Quality of AMD Motherboards

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Kid744

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 22, 2005
Messages
132
Okay, flame suit on. I have not used an AMD cpu since I moved up from my Opteron system. But one thing I noticed after building several machines for family and friends back then, was that the AMD boards seemed to not be as polished as the Intel boards being offered at the time. Nics and other peripherals seemed to fail early and often. Just my limited experience.

My question today for those that are using the current AMD cpu's: Are the available motherboards good quality? I asking mainly about enthusiast boards, not the lower end stuff.

Please share your opinions and experiences for the current AMD motherboard offerings. My interest is piqued, but my past experience is giving me pause.

Kid
 
Quality is great now, through it was a rough six months or so after the Ryzen launch with microcode and BIOS updates. Most of that has been ironed out and I wouldn’t expect any issues on a new AMD board.
 
Depends on what you buy. You buy a $75 motherboard, it's gonna be more likely to shit the bed than a $150 board.

All my personal builds have been with $150+ motherboards and I've yet to have the first problem with one. AMD builds I have done for friends or other people over the years, I generally talk them into a mobo around $100 as I think that's the sweet spot for quality boards at good prices and as far as I know, they're all still working fine.

So I'd say it all boils down to you get what you pay for regardless if you're buying AMD or Intel boards.
 
What level boards were you buying though? Cheap end Biostar or $100 + Asus / Gigabyte boards..
 
Upon intitial release the BIOS shipped were wonky, borked and with poor memory support. Hence this thread.
Supposedly they support Precision Boost 2 and XFR with the new 2000 series processors.
X370 boards can be had for some good deals lately.I got a deal on the MSI X370 Prime for $95 after tax and rebate. Memory runs at rated speed and it's Hynix chip based which was hard at first. So, to sum up, a lot more polished and more to come as the newer BIOSs come out.
 
you get what you pay for and I prefer gigabyte. I literally have never had one of their product fail that wasn't my fault(pushed vrm too hard).
 
Board quality is generally okay or great if you pay for it. Bios generally wasn't great across the board (it sucked) when am4 boards just launched, and it's been a rocky road ever since, but they're in pretty good shape now (pick your brand for your preferred bios quirks now, but they're mostly good). I hear the 400-series boards have better bios, no first hand experience though.
 
pendragon1 said:
you get what you pay for and I prefer gigabyte. I literally have never had one of their product fail that wasn't my fault(pushed vrm too hard).
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100% agree with this statement especially on the 400 series.. 300 series price didn't really matter, all the manufactures bios sucked initially.. but gigabyte ended up being the stand out as far as bios support went. 400 series i'd say they're all on an equal playing field now since they've had a year to fix most of the kinks. so feature set and component quality have become more important again.
 
Recently built 2 Ryzen 7 1700 systems, one for my wife and the other for my son using Gigabyte X370 boards, and I really like the quality of those boards. I just put together a Ryzen 7 2700X with a Gigabyte X470 board for myself and haven’t had any issues at all. The X370 boards needed bios updates to get the ram speeds up to 3000MHz but the X470 board ran full 3200MHz out of the box. Very satisfied with all the AMD and Gigabyte parts used in these systems. Edit: These systems are my first AMD builds ever.
 
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Just finished my 2700X build with the ASRock X470 Tachi and I have virtually no complaints (other than a missing wi-fi antenna). Board was sturdy and seems well-made - RGB is nicely understated.
I used G.Skill TridentZ -3466 memory (bdie) and it recognized it and ran it at full speed after the 2nd reboot. No BIOS updates needed.
User manual could have been written better (larger pictures) but it did the job.
Looks like it will OC, if I decide to - but am only going to tweak the memory for now.
 
