G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, is thrilled to announce the launch of Trident Z Neo DDR4 memory series for the latest AMD Ryzen 3000 series CPUs on AMD X570 platform. Featuring optimized specifications for the new AMD platform, a new sleek dual-tone heatspreader design, and fully customizable RGB lighting, the Trident Z Neo memory series is the ideal DDR4 DRAM for your next AMD gaming system or workstation.

Optimized Performance for AMD Ryzen 3000: Computer systems with AMD Ryzen processors are known for its performance scaling with memory speed, and Trident Z Neo is engineered to achieve optimal performance with the latest AMD Ryzen 3000 series processors on AMD X570 motherboards. Under the latest AMD Ryzen 3000 series platform, DDR4 memory frequency support has increased by leaps and bounds, allowing the X570 chipset platform to run an unprecedented memory speed record of DDR4-5774MHz- the fastest memory speed ever achieved on an AMD platform under extreme liquid nitrogen cooling - as seen in the following CPU-Z validation screenshot with the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE motherboard.

The leading global motherboard manufacturer, ASRock, is pleased to officially announce the launch of the new AMD X570 motherboard series, previewed during Computex 2019. The series offers ten motherboard models for every role from affordable performance to gaming to content creation to power users. ASRock's X570 boards get the most from the next generation PCIe 4.0 interface and from the newest, most powerful AM4 processors, including the AMD Ryzen 2000 and 3000 Series. These new boards continue the tradition of trusted ASRock names such as Taichi and Phantom Gaming.

The new design for ASRock's X570 motherboards is a huge step forward. ASRock has combined both aesthetics and functionality to create a board that not only looks fascinating, with its bold angular lines, but performs as good as it looks. The stunning full coverage aluminum heatsink cools and protects the PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSDs as well as the chipset. The neatly designed color LED system is eye-catching but also classy. If you need even more enhanced RGB effects, you can customize your PC with Polychrome SYNC full-color RGB LED lighting, which provides both 3-pin addressable RGB headers and traditional 4-pin RGB LED headers which allow users to connect RGB strips directly to the motherboard and sync their lighting system using the app provided.

El Chapuzas Informático has posted an early review of the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 which was tested on a Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi motherboard, G.Skill FlareX DDR4 @ 3200 MHz and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE graphics card. Looking at the data presented, it becomes clear the performance on offer if real looks to be quite impressive. The site compared AMD's latest offering to the Intel Core i9-9900K and the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X with the Ryzen 5 3600 typically slotting in between the two and in some cases beating both. This is interesting to note as the Ryzen 7 2700X offers similar clock speeds to the Ryzen 5 3600 but the former has a 2C/4T advantage. Even so, the newer AMD CPU tends to outpace the Zen+ based Ryzen 7 2700X in multiple tests. In Cinebench R15, for example, the Ryzen 5 3600 had the lead in single-core performance while multi-core was held by the Ryzen 7 2700X. Cinebench R20 roughly mimics these results as well.

While memory latency was quite high 80.5 ns, it didn't seem to impact performance to any serious degree. In fact, in wPrime 2.10 32M running on a single core showed the Ryzen 5 3600 coming in just behind the Intel Core i9-9900K while being faster than the previous generation Intel Core i7-8700K, i7-8600K, and AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and 1700X. That said, the previous generation Ryzen processors were far slower here were as the Intel chips were still competitive. In the multi-core test, the Ryzen 7 2700X took a slight lead while the Ryzen 7 1700X was a bit slower than the Ryzen 5 3600. One interesting quirk of note was the lack of write speed on the memory with the Ryzen 5 3600 only hitting 25.6 GB/s which is quite a drop from the 47 GB/s seen on the Ryzen 7 1700X and Ryzen 7 2700X. However this could be due to the X470 motherboard being used or maybe an issue with sub timings on the memory, something that will need to be verified in future reviews.

GIGABYTE today officially launched its latest addition to the Aorus series of motherboards, made for the new generation of Ryzen 3000 series processors. The "Master" as it is called, is an impressive feat of engineering designed to handle even the most power-hungry Ryzen CPUs like the 16 core Ryzen 9 AMD recently showcased.

