Will Asrock release some new motherboards soon??

Asingo wrote: What can I expect from future AM4 Asrock motherboards? What versions? I am not quite expiriance with history of mbo versions, can someone explain me in short what can I expect (K6, Supercarrier and so on)?

Anyone with specific inside information about any upcoming ASRock products would be under an NDA and would not talk about it, if they had any sense. Which means I have nothing specific to tell you or anyone else.

My personal editorial comments are, I hope the trend towards cheap, low end Ryzen boards ($100 or less) is put aside, and more focus upon high quality products at ~$200 (-15%, +50%) in the near future.

How anyone can produce a decent mother board below $100 currently, is astonishing. Yes, the ASRock non-X370 chipset Ryzen boards are better than the extreme budget AM3 and AM3+ boards that were available not long ago. AMD may finally be insuring that Ryzen boards are built to the level they should be, but not at the super low price (and low quality) that some consumers demand. Intel has been doing that with their Z series chipsets for a long time. Many people hate Intel for that (only OC on the Z chipset boards) but their is more respect for the customer in that than is truly understood.

Yes, the budget boards sell very well, the main reason they exist, but too many of their owners expect them to be the equivalent in performance, over clocking, and UEFI/BIOS options of boards twice or three times the price. The only difference being their features, is their thought. That is simply false.

Knowledge and education about technical realities of mother boards is a problem that is rarely addressed. For example, Ryzen processors are SOC type CPUs, (System On a Chip) and integrate many of the features usually found in the separate chipset, within the CPU itself. With Ryzen, the SOC is also involved with memory over clocking. Ryzen board owners soon learned that the SOC portion of the CPU has its own power supply and VRM chips, like the CPU cores do. The SOC does not use at all as much power as the CPU cores, but it uses much more power than the typical external chipset does.

Good Ryzen boards have a four phase VRM design for the SOC voltage, and even have an LLC setting for the SOC voltage. That is unique to Ryzen. But other Ryzen boards have a two or even one phase SOC VRM design. The parts for this circuitry is not free, and the 12 phase VRM design on my Ryzen X370 board is really an eight plus four design, eight for the CPU cores, four for the SOC. So I just lost two or four phases that could be for the CPU cores. But Ryzen is relatively power efficient, so the overall design is fine. But each board design has a budget for its retail price point, and VRM chips are not cheap components. The fewer of these chips used, the lower the board price.

So what about the two or single phase SOC VRM stage on an $80 or less board? Hmm, no SOC voltage adjustment option in the UEFI, locked into the standard 0.900V? Or we can adjust the SOC voltage somewhat, but no SOC LLC setting in the UEFI? I don't understand, that other board ($150) has those options, why doesn't mine? When will they be added? (Never, they can't be, the SOC VRM stage is not capable.)

Overall, mother board versions and model names are only general indications of what they are all about. We must study the board's specs and the specs of the mother board platform (Ryzen, ThreadRipper, Kaby Lake, etc) to understand what they are all about. Otherwise we are just buying blindly, except for price. Price matters with mother boards. If you buy cheap, don't expect miracles, or really, much.

Asingo wrote: datonyb wrote: they got 17 versions already i did notice theres a cheap x370 coming soon on one uk retailer from asrock I know but they got a big price range hole between Taichi and X370 k4. They need something to fight with Asus strix and Gigabyte Gaming 5...

they got 17 versions already

i did notice theres a cheap x370 coming soon on one uk retailer from asrock