My assessment is that this is more of a Mobo maker issue. Seems like some makers could care less about AMD and just throw crap together to get it out there. My personal experience (not necessarily fact just what I've dealt with) since Ryzen is Asus just throws stuff together for AMD (have used 3 of their boards), Gigabyte boards (have used 2 of their boards) have been great, and MSI seems decent (only had limited time with 1 of their boards). So I'd say the enthusiast boards are mostly pretty impressive.
 
tayunz said:
My assessment is that this is more of a Mobo maker issue. Seems like some makers could care less about AMD and just throw crap together to get it out there. My personal experience (not necessarily fact just what I've dealt with) since Ryzen is Asus just throws stuff together for AMD (have used 3 of their boards), Gigabyte boards (have used 2 of their boards) have been great, and MSI seems decent (only had limited time with 1 of their boards). So I'd say the enthusiast boards are mostly pretty impressive.
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/Agree
I watched a couple of dozen YouTube reviews of all of the X470 boards and conventional wisdom was that you really couldn't go too wrong with any of them. Just compare and pick out the features you want.
/MSI's BIOS is still a nightmare though
//Gigabyte's isn't much better (and their QC is getting dodgy, according to some reviews)
///ASRock seems to do AMD boards very well though + 2nd best BIOS
 
Lumpus said:
/Agree
I watched a couple of dozen YouTube reviews of all of the X470 boards and conventional wisdom was that you really couldn't go too wrong with any of them. Just compare and pick out the features you want.
/MSI's BIOS is still a nightmare though
//Gigabyte's isn't much better (and their QC is getting dodgy, according to some reviews)
///ASRock seems to do AMD boards very well though + 2nd best BIOS
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Yeah seems like AsRock is serious about AMD these days. Sadly haven't owned one yet.
 
Thanks for all the feedback. I would definitely be going with a 150 -200 dollar board whether it is an AMD or INTEL cpu.

Kid
 
MSI mortar b350 doa. ASUS tuf b350 lasted about 6 months (though I did some overclocking). Gonna try my luck on asrock itx b350 now...
 
tayunz said:
Yeah seems like AsRock is serious about AMD these days. Sadly haven't owned one yet.
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as far as build quality yes, as far as bios support they're still lacking.. they pretty much pissed off all their alpha testers by not fixing the things they've been requesting since ryzen released that other manufactures have fixed so most of them left.
 
My asrock X399 boards are better than just about every server, desktop or "workstation" (usually a big fat lie) motherboard I have ever dealt with, which is quite a few now.

They have a really good combo of "server" features along with the actually useful "gamer" features.

Motherboards in general have gotten better over time though, a lot of things that used to be rare or premium are now standard on anything above the ultra-budget tier.
 
The problem with the AMD AM4 motherboards is not so much the quality as it is the DDR4 speed which you can only get when you buy QVL ram.
There are some lesser motherboards but that is obvious you can also check https://www.hardocp.com/reviews/motherboards_chipsets/

But I'll say it again the most important thing is to buy the ram that is on the motherboard QVL.
 
It took a lot of bios updates but my B350 Tomahawk is fine, beat on it fine, however my Gigabyte UD3H and 4670k were set it and forget with minimal vdroop though.
 
Kid744 said:
Okay, flame suit on. I have not used an AMD cpu since I moved up from my Opteron system. But one thing I noticed after building several machines for family and friends back then, was that the AMD boards seemed to not be as polished as the Intel boards being offered at the time. Nics and other peripherals seemed to fail early and often. Just my limited experience.

My question today for those that are using the current AMD cpu's: Are the available motherboards good quality? I asking mainly about enthusiast boards, not the lower end stuff.

Please share your opinions and experiences for the current AMD motherboard offerings. My interest is piqued, but my past experience is giving me pause.

Kid
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Hate to be that guy, but AMD doesnt make motherboards....

https://hardforum.com/threads/thoug...ind-this-interesting.1962285/#post-1043675186

Not sure if this is quality, or the opposite of quality though... Still working after obvious catastrophic heat event....
 