For starters, the board is featuring twice the amount of copper wires usually needed to implement a PCIe connection, which means less information loss on PCB. It has a 14 direct phases of Infineon digital IR 3556 PowIRstage MOSFETs VRMs that are capable of delivering 50A each, which means that the VRM is capable of delivering up to 700A of current, providing additional headroom for CPU overclock. To handle the large amount of VRMs effectively, the board is equipped with beefy heatsinks and a heat pipe that has direct contact with VRMs. Sandwiches between the heatsink and the board is a new generation of thermal pads designed by LAIRD, with 1.5 mm thickness and 5 W/mK thermal conductivity.

Last week, we brought you an exclusive report of an ASUS AMD X570 motherboard price-list leak that foretells a $50-150 average price increase over launch-prices of motherboards based on the previous-generation AMD X470 chipset. European PC component price aggregator Geizhals has a partial list of X570 motherboards by another major manufacturer, MSI. It must be noted here, that while the ASUS price-list was for day-one retail prices, these prices of MSI boards are early listings, and could be marked-up by the retailer.

The cheapest model on the list is the MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus, which succeeds the roughly-120€ X470 Gaming Plus at a whopping 201.30€. Interestingly, the MPG X570 Gaming Edge WiFi, which is supposed to be a slightly toned-down variant of the Gaming Pro Carbon, is priced only 18€ more, at 219.50€. The MEG X570 ACE, which will be a fast-moving high-end product, is priced at 414.60€, or roughly on par with HEDT motherboards based on the Intel X299 or even AMD X399 chipsets. For 100€ more, you get the better equipped MEG X570 Creation. Record-seeking enthusiasts will have their sights on the MEG X570 GODLIKE, though, which can be yours for 780.40€.

It looks like SSD manufacturers such as Corsair will price some of the first M.2 PCIe gen 4.0 NVMe SSDs at a premium compared to existing drives that use PCIe gen 3.0. The company on the sidelines of Computex launched its MP600 series of high-end M.2 SSDs that take advantage of PCI-Express 4.0 x4 bus (64 Gbps) on the upcoming AMD "Valhalla" desktop platform, with up to 4950 MB/s of sequential read speeds. Ahead of their market availability alongside AMD Ryzen 3000 "Matisse" processors and AMD X570 chipset motherboards on July 7th, Cowcotland scored prices of the 1 TB and 2 TB models in Europe.

According to the French publication, the 1 TB variant of MP600 is priced at 249€ (0.24€ per GB), and the 2 TB variant at 449€ (0.22€ per GB), including VAT. To put these prices into perspective, the 960 GB variant of Corsair's current flagship SSD, the MP510, is priced at 160€, and its 1920 GB variant at 320€. Stateside, the Intel 660p 1 TB PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 NVMe drive is priced at $99.99 on Newegg, although it isn't generally counted as a premium SSD. Its 2 TB variant is priced at $192 on the same site. Nearly all client-segment PCIe gen 4.0 SSDs launched so far are built around the new Phison PS5016-E16 controller.

Last Friday, we reported ASMedia working on new-generation socket AM4 motherboard chipsets that succeed the AMD B450 and A320, which could hopefully offer significantly cheaper alternatives to boards based on the feature-rich AMD X570 chipset. The DigiTimes story we cited was updated to clarify that the chipset only supports PCI-Express gen 3.0, and not the newer PCI-Express gen 4.0. There are two distinct ways of interpreting this information.

One, that motherboards based on B550 and A520 completely lack PCIe gen 4.0, including the main PCI-Express x16 (PEG) slot and the M.2 slot wired to the AM4 SoC; and two, that only the downstream PCIe lanes and the chipset bus are PCIe gen 3.0, while the main PEG slot and M.2 slot from the SoC remain gen 4. We lean toward the latter interpretation being more plausible, that AMD B550 and A520 motherboards will at least feature one PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slot, and one M.2 slot that has PCI-Express 4.0 x4 wiring from the AM4 SoC; while the ASMedia chipset is connected to the SoC over PCI-Express 3.0 x4, and downstream PCIe lanes put out by the chipset are gen 3.0, too. These ASMedia-sourced AMD 500-series chipset motherboards could also implement the latest PCB, CPU VRM, and memory wiring specifications released by AMD that enable CPU and memory overclocking levels unattainable on motherboards based on older chipsets.

