The Socket AM4 platform is designed to be a long life, fully featured, scalable solution with support for multiple processors, with varying capabilities. Since the release of the AMD Socket AM4 motherboards in early 2017 with the AMD Ryzen desktop processor, there have been several BIOS updates made available through our motherboard partners. These updates not only provide improved system performance but also expand support for newer processors as they become available.

In February 2018, AMD began introduction of the new 2nd Gen Ryzen Desktop Processor with Radeon Vega Graphics. To enable support for this new processor, an updated BIOS is required. Due to the rapid pace of innovation, and strong demand for Ryzen Processors with Radeon Graphics, it may be possible that some users with an AMD Socket AM4 motherboard paired with a 2nd Generation Ryzen Desktop introduced in 2018, may experience an issue where the system does not boot up during initial setup.

Over the last couple of days, motherboard manufacturers have been scrambling to release BIOS updates for their AM4 motherboards to accommodate the new Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G processors. From the information we gathered from ASRock's AM4 CPU support list, AMD is secretly preparing two more Ryzen "Raven Ridge" APUs. The unannounced models are the Ryzen 5 2400GE and Ryzen 3 2200GE. Judging from their technical specifications, the aforementioned processors are the low-power variants to the two models that were released today. The "GE" variants come with a lower 3.2 GHz base clock and 35W TDP. As of yet, AMD hasn't officially announced the pricing or release date.

BIOSTAR announces compatibility with the all-new AMD Raven Ridge APUs for its existing X370, B350 and A320 chipset-based motherboards. Current owners of these BIOSTAR motherboards can download their BIOS with a new update from BIOSTAR website. Mainstream users such as gamers and content creators will be able to take advantage of the new upgrades from AMD.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, has released new BIOS for the GIGABYTE AM4 motherboards based on the AMD X370, B350, A320 chipsets. With the latest BIOS update, the AM4 motherboards support the newest AMD Ryzen Desktop Processors with Radeon Vega Graphics, which fuse both CPU and GPU functions together through new architecture. Not only does this synergy allow for solid processor performance, it also produces impressive graphics performance even without the addition of dedicated graphics cards. By upgrading their firmware with the newest BIOS updates available on the GIGABYTE official website, users can bring out the full potential of these AM4 motherboards with exclusive Smart Fan 5 Technology for effective cooling and Ultra-Durable PCIe armor for added durability.

ASUS today announced that its complete lineup of AM4-socket-based motherboards now offer support for the first Zen architecture-based AMD Ryzen desktop processors with Radeon Vega graphics Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), via a BIOS update that's available immediately. These all-new AMD Ryzen 2000 Series APUs combine up to four Zen-based CPU cores with integrated Radeon Vega graphics. When used in combination with ASUS AMD AM4 Series motherboards, AMD Ryzen 2000 Series APUs offer great-value performance and deliver best-in-class gaming and graphics experiences.

Existing owners of ASUS AM4-socket motherboards can update their systems quickly and easily with the intuitive ASUS USB BIOS Flashback or ASUS EZ Flash 3 tools. In addition, an updated graphics driver - available from the ASUS support website - pushes the integrated AMD Radeon graphics to new performance heights for best-ever visual and gaming experiences with AMD Ryzen 2000 Series APUs.

ASRock today announced that it has posted motherboard BIOS updates for its socket AM4 motherboard product lineup, which enables support for AMD Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G APUs based on the "Raven Ridge" silicon. The company posted BIOS updates for all 18 of its AM4 motherboard models, based on AMD X370, B350, and A320 chipsets. To get your BIOS update, visit the downloads section of the product page of your motherboard model on ASRock company website.

In related news, it looks like AMD has standardized a new label for use by motherboard manufacturers on their product boxes to denote out of the box support for AMD Ryzen 2000 series processors, on newer batches of their AMD 300-series chipset motherboards. Motherboards without this label likely won't support chips such as the 2200G or 2400G out of the box, and will require a BIOS update using a supported Ryzen "Summit Ridge" processor first. Motherboards based on the upcoming AMD 400-series chipsets, which should launch in Q2-2018, will support "Raven Ridge" and upcoming "Pinnacle Ridge" processors out of the box, including backwards-compatibility for existing "Summit Ridge" processors.

