Quality of AMD Motherboards

I have two Zenith Extreme's and a Taichi. The boards are good; the only early issues were memory compatibility which looks to be straightened out now. If you are buying new memory though, it would make sense to stick to those that are on the QVL list though just to be extra safe.
 
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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Dan_D said:
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.
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I don't know if I'm the outlier or if the BIOS's were fixed by the time I did my build, but I never found overclocking more easy than on my GA-990FXUD3 + FX 8320 setup. Disable APM master mode, disable turbo mode, reboot, set the multiplier for 4.8GHz and voltage to 1.45v, reboot. I could play around with the base clock/divider to get the memory running at 1866, though it didn't seem to run much faster than it did at 1600.

Still runs to this day, and unlike contemporary Intel boards it has 6 SATA6 ports rather than two.
 
Intel boards might be different, but it seems like AMD boards could really use some re-reviews after a few BIOS updates. This is especially true with any new architecture they release.

I could be wrong, but AMD seems to completely change their architecture more often than intel, which means motherboard manufacturers are left with a ton of unrefined solutions to known issues, and an incomplete big picture on the system itself. This would explain wonky BIOSes and such. It's a shame that some of them never get around to fixing the the BIOS interface itself even after compatibility and other issues are addressed *cough*asrock*cough*

For decent motherboard analysis, check out Buildzoid on youtube. He goes over mainly VRM and BIOS options for overclockers, but usually keeps average Joes in mind as well for mid to high end boards. There aren't a whole lot of reviewers that directly compare motherboard lineups, it seems.
 
Have an ASROCK x370 Gaming Fatality OMG PRO WTFBQQ w/ a Ryzen 1700 and the Gigabyte X399 Gaming Auros 7 w/ a TR 1950x. Both have been rock solid with 3200 MHz memory since day one (G.Skill Flare X). I do love my massive overkill VRM boards what can I say :)
 
I upgraded from a AM3+ motherboard to a B350 one in January, and I can definitely tell the difference in the motherboard quality. My second AM3+ board was a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 (after breaking a Sapphire AM3+ Mobo my wife won at the last [H]ard|OCP/AMD event in Dallas), and along with a FX-8150 initially, followed by a FX-8350 I lasted about 5 years before it became a bottleneck. I upgraded to a Ryzen 5 1600 with a Asus TUF B350-M Gaming board, and I'll be damned if it wasn't easy as all get out to get running. Updated the bios, enabled XMP on my Corsair Vengeance RGB memory, and away I went. It runs at 3.6ghz right now on the stock air cooler and has given me zero trouble. My board supports the 2600/2700 processors, but I haven't felt an itch to upgrade to them.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
I don't know if I'm the outlier or if the BIOS's were fixed by the time I did my build, but I never found overclocking more easy than on my GA-990FXUD3 + FX 8320 setup. Disable APM master mode, disable turbo mode, reboot, set the multiplier for 4.8GHz and voltage to 1.45v, reboot. I could play around with the base clock/divider to get the memory running at 1866, though it didn't seem to run much faster than it did at 1600.

Still runs to this day, and unlike contemporary Intel boards it has 6 SATA6 ports rather than two.
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FX CPU's of the day were Bulldozer CPU's. That was long after the BIOS ROMs had been updated and we learned later on that those motherboards worked far better with Bulldozer CPU's than the older Phenom II's we had to use during the earlier reviews. At launch, the 990FX boards were trash. Plain and simple. After Bulldozer was released things were different.
 
My ASrock X370 Killer SLI/AC has been rock stable other than early RAM speed issues. Once I updated the BIOS I could run my Hynix Dual Rank (TeamGroup 2x16GB) @2933MHz. I upgraded from a crappy OC'ing 1600 to a good 1700 when the 2700x came out (got it from a friend) that I can run @4GHz 100% stable.
Not bad for a $139 Motherboard that I got at launch.

My previous ASrock 970extreme3 has been rock stable since I got it on 2012 also. It has seen a 955 clocked at 4GHz and a 8320e clocked at 4GHz. I couldn't clock it any higher because of the weak 4+1 phase VRMs (i didn't know better back then).
 
Had a Gigabyte Aurus x399 Gaming 7. Didn't last very long before it started throwing CPU error codes and refusing to post. Replaced with an Arock x399 TaiChi. So far so good. Ask me again in about 6 months.
 
The GIGABYTE Aorus X399 Gaming 7 is one of my favorite X399 motherboards. It was very solid during testing. I've considered putting one in my machine.
 
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