If a recent MSRP price-list leak is anything to go by, motherboards based on the AMD X570 chipset will cost a pretty penny, beating even Intel's premium Z390 Express chipset on average motherboard pricing. Those looking for an affordable motherboard for the Ryzen 3000 series processors have the option of choosing existing AMD 400-series chipset based motherboards, and taking advantage of the USB BIOS Flashback feature that's almost universally available on the AMD platform. You lose out on PCI-Express gen 4.0 with the older platforms, which may not be a big compromise when it comes to graphics cards, but would limit your M.2 NVMe SSD performance upgrade path. One possible option would be to wait for affordable variants of AMD's 500-series chipsets, which are sourced from ASMedia.

According to DigiTimes, ASMedia will tape out its next-generation AMD-platform chipset silicon, and is on track to shipping its new chipsets to motherboard manufacturers by Q4-2019. This would pin availability of the first motherboards based on these chipsets to at least Q1 2020. These chipsets not only feature PCI-Express gen 4.0 downstream lanes, but also boards based on these will be built to AMD's PCB requirements for the new platform, enabling a PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slot for discrete graphics, and revised CPU VRM and memory wiring specifications that improve overclocking over the previous generation platform. For now there are two SKUs in the works, the B550, which succeeds the B450, and the A520, succeeding the A320.Image Credit: Hardware.info

AMD X570 is the company's first in-house design desktop motherboard chipset for the AM4 platform. The company sourced earlier generations of chipset from ASMedia. A chipset in context of the AM4 platform only serves to expand I/O connectivity, since an AM4 processor is a full-fledged SoC, with an integrated southbridge that puts out SATA and USB ports directly from the CPU socket, in addition to LPCIO (ISA), HD audio bus, and SPI to interface with the firmware ROM chip. The X470 "Promontory Low Power" chipset runs really cool, with a maximum TDP of 5 Watts, and the ability to lower power to get its TDP down to 3W. The X570, on the other hand, has a TDP of "at least 15 Watts." A majority of the X570 motherboards we've seen at Computex 2019 had active fan-heatsinks over the chipset. We may now have a possible explanation for this - there are just too many things on the chipset.

According to AMD, the X570 chipset by itself can be made to put out a staggering twelve SATA 6 Gbps ports (not counting the two ports put out by the AM4 SoC). A possible rationale behind this may have been to enable motherboard designers to equip every M.2 slot on the motherboard with SATA wiring in addition to PCIe, without needing switches that reroute SATA connection from one of the physical ports. It's also possible that AMD encouraged motherboard designers to not wire out SATA ports from the AM4 SoC as physical ports to save costs on switches, and dedicate one of them to the M.2 slot wired to the SoC. With the two SATA ports from the SoC out of the equation, and every other M.2 slot getting a direct SATA connection from the chipset, motherboard designers can wire out the remaining SATA ports as physical ports, without spending money on switches, or worrying about customer complaints on one of their drives not working due to automatic switching. This is an extreme solution to a rather simple problem.

AMD is on the verge of launching its 3rd generation Ryzen "Matisse" processors that are widely expected to take the performance crown from Intel. At its Computex 2019 reveal, AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su claimed that these processors beat the competition in all areas, including gaming. Motherboard manufacturers threw their weight behind AMD by pulling out their most premium brands for the AMD "Valhalla" desktop platform that consists of these processors, mated with an AMD X570 chipset motherboard. Ahead of its E3 2019 keynote Monday afternoon, Intel has come out with a challenge. Chipzilla dares AMD to beat it in "real-world gaming."

At its "gaming performance for the real world" address in Los Angeles Jon Carvill, VP of marketing, challenged AMD to beat it in real world gaming with its upcoming processors. "So you're going to hear a lot about gaming CPUs this week," he began. "They may or may not come from certain three letter acronyms. That said, here's what I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you to challenge them. If they want this crown come beat us in in real world gaming, real world gaming should be the defining criteria that we use to assess the world's best gaming CPU. I challenge you to challenge anyone that wants to compete for this crown to come meet us in real world gaming. That's the measure that we're going to stand by."