MSI is among the first motherboard manufacturers to release BIOS updates for its entire socket AM4 motherboard lineup, to enable support for Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G APUs, based on the "Raven Ridge" silicon. With the two chips installed, you will finally be able to use the DVI, D-Sub, HDMI or DisplayPort connectors on the rear-panel of your socket AM4 motherboards. Motherboards based on AMD's upcoming 400-series chipset, will come with support for "Raven Ridge" APUs out of the box, among other chips, such as the company's upcoming 12 nm "Pinnacle Ridge" processors.

Among MSI's 300-series chipset socket AM4 motherboards to receive "Raven Ridge" support, are the X370 XPower Gaming Titanium, the X370 Gaming M7 ACK, the X370 Gaming Pro Carbon, the X370 Gaming Pro, X370 Gaming Plus, X370 SLI Plus, X370 Krait Gaming; the B350 Tomahawk Plus, the B350 Tomahawk, the B350 Tomahawk Arctic, B350 PC Mate, B350M Gaming Pro, B350M Mortar, B350M Bazooka, B350M Pro-VDH, and A320M Gaming Pro. You'll find the BIOS ROM files in the downloads section of your motherboard's product page on MSI website.

Xigmatek today introduced the Prodigy ST1266 low-profile CPU cooler. With an overall height (including fan) of 67 mm, the cooler is capable of handling thermal loads of up to 150W, making it fit for some of the higher-end mainstream desktop CPUs, such as the Core i7-8700K and the Ryzen 7 1800X. It supports sockets LGA2066, LGA2011(v3), LGA115x, AM4, AM3(+), and FM2(+). Its design involves a conventional C-type, top-flow layout. The cooler measures126 mm x 120 mm x 67 mm.

Six 6 mm-thick copper heat pipes make direct contact with the CPU at the base, which doubles up as a small aluminium mono-block heatsink. The heat-pipes convey heat to a thin aluminium fin-stack that propagates along the plane of the motherboard, which is ventilated by a 15 mm-thick 120 mm fan, which takes in 4-pin PWM input, spins between 800 to 1,500 RPM, pushing up to 56.9 CFM of air, with a maximum noise-level of 22.4 dBA. The company didn't reveal pricing.

AMD today revealed specifications of its first desktop socket AM4 APUs based on the "Zen" CPU micro-architecture, the Ryzen 2000G "Raven Ridge" series. The chips combine a quad-core "Zen" CPU with an integrated graphics core based on the "Vega" graphics architecture, with up to 11 NGCUs, amounting to 704 stream processors. The company is initially launching two SKUs, the Ryzen 3 2200G, and the Ryzen 5 2400G. Besides clock speeds, the two are differentiated with the Ryzen 5 featuring CPU SMT, and more iGPU stream processsors. The Ryzen 5 2400G is priced at USD $169, while the Ryzen 3 2200G goes for $99. Both parts will be available on the 12th of February, 2018.

The Ryzen 5 2400 features an 4-core/8-thread CPU clocked at 3.60 GHz, with a boost frequency of 3.90 GHz; 2 MB of L2 cache (512 KB per core), and 4 MB of shared L3 cache; and Radeon Vega 11 graphics (with the 11 denoting NGCU count), featuring 704 stream processors. The iGPU engine clock is set at 1250 MHz. The dual-channel DDR4 integrated memory controller supports up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR4-2933 MHz memory. The Ryzen 3 2200G is a slightly cut down part. Lacking SMT, its 4-core/4-thread CPU ticks at 3.50 GHz, with 3.70 GHz boost. Its CPU cache hierarchy is unchanged; the iGPU features only 8 out of 11 NGCUs, which translate to 512 stream processors. The iGPU engine clock is set at 1100 MHz. Both parts feature unlocked CPU base-clock multipliers; and have their TDP rated at 65W, and include AMD Wraith Stealth cooling solutions.

AMD today in a blog post announced the fruits of its partnership with Enmotus, a mainly enterprise-focused company that has made its name in creating performance-optimizing software solutions. The new solution, the FuzeDrive, is an ingenius (paid) software stack that will aggregate all of a users' system memory (be it RAM, HDDs, SSDs, NVMe drives, all of that) and expose it as a single drive via software. The goal is to allow the software to optimize data placement on the fly according to its read/write needs, creating caching solutions at will, learning from users' usage patterns, and basically creating a "set it and forget it" experience for users that critically also improves performance (and by AMD's estimates, it really does do so by a significant margin).

