ASRock trots out new AMD AM4 motherboards for gamers
ASRock trots out new AMD AM4 motherboards for gamers
ASRock has announced its new AMD AM4 motherboards based on the X370 and B350 chipsets, hot on the heels of ASUS’ own announcement of its AM4 line-up. Many of the new boards have a distinctly gamer-oriented focus, which isn’t surprising given that it is this segment of the market that will be most excited about the performance Ryzen offers relative to Intel.
The top AM4 board is the Fatal1ty X370 Professional Gaming, a board aimed squarely at gamers and overclockers. It is decked out in a familiar red-and-black color scheme and features a 16-phase power design, Creative Sound Blaster Cinema3 onboard audio, and steel-reinforced PCIe slots.
One interesting feature is the support for 5Gbps LAN, courtesy of an Aquantia controller. However, you’ll still need a 5Gbps switching hub, and of course a blazing fast internet plan, to fully enable the higher network capacity.
ASRock also highlighted the X370 Taichi, an all-rounded board intended to appeal to a wider swath of the market. That said, it still boasts a 16-phase power design, a Hyper BCLK Engine II external chip for a wider range of frequencies, and a wide range of storage options, including dual M.2 sockets. It will also work with ASRock’s U.2 kit and allow you to install speedy U.2 drives like the Intel 750 series SSDs.
The board shares the same unique design with its X99 counterpart, and appears a good fit for those sick of the usual red and black.
The company singled out the X370 Killer SLI as well, a more budget-oriented board with a strategic selection of features to attract those who want the most bang for their buck. For one, it comes with both SLI and CrossFire support, and ships with ASRock’s own SLI high bandwidth bridge for use with NVIDIA’s latest Pascal GPUs. The SLI support is especially welcome, as cheaper AMD motherboards tend to omit that.
In addition, you get a USB-C connector, dual M.2 sockets, and a 12-phase power design. There is a second variant of the board, the X370 Killer SLI/ac, which comes with 802.11ac Wi-Fi.
Here’s a list of all the boards that will be available to buy locally:
- ASRock X370 Professional Gaming (S$470)
- ASRock X370 Taichi (S$399)
- ASRock X370 Gaming K4 (S$265)
- ASRock X370 Killer SLI (S$255)
ASRock also announced a handful of boards based on the B350 chipset but we don’t have the prices for those yet. Here’s a list of what was announced:
- ASRock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming K4
- ASRock AB350 Pro4
- ASRock AB350M Pro4
- ASRock AB350M
- ASRock AB350M-HDV