MSI's CEO Charles Chiang, quoted by Tom's Hardware at COMPUTEX 2019, laid out what we were already seeing with motherboard designs from all vendors of AMD's X570-based motherboards: pricing is likely increasing across the board, and AMD's market positioning won't be of the alternative, lower-value brand.

As quoted, Chiang said that ""Lots of people ask me, what do you think about today's AMD? I say today's AMD is completely different company compared to two, three, five years ago. They have nice technology and they are there to put the higher spec with the reasonable pricing. But right now they say, "Hey Charles, let's push to marketing to the higher [end]. So let's sell higher-pricing motherboards, higher-spec motherboards, and let's see what will happen in the market. So I don't think that AMD is the company that wants to sell low cost here, low cost there." Which does make sense: AMD isn't in the position of the underdog anymore -at least technology and product-portfolio wise when it comes to consumer CPUs. With better products, comes a desire for higher margins, and a change in direction for a company that was basically forced to almost cut itself out of the market in terms of profits with its previous, non-competitive CPU designs.

Motherboard vendors are betting big on the success of AMD's "Valhalla" desktop platform that combines a Ryzen 3000-series Zen 2 processor with an AMD X570 chipset motherboard, and have responded with some mighty premium board designs. GIGABYTE deployed its full spectrum of Aorus branding, including Ultra, Elite, ITX Pro, Master, and Xtreme. The X570 I Aorus Pro WiFi mini-ITX motherboard is an impressive feat of engineering despite its designers having to wrestle with the feisty new PCIe gen 4 chipset. It draws power from a combination of 24-pin and 8-pin connectors, and conditions power for the SoC with an impressive 8-phase VRM that uses high-grade PowIRstage components. A rather tall fan-heatsink cools the X570 chipset, with a 30 mm fan.

Connectivity options on the X570 I Aorus Pro WiFi are surprisingly aplenty. The sole expansion slot is a PCI-Express 4.0 x16, but the storage connectivity includes not one, but two M.2-2280 slots (reverse side of the PCB), each with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 and SATA 6 Gbps wiring. Four SATA 6 Gbps ports make for the rest of the storage connectivity. Networking options include 2.4 Gbps 802.11ax WLAN, Bluetooth 5.0 (Intel , and 1 GbE, all pulled by Intel-made controllers. USB connectivity includes six 5 Gbps USB 3.2 gen 1, and two 10 Gbps USB 3.2 gen 2 ports (of which one is type-C), and two 5 Gbps ports by headers. The onboard audio solution has 6-channel analog output, but is backed by a premium Realtek ALC1220VB Enhance CODEC (114 dBA SNR).

With AMD chipset based motherboards like X570 and next-generation Ryzen 3000 series CPUs delivering the 4.0 version of the PCIe protocol for consumers, products based on the faster protocol are bound to take advantage of its improvements - especially in terms of better bandwidth.

At their Computex booth, Gigabyte showed off some pretty impressive results of their PCIe 4.0 based SSD card. The so-called "Auros AIC Gen4 SSD" is a performance monster. It is able to pack up to four PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs that can go up to 2 TB of density each, for a maximum 8 TB total storage. Put them in RAID 0 configuration, though, and you will get some amazing performance numbers. Gigabyte demonstrated speeds exceeding 15 GB/s in sequential reads and writes, providing much more bandwidth than what has ever seen before ina consumer-geared product. The SSD comes with an aluminum shroud with pre-applied thermal pads to facilitate heat dissipation. Additionally, there is a blower fan attached to the card to keep a constant flow of fresh air, which seems like a must if you're packing four M.2 drives inside a tiny aluminum case.

We were pleasantly mistaken when we thought ASRock would stop at the X570 Phantom Gaming X or the X570 Taichi for AMD's new "Valhalla" enthusiast desktop platform. It turns out that they have a roughly-$1,000 monster motherboard in the pipes, called the X570 Aqua. Pictured below, the board is based on a slight variation of the X570 Phantom Gaming X PCB. The biggest change of course is the aluminium shroud that covers most of the board's front side. There's also a metal back-plate.