All of these features were pretty hard-set from the start; in the AMD blog post by Don Woligroski, he states that "AMD started with a list of goals, like improving storage performance and lowering loading times." AMD's love for open standards still hasn't gone and went away; he said that "because AMD believes in open hardware standards, it prefers to work with off-the-shelf, non-proprietary NVMe, SSD, and hard disk drives." Convenience was also a very important item to check; according to AMD, "any superior storage acceleration solution needs to be easy to set up, and simple to use." And the company believes they've achieved all of that with their new solution.

We headed to the GIGABYTE Aorus booth at the 2018 International CES to check out the only motherboard based on AMD's upcoming 400-series chipset visible in the entire show, the Aorus X470 Gaming 7. We snapped a lot of pictures. The first thing that caught our attention is the board's updated styling, which resembles the one GIGABYTE introduced with its Intel Z370-series motherboards. The second thing of course, was two 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, confirming that AMD has indeed addressed 300-series chipset's greatest shortcoming - lack of PCIe gen 3.0 general purpose lanes. Since the AM4 SoC puts out 4 gen 3.0 general purpose lanes of its own, which wired to one 32 Gb/s M.2 slot on 300-series motherboards, the new 400-series boards will have at least two of these slots, one wired to the AM4 SoC, and another to the chipset.

The Aorus X470 Gaming 7 could become the company's flagship socket AM4 product based on AMD X470 chipset. It's been designed as such. Built in the ATX form-factor, the board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, 8-pin EPS, and 4-pin ATX power connectors. A 12-phase VRM supplies power to the AM4 SoC. It's interesting to note that GIGABYTE chose some very high-current chokes for the chip's main voltage domains. The VRM heatsinks, too, are elaborate aluminium fin-stack types, with the two heatsinks spreading heat over a heat pipe. Is this a telltale sign that certain Ryzen 2 parts could have >95W TDP? The CPU socket is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots, two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x8/x8 when both are populated), and one of the two M.2 slots (we're guessing the top M.2-22110 slot). Both it, and the bottom M.2-2280 slots have included heatsinks. Other expansion slots include an x16 (electrical x4) slot wired to the chipset, and two x1 slots, which are all gen 3.0.

Phanteks showed off premium versions of its latest Glacier C300-series CPU water blocks, with the Glacier C350iP and the Glacier C350AP. The two are nearly identical to each other, but differ with their CPU socket support, with the former supporting Intel LGA115x and LGA2011(v3)/LGA2066; and the latter supporting just AM4. These blocks themselves are identical to the Glacier C350-series, but come with acetal tops. The gunmetal-gray top replaces the clear-acrylic ones on the standard C350-series blocks, such as the C350a and C350i. The cold plate material is still nickel-plated copper, with mirror finish at the base. Both blocks are priced at USD $69.99, which is surprisingly $10 cheaper than their acrylic twins.

Here are some of the first pictures of GIGABYTE Aorus X470 Gaming 7 WiFi, one of the first socket AM4 motherboards based on the upcoming AMD X470 chipset, which will launch with out of the box support for 2nd generation Ryzen "Pinnacle Ridge" and Ryzen "Raven Ridge" APUs, in addition to current-gen Ryzen chips, when it launches early-Q2 (April). The presence of more than one 32 Gbps M.2 slot bodes well, as it confirms that the chipset features PCI-Express gen 3.0 general purpose lanes (current AMD 300-series chipset have gen 2.0). One can also spy three x16 slots, from which two will be wired to the CPU, with SLI support; and the board's overall design scheme matching that of the company's Intel 300-series chipset motherboards.

Following its Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G socket AM4 APU announcement, AMD announced price cuts for its Ryzen family of processors, across the board. These are official price cuts, and not seasonal retailer discounts. The price cuts have been made in a bid to make its existing socket AM4 Ryzen processors more competitive against 8th generation Intel Core "Coffee Lake" processors.

