Gigabyte AM4 Ryzen Motherboards Using X370, B350, A320 Chipsets | CES 2017

By Published January 06, 2017 at 11:03 am
Gigabyte AM4 Ryzen Motherboards Using X370, B350, A320 Chipsets | CES 2017
Hardware

AMD’s CES 2017 meeting room was primarily stocked with untouchable demos: Ryzen populated about half the room, Vega took a small (but critical) corner, and HDR screens took the rest. Given the challenges of demonstrating HDR in any medium other than analog (read: human eyes), we’ll skip that for now and focus on some of the Ryzen information. If Vega interests you, check out our write-up on the basics.

AMD’s suite served as a home to motherboards from MSI, Gigabyte, ASRock, and Biostar. We already spent some time with the MSI motherboards, including a look at the VRM design for each of the two configurations on display, and will today be focusing on Gigabyte’s X370, B350, and A320 motherboards. The company didn’t have any X300 mini-ITX boards at AMD’s suite, unfortunately, but did have micro-ATX displayed alongside the usual ATX form factor motherboards.

One of the major pushes from AMD for Zen is its move to support small form factor motherboards, something distinctly lacking from the FX lineup. The X300 chipset is about the size of a pinky nail, demanding less physical board presence. This frees-up physical board space and potentially allows for integration with custom form factor motherboards, like for pre-built systems by SIs. All of the I/O goes through the CPU when using X300; X300 primarily exists to allow secure boot, and functions almost like TPM in this regard.

Gigabyte had two X370 motherboards present, representing the high-end, a B350 board, and an A320 board. The boards, top-down, are the X370 Gaming K5, X370 Gaming 5, AB350 Gaming 3, and A320M-HD3.

gigabyte-am4-motherboards-2

The X370 boards were both of the Aorus class, meaning they’re equipped fully with RGB LEDs, largely in the same places as in our Gaming 7 Z270 motherboard review. We don’t have hard stats on the VRM design for these boards, but from a cursory glance, it looks like the these boards are ~10 and ~7 total phase boards (see video for more on this). PCI-e wiring on the X370 platform is physically routed for 1 x16, 1 x8, and 1 x4 on the full-length slots.

The Gaming 3 is more of a mid-range-to-cheap board.

AMD made it a point to highlight the mATX boards this time around, which Gigabyte is covering with its HD3 motherboard.

Check the video above for further information, though we are limited right now.

For the total list of AM4 motherboards on display (50 in total, but ~15 at AMD’s conference room), find the below items:

ASRock AM4 Motherboards:

  • ASRock X370 Taichi
  • ASRock X370 Gaming K4
  • ASRock AB350 Gaming K4
  • ASRock A320M Pro4

ASUS AM4 Motherboards:

  • ASUS B350M-C

Biostar AM4 Motherboards:

  • Biostar X370GT7
  • Biostar X350GT5
  • Biostar X350GT3

Gigabyte AM4 Motherboards:

  • Gigabyte GA-AX370-Gaming K5
  • Gigabyte GA-AX370-Gaming 5
  • Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3
  • Gigabyte A320M-HD3

MSI AM4 Motherboards:

  • MSI A320M Pro-VD
  • MSI X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium
  • MSI B350 Tomahawk
  • MSI B350M Mortar

Editorial: Steve “Lelldorianx” Burke
Photography: Jim Vincent
Video: Keegan “HornetSting” Gallick

Last modified on January 06, 2017 at 11:03 am
Steve Burke

Steve started GamersNexus back when it was just a cool name, and now it's grown into an expansive website with an overwhelming amount of features. He recalls his first difficult decision with GN's direction: "I didn't know whether or not I wanted 'Gamers' to have a possessive apostrophe -- I mean, grammatically it should, but I didn't like it in the name. It was ugly. I also had people who were typing apostrophes into the address bar - sigh. It made sense to just leave it as 'Gamers.'"

First world problems, Steve. First world problems.

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