Beneath the metal shroud is what gives the board its name: a massive liquid-cooling monoblock that cools not just your processor (including heavyweights such as overclocked Ryzen 9 3900X chips), but also the CPU VRM, and the feisty AMD X570 chipset. The coolant channel first goes over the CPU through a large micro-fin lattice, then onto the X570 chipset, and finally over the CPU VRM on its way out. Much like the Phantom Gaming X, this board features daisy-chained dual-channel DDR4 memory slots designed to make the most OC out of 2-module setups.

Colorful always believed in shock-and-awe to market their overengineered graphics cards and motherboards; and the company did not disappoint this Computed. We saw their new iGame RTX 2080 Ti Kudan, a 5-fan monstrosity that could very well be the heaviest graphics card ever built. A triple-slot, triple-fan air-cooler copes with some of the heat from the GPU, all of the heat from the VRM and memory; while most of the heat is dissipated by a closed-loop liquid cooling solution that uses a massive radiator that's almost as big as a standard 360 mm x 120 mm, but only has two 120 mm spinners, and 1/3rd of its body made up of a coolant reservoir and integrated pump. The block over the GPU is entirely metal (both base and top), so it could shed some of its heat onto the card's heatsink. How fast is it? Well, out of the box it's a damp 1545 MHz, but has a "one-click OC" to 1815 MHz.

It looks like SSDs will beat graphics cards to utilizing (and benefiting) from the bandwidth of PCI-Express gen 4.0 bus. AMD X570 platform motherboards offer 2-3 M.2 slots with PCIe gen 4.0 x4 wiring (64 Gbps). Corsair formally launched the MP600, and now ADATA joins the party with its unnamed drive. Based on the Silicon Motion SM2267 controller, the drive comes in an unbelievable capacity of up to 8 TB, probably using 96-layer QLC NAND flash.

The controller features DRAM cache, and dynamic SLC caching (all of the NAND flash is treated as SLC until storage demands force portions of them to be treated as MLC, TLC, and eventually QLC). It takes advantage of NVMe 1.3 protocol. As for performance, ADATA claims sequential speeds of up to 4000 MB/s reads. Such speeds were impossible of PCIe gen 3.0 x4 due to various overheads. Sequential writes are still up to 3000 MB/s. 4K random read/write access is rated at 400k IOPS. The company didn't reveal availability details.

ASRock is ready with its own mini-ITX motherboard based on the AMD X570 chipset, the X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3. This tiny powerhouse one-ups other mini-ITX motherboards in its category by offering 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 connectivity over USB type-C, in addition to USB 3.2. This Thunderbolt port also includes a DP pass-through from your discrete graphics card.

Expansion includes one PCI-Express 4.0 x16. Storage connectivity includes one M.2-2280 with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 and SATA 6 Gbps connectivity; and four SATA 6 Gbps ports. Networking options include 2.4 Gbps 802.11ax WLAN, Bluetooth 5.0, and 1 GbE driven by Intel i211-AT. The board pulls power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors, conditioning it for the SoC with a 6+2 phase VRM. A chunky fan-heatsink cools the chipset, shedding some of its heat to the enlarged VRM heatsink cloaked under the I/O shroud.

CORSAIR , a world leader in PC gaming peripherals and enthusiast components, today unveiled the new CORSAIR Force Series MP600 NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 SSD, one of the world's first PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs compatible with the new AMD X570 chipset, also revealed today. Unleashed by the PCIe 4.0 ready AMD X570 chipset, the MP600 reaches new heights of enthusiast single-drive storage performance, delivering up to 4950MB/sec sequential read - ten times the performance of many SATA SSDs, and fifty times faster than some hard disk drives.

The MP600's phenomenal performance stems from the hugely increased bandwidth of PCIe 4.0 (PCI-Express Generation 4), a feature that will be made available to customers for the first time as part of the AMD X570 chipset and 3rd Generation AMD Ryzen Desktop Processors. Easily fitting into a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, the MP600's NVMe interface and high-density 3D TLC NAND combine with a Phison PS5016-E16 controller to enable a new level of single-drive SSD performance. Boasting up to 4,950MB/s sequential read and 4,250MB/s sequential write speeds, the MP600 is ready to become the storage center of your new 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen Desktop Processor and AMD X570 chipset-based system.