Among the notable changes, are bringing the entire Ryzen 7-series lineup under the $350-mark, with the 1800X being priced at $349, the 1700X at $309, and the 1700 non-X at $299. These changes make the three competitive against the Core i7-8700K (which is scraping the $400-mark in many places), and the i7-8700 non-K (around $330). The Ryzen 5-series six-core parts also receive much-needed price-cuts to make them competitive against the Core i5 six-core SKUs, such as the i5-8600K and i5-8400. There are marginal changes in the Ryzen 3 series and Ryzen Threadripper series. All price cuts are tabled below.

There is more clarity on when AMD plans to launch its 2nd generation Ryzen "Pinnacle Ridge" processors, along with companion 400-series chipsets. Retailers in Japan, citing upstream suppliers, expect AMD to launch Ryzen # 2000-series (or "Ryzen 2") processors in March 2018, along with two motherboard chipset models, the top-tier AMD X470, and the mid-range AMD B450. An older report pegged this launch at February. The two chipsets are differentiated from their current-generation 300-series counterparts in featuring PCI-Express gen 3.0 general purpose lanes. The "Pinnacle Ridge" processors, on the other hand, are expected to be optical-shrinks of current Ryzen "Summit Ridge" silicon to the new 12 nm silicon fabrication process, which will allow AMD to increase clock speeds with minimal impact on power-draw.

AMD Ryzen 2 "Pinnacle Ridge" processors will be built in the existing socket AM4 package, and are expected to be compatible with existing socket AM4 motherboards, subject to BIOS updates by motherboard manufacturers. AMD plans to nurture the socket AM4 ecosystem till 2020. Future motherboards based on AMD 400-series chipsets could also feature compatibility with existing "Summit Ridge" Ryzen processors. These motherboards will come with out of the box support for Ryzen "Raven Ridge" APUs, something that requires BIOS updates on current 300-series chipset motherboards.

MSI, one of the world leading motherboard developers, is pleased to introduce the new Mini-ITX B350I PRO AC motherboard, ready for AMD SocketAM4 and the latest RYZEN processors. Building a small form factor PC, whether it's for professional, multimedia or gaming use, has never been more interesting on the AM4 platform with this comprehensive, feature packed solution.

A strong 9-phase PWM design (6+2+1), unseen on any AM4 Mini-ITX motherboard, the use of Military Class components and inclusion of DDR4 Boost, ensures a perfectly stable system under any condition with top performance. It also features DisplayPort, a HDMI output and 2x pin headers for RGB strips.The new B350I PRO AC even comes with Mystic Light, allowing anyone to change the system LED colors while applying lighting effects.

HWiNFO v. 5.7 has brought with it a smattering of improvements and additions, as is usually the case. These are worthier of a news piece than most, however, since we're looking at quite a number of interesting developments. For one, preliminary support has been added for Intel's Whiskey Lake, an upcoming mobile design that succeed's Intel's Kaby Lake products, and should bring the fight to AMD's Ryzen Mobile offerings. Furthermore, and still on the Intel camp, support for the upcoming 10 nm Ice Lake has also been added. Íf you'll remember, Ice Lake is expected to be Intel's first foray into the 10 nm+ process in the mobile camp (given away by the U/Y product codes), after numerous delays that made the company stick with its 14 nm process through three iterations and in-process improvements. These are not the only Intel developments, however; the team behind HWiNFO has also added a new feature that reveals your Intel CPU's Turbo Boost multipliers, which the company has since removed form their ARK pages and processor specifications - an issue that generated rivers of ink.

Stepping away from the blue giant's camp, there's added support for AMD's next revision of their Ryzen processors (Pinnacle Ridge, on a 12 nm process). There's also mention of upcoming support for AMD's 400-series chipsets, which should improve platform features of the AM4 socket. This addition comes after we've seen its first appearance in the PCI-SIG Integrators List.

AMD's second-generation Ryzen processors, which debut some time in Q1-2018, will be accompanied by the company's new 400-series motherboard chipset, even though they are expected to work with existing socket AM4 motherboards based on 300-series chipsets (with BIOS updates). The 400-series Promontory chipset surfaced on the PCIe Integrators List of PCI-SIG, the standards governing body of the PCI bus (which also oversees PCIe specifications development).