What you need to understand is that Intel has far more control over motherboard manufacturers than AMD does. Intel guidelines are extremely strict. Motherboard makers used to get away with serious corner cutting on AMD processor compatible motherboards. Today, with the media, forums, reviews, etc., motherboard manufacturers can't get away with the shit they used to pull. Today's AMD processor compatible motherboards are built well. The biggest problem lies with AMD's AGESA code. It took a long time for AMD to get that under control and up to par.
 
ive used bad quailty i guess you could say mobo's in the past ? ECS, FIC aweful cheap generic boards and never once ever had a single amd issue ever Funny thing is i had 2 asus boards die on me pretty quickly but never a pos board......strange
 
The hardest things to notice are the things that are missing.
AMD says that boards with 6 layers can officially support up to 2933 RAM and 4 layer boards are still at 2666. (Note I understand this is officially supported spec, and some 4 layer boards work with 3200 RAM just fine.) Anyway, the problem is that the board makers do not list this in the specs. Once in a while in a review of a specific board someone will mention this but it is rare to find this information.
MSI seems to have this marked on some boards. The X470 Gaming Pro Carbon is 4 layer, same was true for X370 Gaming Pro Carbon. X470 detail here: https://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/hardware-clinic-2/[review]msi-x470-gaming-pro-carbon-fanciful-rgb-motherboard-amd-r7-2700x-5826726.html
I am not aware of any other company marking like this but I could be wrong. I wish they did, it would be helpful.
 
I've had the opposite experience, at least since the beginning of the skt 775/AM3 era. Every AMD board I've bought since then has 'just worked.' I've had various issues with Intel boards, including a very expensive X79 Deluxe that completely shit the bed.
 
I have been running an Asrock AB350M Pro4, which is a very middle-of-the-road motherboard, for over 6 months now without issue. I bought it from a friend of mine and he bought it as a combo when the R5 1600 launched. It runs DDR4 2666 without issue as of several BIOS updates ago. 2933 will not run, though it is the rated speed of the particular kit I'm running.

The build quality is what I would expect for something at the price point it was at when it was new. It is definitely not as nice as the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3. It was probably the best AMD motherboard I have owned in my experience and cost quite a bit more than the Asrock board. I had a Crosshair V at launch that was a complete disaster. I ended up returning it because it was so bad and the Gigabyte was the best available option of what was in stock at the time.

The moral of the story is that, like many others on [H], I have had a rough experience with new AMD sockets, but after 6 months of maturing, things settle in well.
 
Shit has gotten a lot better in the last year. My X370 board was... twitchy, and memory overclocking was a crapshoot... at first.

Now (after a gazillion BIOS updates), it is rock solid, and getting me the promised memory speeds. Early adopters suffered a bit last year, but there are no problems now. It's more stable than my 2600k box was.
 
I've tried 3 am4 boards so far (4th is on it's way), Asus Prime b350m-a, Asus crosshair VI, and Asrock ab350m-hdv. The Asus boards have been excellent, both humming along without issue.

I had the prime b350m-a at the initial ryzen launch and, other than memory speed taking 3-4 months to get to the rated speed of the ram I had, it worked perfectly, even dropped in the 2700x when it released and it worked perfectly. I put in the 2700x, booted up and the system was never shut down or rebooted again until I swapped in my ch6 20 days later due to a planned sff build with the prime. That included a bunch of benchmarking and stress testing, never had so much as an application crash in the 20 days it was up.

The prime didn't fit my sff case (doh, some poor planning coupled with the case advertising matx compatibility), so I bought the Asrock and it's the first and only board I've ever had fail during a bios update - and I've been building pc's since the 486 dx-2 days. So I sent it back and ordered a biostar x370 m-itx board instead (waiting for it to come). The Asrock worked alright with 1 stick of ram but became unstable when I added a 2nd, but was on a very early bios hence the attempt to update it figuring that was the cause of the instability. Not sure what happened, but about half way through the bios update it went blank and never responded again. I put the chip (1700) and ram back into the prime in a different case while I figured out what direction to take with my build, and it all works perfectly, so something bad with that board (or bios).

The crosshair VI has worked perfectly since I got it - I put my old 1700 in it to flash to the latest bios, then put the 2700X in and it's been humming along ever since. Only reboots were from windows updates, otherwise it's been perfectly stable. It benches slightly higher than the prime, but probably because It has ram dividers to allow full 3000mhz on the ram where the prime only had a 2933 and no 3000 available (skipped that and went to 3133, 3200 etc).

My main pc which had the prime in it from ryzen launch through around 3 weeks after ryzen 2 launch (so ~14 months), and now the crosshair vi, is always on. It's not stressed 24/7 but never shut down unless I'm going to be out of the house for a few days. It's an htpc, NAS, and VR gaming rig and I do some ML experimentation with it, light video editing, gimp photo editing etc. So varied use, on 24/7, and sometimes under full 8c/16t use, though not all that often.

