware that hasn't been released yet. Just hold on to your pants and there will likely be a huge recommendations thread when everything comes out.
That said, both of those boards are probably going to be fine.
Personally, I'm waiting on the ITX boards. I want to build a small rig. Do something different...
I first thought the ASRock AB350 Pro4 would be perfect but I need a third PCIe slot that is at least 4x. I went with the Asus Prime X370 Pro because it isn't crazy expensive and seems relatively understated. I never use onboard sound, it has all the connectivity I want, Intel NIC and hopefully an off switch for the RGB shit. RGB is the worst. Ever. ... Fuck you, RGB!
@SgtAwesomesauce Well, afaik most of the time mainboards are pretty similar. Why do you dislike RGB boards? I've never had one, nor gave it much thought^^
@noenken Another point for the Asus board is that it has a reinforced PCIe slot. I definitely need one of those.
Well the hype and being on a 8350 (so it will be an upgrade no matter) AMD broke my normal senses. Preordered a asus Chrosshair, also minimal rgb crap. Building dual loops and it just fits perfect for that.
I have not yet preordered it, but I don't exaclty see a reason why not to.
First, there are a Ryzen benchmarks out there and real life performance will probably bee around those. Also, I kind of want to support the competition, since a monopoly is always a bad thing.
Second, I'm living in the EU, which means I'm able to get a full refund up to three weeks after getting a device I've purchased. This means I can return the CPU and get my money back, if it's performance is crap.
Edit 1: Ok, one reason could be that the price may be dropping a little after it's release.
To be honest, got my Phanteks enthoo primo se red/black 6 months ago twin 360 rads 4 months ago 32 Gb Trident Z 2800 kit 2 months ago 2 Alphacool Light towers spread over this time. And last month a 512 Gb Plextor Nvme drive. Ohh and got a EVGA 850P2 for my birthday last month. So this build was gonna happen anyway's. And seeing the benches my 8350 wil be annihilated. And indeed those pesky EU rules can be nice at time's, as i'm Dutch.
I was looking into B350 and saw the article claiming crossfire compatibility. After looking into this, I found no reference of CF in the manuals, AND I saw the second PCIe16x(4x) slot on the mentioned motherboards gets deactivated completely when installing an NVMe.
Maybe ComputerBase has documents/info from manufacturers that mux the X16 slot to x8/x8 to the second X16 slot, when a second GPU is installed?
Some weird choices at ASRock... mATX looks good, but then you find they didn't put USB3.1(Gen2) on the rear IO??? WTH!!!
So, as far as we know (right now) a sensible choice would be anything but an ASUS board, although I'm pretty sure ASUS will fix this issue(s) sooner rather than later. Is any manufacturer actually known of making durable products? MSI claims it uses military grade components, but I believe that is more marketing than anything else.
Well, so far the best results in both mem speed and OC has been on Asrock Taichi... Then we have Gigabyte Auros etc etc...
I rather not have issues to await fixing in the first place... Also, keep in mind Corsair also have issues with Ryzen, so... Gskill and Kingston have been said to work fine on high speeds. Still want to know about Crucial Ballistics, but I'll keep them at 2666 anyways...
Asus is good at fixing issues. According to Jay, they're taking back his bricked board to diagnose and issue a fix. It's just disappointing that they need to fix them in the first place. :/
What's the benefit of an external clock generator? I'm not following the motherboard issues too closely.