The listing seems to confirm that 400-series chipset will feature PCI-Express gen 3.0 general purpose lanes. These are downstream PCIe lanes put out by the chipset, to run the various external onboard controllers on the motherboard, and usually wired to the x1 and x4 PCIe slots. The current 300-series chipset only features up to 8 PCIe gen 2.0 general purpose lanes, and that was seen as a drawback. AMD Ryzen socket AM4 processors put out additional gen 3.0 lanes besides the 16 lanes allocated to PEG (one x16 or two x8, physically x16 slots); and 4 lanes serving as chipset bus. These additional gen 3.0 lanes typically drive a 32 Gb/s M.2 slot. With 400-series chipset bringing gen 3.0 general purpose lanes, one can expect newer socket AM4 motherboards with more than one 32 Gb/s M.2 slot (one from the SoC, another from the chipset).

Arctic Cooling has introduced a new tower cooler solution for your CPU of choice. Silently shared on their website, the Freezer 33 eSports One exudes the conventional "gaming" aesthetic of black and red, with a black, 49-fin-stack array, and your choice of a 120 mm black, yellow, green, or white Bionix fan. Arctic says the eSports one is good for CPUs with TDPs up to 200 W, placing this heat dissipation capability on a new thermal coating technology that creates microturbulences, increasing the amount of heatsink area that's engaged in the cooling efficiency of the eSports One. There's also direct heatpipe technology with an offset design, and Arctic says that the heatpipes being centered on the die, instead of covering the entire surface are, delivers maximum cooling performance.

Jonsbo introduced the futuristic-looking CR-401 air CPU cooler. The U-type aluminium dual fin-stack cooler features a monolithic industrial design thanks to the metal shroud concealing the sides and top of the fin-stacks, and a discrete 120 mm fan between the two fin-stacks underneath. The top features an RGB LED lighting diffuser, while keeping up with the black color-scheme of the shroud, the aluminium fin-stacks and heat-pipes are black. Five coated copper heat pipes make direct contact with the CPU at the base, with their two ends passing through the two fin-stacks; which are ventilated by the 120 mm fan between them in pull-push configuration, which has an RGB LED-illuminated frame of its own.

The discrete 120 mm fan takes in PWM input, spins between 800 to 1,600 RPM, with a noise output ranging between 18 to 25 dBA, although the company didn't list its air-flow. Measuring 125 mm x 88 mm x 165 mm (WxDxH), the CR-401 weighs 860 g. It is rated by its designers for thermal loads of up to 135W, and hence only supports today's mainstream-desktop CPU sockets, including AM4, AM3(+), FM2(+), and LGA115x. The RGB LED elements of the diffuser and fan take in standard 4-pin input, and support a 256-color palette. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Jonsbo today introduced the Angel Eye TW2 series all-in-one liquid CPU coolers. Available in two variants based on radiator size - the TW2-120 with a 120 mm x 120 mm radiator, and the TW2-240 with the 240 mm x 120 mm radiator; the series includes sub-variants based on the type of RGB LED lighting. The "standard edition" variants have RGB LED lighting limited to the pump-block, with non-illuminated radiator fans; "Version 501" variants have RGB LED lighting on the pump-block as well as the fan impeller; while the range-topping "Version 601" variants have RGB LED lighting on the circular fan-frames instead of the impeller.

The pump-block is cylindrical, with a prominent circular RGB LED diffuser framing it from the top. The copper block features a 0.15 mm micro-fin lattice. The radiator is made of aluminium. All sub-variants of the TW2-120 and TW2-240 have the same cooling performance, as their fans otherwise have identical specs - PWM power input, 800 to 1,500 RPM speed, 21.6 to 50.4 CFM air-flow, and up to 25 dBA noise output, each. The coolers support AMD sockets AM4, AM3(+), FM2(+); and Intel sockets LGA2066, LGA2011(v3), LGA1366, LGA115x, and LGA775. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Jonsbo today introduced the CR-301 RGB top-flow CPU cooler. Designed to handle thermal loads of up to 135W, the cooler supports mainstream-desktop sockets, including AM4 and LGA115x. Its design involves two independent aluminium fin-stacks that propagate along the plane of the motherboard, which draw heat from the base via heat-pipes. Heat to the upper main cuboid fin-stack is supplied by four heat-pipes, while it's fed to the smaller lower truncated-pyramid shaped fin-stack by two heat-pipes. All six heat-pipes are 6 mm-thick.