I'm actually tempted to throw the prime back in my main pc and sell the crosshair as I really don't use all (any?) of it's added features. My Prime was fine, but I was upgrading from an mATX case to a full ATX case and wanted to build an sff with the prime, so I figured I'd upgrade the board to be more future proof, but I'm struggling to think what I'd add to the system that would require the 370 chipset and the prime doesn't work in my desired case, so...We'll see how the biostar does.
 
I have personally not had quality issues with anything AMD related since the 790x boards or since. (Even the 990FX boards I used were solid but, I also did not go cheap on those either.) You will be fine with whatever you decide on.
 
I use the Taichi, it's been solid.No problems and hit all the memory/clock speeds promised. Great feature set on it too.
 
My girlfriend has a B350m Mortar in her Ryzen machine, and it was awesome to work with, and very well priced. She runs it often and hard, and has had no issues with it at all.
 
ManofGod said:
I have personally not had quality issues with anything AMD related since the 790x boards or since. (Even the 990FX boards I used were solid but, I also did not go cheap on those either.) You will be fine with whatever you decide on.
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The 990FX boards were trash. They launched without the processors they were really designed to use and were a disaster with pre-Bulldozer chips. They were all so bad we quit reviewing them entirely after doing a few of them.
 
Dan_D said:
The 990FX boards were trash. They launched without the processors they were really designed to use and were a disaster with pre-Bulldozer chips. They were all so bad we quit reviewing them entirely after doing a few of them.
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*Shrug* I had no issues with the Asrock 990FX Extreme 4 or the Asrock 990FX Extreme 9 boards. They were not trash, unless you mean the lower end supposed 990FX boards which really were not that at all. I wish I would have bought the Professional one out of the gate of the 990FX Sabretooth board initially though.
 
ManofGod said:
*Shrug* I had no issues with the Asrock 990FX Extreme 4 or the Asrock 990FX Extreme 9 boards. They were not trash, unless you mean the lower end supposed 990FX boards which really were not that at all. I wish I would have bought the Professional one out of the gate of the 990FX Sabretooth board initially though.
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At the time, I had tested high end boards like the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7 and similar boards from ASUS and MSI. I tested enough of them and worked on enough systems owned by friends to call those boards trash. The hardware is one thing, but the BIOS for those things was as much of a cluster fuck as the AGESA code at launch for all the X370 boards.
 
I just bought a Gigabyte X470 Gaming Ultra last night for $139 (and 2700 for $229!) at MC and I can tell you its one of the nicer boards I've ever worked with, especially considering its their lowest x470 tiered board. It comes with a lot of features I wouldn't have thought would come at this price point. I haven't built an AMD system in 20 some odd years, and I'm really enjoying the ease and quality of Ryzen and X470.
 
+1 for the Gigabyte X470 Gaming Ultra. Great value and no issues with my 2600X that I just upgraded to this week, such a solid board.

My last CPU was a AMD FX-8350 that I regret buying but their Ryzen platform has kept me on their team. Reminds me of the old AMD Athlon XP glory days last decade.
 
I had no issues with my Asus x370 Prime..With the Dec bios my 3200 Hynix kit would run at a solid 2933 14-14-14-1T. With the January bios that supposed APUs, I could run the rated 3200 C16 but found the 2933 c14 faster.

The board randomly corrupted the bios and wouldn't boot 10 days ago after running 24/7 with my 1600 @ 4.1Ghz mining Cryptonight aside from the few hours iD be gaming. This was a known issue with this board and Asus had to cover them with an RMA.

I bought an Asus x470 on sale from eBay to replace the 370 since I needed 3 PCI-E 16x slots for my VEGA GPUs and haven't had sent issues. With the April bios it booted my ram @ 3200 C16 with no issues. I haven't had time to get in there and tweak it and my 2700 yet but the 2700 boosts to 4.25 on all cores and 4.35 on a light load since I have 780mm of rad space cooling it and the 3 underclocked VEGAs.
 
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