Ventilating the two fin-stacks are two 120 mm PWM fans with RGB multi-color LED lighting. The upper fan is to be installed above the upper fin-stack, and the lower fan between the two fin-stacks. Spinning at speeds of 600 to 1,600 RPM, the fans push 23.8 - 76.6 m³/h of air, with a noise output of 18.0 - 25.0 dB(A), each. Together the fans blow air downwards, and the fins of the lower stack guide air onto the CPU VRM and memory areas. Besides AM4 and LGA115x, the cooler supports AM3(+), FM2(+), and LGA775. Measuring 128 mm x 138 mm x 135 mm (LxWxH), the cooler weighs 890 g. It will be sold under the Cooltek brand in the EU. The company didn't reveal pricing.

At a press event, AMD confirmed that its 2nd generation Ryzen desktop processors will debut in Q1-2018 (before April). It also clarified that "2nd Generation" does not equal "Zen2" (a micro-architecture that succeeds "Zen"). 2nd Generation Ryzen processors are based on two silicons, the 12 nm "Pinnacle Ridge," which is a GPU-devoid silicon with up to eight CPU cores; and "Raven Ridge," which is an APU combining up to 4 CPU cores with an iGPU based on the "Vega" graphics architecture. The core CPU micro-architecture is still "Zen." The "Pinnacle Ridge" silicon takes advantage of the optical shrink to 12 nm to increase clock speeds, with minimal impact on power-draw.

AMD is also launching a new generation of chipset, under the AMD 400-series. There's not much known about these chipsets. Hopefully they feature PCIe gen 3.0 general purpose lanes. The second-generation Ryzen processors and APUs will carry the 2000-series model numbering, with clear differentiation between chips with iGPU and those without. Both product lines will work on socket AM4 motherboards, including existing ones based on AMD 300-series chipset (requiring a BIOS update). AMD is reserving "Zen2," the IPC-increasing successor of "Zen" for 2019. The "Mattise" silicon will drive the multi-core CPU product-line, while the "Picasso" silicon will drive the APU line. Both these chips will run on existing AM4 motherboards, as AMD plans to keep AM4 as its mainstream-desktop socket till 2020.

X2 introduced the Eclipse Advanced 992, a tower-type CPU cooler its makers believe has enough metal to cool HEDT processors, including AMD Ryzen Threadripper series, and Intel Core X. It supports AMD sockets TR4 (SP3r2), AM4, AM3(+), FM2(+), and Intel sockets LGA2066, LGA2011(v3), LGA1366, LGA115x, and LGA775. Its design involves an aluminium fin-stack which is narrowed towards the base for better VRM heatsink clearance; through which six 6 mm-thick copper heat-pipes pass, which draw heat making direct contact with the CPU at the base. The aluminium fin-stack is ventilated by a 120 mm RGB LED-illuminated fan, which spins between 400 to 1,500 RPM, pushing up to 45.26 CFM of air, with a noise output ranging between 10 to 22 dBA. The cooler can handle thermal loads of up to 200W. Measuring 127.5 mm x 53 mm x 155.9 mm (WxDxH), it weighs about 740 g.

Raijintek today introduced the Leto Pro RGB CPU cooler. An upscale variant of the Raijintek Leto launched earlier this year, the Leto Pro RGB retains the essential tower-type heatsink design of the original Leto, but comes with two 120 mm RGB LED-illuminated fans in push-pull configuration. Each of the two included Raijintek Macula 12 RGB fans spins between 800 to 1,800 RPM, pushing up to 56 CFM of air, with a noise output of 25 dBA. Raijintek has also launched the Leto RGB, which is the original Leto with a single Macula 12 RGB fan. With both its fans installed, the Leto Pro RGB measures 127 mm x 101 mm 155 mm (WxDxH), weighing 925 g. It supports nearly all modern CPU socket types, including AM4, AM3(+), FM2(+), LGA2066, LGA2011(v3), and LGA115x.