We got a closer look at the Racing X570GT8 from BIOSTAR. This board was already leaked to the web earlier this month. Right off the bat we see an understated design with a predictable layout. The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, 8-pin EPS, and 4-pin ATX power connectors, and uses a 12-phase VRM design. Expansion slots include two PCI-Express 4.0 x16, a third gen 4.0 x16 (electrical gen 4.0 x4), and three other gen 4.0 x1 slots. Storage connectivity includes three M.2 NVMe 64 Gbps slots. Overclocker-friendly features include POST code readout, onboard buttons, and USB BIOS Flashback. The board's sole 1 GbE interface is driven by an Intel i211-AT controller. The onboard audio solution is powered by an ALC1220 CODEC. Expect this board to be priced around $170.

ASRock came to Computex 2019 with a fairly big selection of socket AM4 motherboards based on the AMD X570 chipset. The lineup is led by the X570 Taichi, launched as a single SKU and not differentiated into an "Ultimate" variant. ASRock retains the characteristic gearwheel style along the board's styling. Almost the entire bottom half of the board is covered by a metal shroud that spreads heat from the chipset heatsink, and three M.2 SSDs. The chipset heatsink's fan is concealed behind a grille to not look like an eyesore. New generation connectivity options from this board include 2.5 GbE wired + 2.4 Gbps 802.11ax WLAN, and USB 3.2 ports. The Taichi looks a little less understated than its predecessors, with more RGB LED embellishments.

We also spied the X570 Steel Legend, with its polarizing "urban camo" print, and bright metal meatsinks and I/O shrouds. The Steel Legend series motherboards command interesting sub-$200 price-points, and it will be interesting to see where this one lands. You get two M.2 NVMe slots, both with metal heatsinks, an M.2 E-key slot, open-ended x1 slots, and a reasonably powerful ALC1220-based onboard audio solution. We also spotted two Phantom Gaming products, the X570 Phantom Gaming X, and the X570 Phantom Gaming 4, with the Gaming X being the company's flagship X570 offering. This board maxes out the platform's connectivity with three M.2 NVMe slots, 802.11ax WLAN, 2.5 GbE wired networking, an additional 1 GbE interface driven by an Intel controller, USB 3.2, and a strong 16-phase VRM powering the AM4 socket. Like most other ASRock boards, the fan ventilating the chipset heatsink is concealed behind a grille.

With motherboard vendors going big on the AMD "Valhalla" platform (a combination of 3rd generation Ryzen processor and AMD X570 chipset), we got to see MSI pull out every single high-end motherboard label it has, including MEG GODLIKE and MEG Creation. We sneaked into the MSI booth to take some snaps of the other X570 boards, including a close-up of the MEG X570 Ace, and three other MPG series boards. The MEG X570 Ace is largely carved out of the MEG X570 GODLIKE with a little toning down of the style and features. This is still a formidable board built for serious manual overclocking. We also get the sense that MSI is replacing its "Gaming M7" moniker with MEG Ace in its product stack, as we couldn't find an "X570 Gaming M7" anywhere.

With the MEG GODLIKE and MEG Creation expected to be priced north of $300, the MEG X570 Ace could be priced around the $260-mark. Positioned below it around $200-220, is the MPG X570 Gaming Pro Carbon. This board offers everything you need to build a super high-end rig where the focus is on gaming. It has decent CPU overclocking chops, too. The onboard audio and networking features are premium, and we expect MSI to deploy 802.11ax Wi-Fi. The new MPG X570 Gaming Edge is a lighter variant of the Gaming Pro Carbon, and is largely based on the same PCB. If you don't care all that much about board design, the MPG Gaming Edge is the way to go, with its roughly-$180 price. The MPG X570 Gaming Plus is a cost-effective product, and has all of the essentials gamers need for this platform. It is expected to go for around $150.

ASUS at a private pre-Computex event gave us a closer look at a treasure of upcoming products. The star-attractions, however, were its AMD X570 motherboard family that's spread across nearly every brand: ROG Crosshair, ROG Strix, TUF Gaming, Prime, and for the very first time for the AM4 platform, the WS series. The crown jewel of course is the mini-ITX form-factor product, the ROG Strix X570-I Gaming. This board is quite an engineering feat considering the ≥15 Watts TDP of the X570 chipset, which requires active cooling in most cases. An intricate network of heatsinks suspended along heat-pipes leading up to a dense aluminium fin-stack ventilated by a 30 mm fan, cools both the chipset and CPU VRM. ASUS designed this board to handle even the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X, but we don't expect too much overclocking headroom.

AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su at her 2019 Computex keynote address announced the 3rd generation Ryzen desktop processor family, which leverages the company's Zen 2 microarchitecture, and are built on the 7 nm silicon fabrication process at TSMC. Designed for the AM4 CPU socket, with backwards compatibility for older AMD 300-series and 400-series chipset motherboards, these processors are multi-chip modules of up to two 8-core "Zen 2" CPU chiplets, and a 14 nm I/O controller die that packs the dual-channel DDR4 memory controller and PCI-Express gen 4.0 root complex, along with some SoC connectivity. AMD claims an IPC increase of 15 percent over Zen 1, and higher clock speeds leveraging 7 nm, which add up to significantly higher performance over the current generation. AMD bolstered the core's FPU (floating-point unit), and doubled the cache sizes.

AMD unveiled three high-end SKUs for now, the $329 Ryzen 7 3700X, the $399 Ryzen 7 3800X, and the $499 Ryzen 9 3900X. The 3700X and 3800X are 8-core/16-thread parts with a single CPU chiplet. The 3700X is clocked at 3.60 GHz with 4.40 GHz maximum boost frequency, just 65 Watts TDP and will be beat Intel's Core i7-9700K both at gaming and productivity. The 3800X tops that with 3.90 GHz nominal, 4.50 GHz boost, 105W TDP, and beat the Core i9-9900K at gaming and productivity. AMD went a step further at launched the new Ryzen 9 brand with the 3900X, which is a 12-core/24-thread processor clocked at 3.80 GHz, which 4.60 boost, 72 MB of total cache, 105W TDP, and performance that not only beats the i9-9900K, but also the i9-9920X 12-core/24-thread HEDT processor despite two fewer memory channels. AMD focused on gaming performance with Zen 2, with wider FPU, improved branch prediction, and several micro-architectural improvements contributing to a per-core performance that's higher than Intel's. The processors go on sale on 7/7/2019.

With AMD expected to launch its 3rd generation Ryzen processor family at the 2019 Computex, the show is expected to have unveilings of several compatible motherboards based on the new AMD X570 chipset. ASUS posted a collage picture that teases its upcoming X570 lineup. This appears to include boards from pretty much all of ASUS's brands, including the high-end ROG Crosshair, the upper mainstream ROG Strix, the mainstream TUF Gaming, and the sober Prime series. From this, the ROG Strix board appears to be the first one we've come across that doesn't use a fan-heatsink to cool the 15W TDP X570 chipset. The Ryzen 3000 "Matisse" processor and X570 chipset make up AMD's "Valhalla" desktop platform.

AMD X570 is the company's first in-house design socket AM4 motherboard chipset, with the X370 and X470 chipsets being originally designed by ASMedia. With the X570, AMD hopes to leverage new PCI-Express gen 4.0 connectivity of its Ryzen 3000 Zen2 "Matisse" processors. The desktop platform that combines a Ryzen 3000 series processor with X570 chipset is codenamed "Valhalla." A rough platform diagram like what you'd find in motherboard manuals surfaced on ChipHell, confirming several features. To maintain pin-compatibility with older generations of Ryzen processors, Ryzen 3000 has the same exact connectivity from the SoC except two key differences.

On the AM4 "Valhalla" platform, the SoC puts out a total of 28 PCI-Express gen 4.0 lanes. 16 of these are allocated to PEG (PCI-Express graphics), configurable through external switches and redrivers either as single x16, or two x8 slots. Besides 16 PEG lanes, 4 lanes are allocated to one M.2 NVMe slot. The remaining 4 lanes serve as the chipset bus. With X570 being rumored to support gen 4.0 at least upstream, the chipset bus bandwidth is expected to double to 64 Gbps. Since it's an SoC, the socket is also wired to LPCIO (SuperIO controller). The processor's integrated southbridge puts out two SATA 6 Gbps ports, one of which is switchable to the first M.2 slot; and four 5 Gbps USB 3.x ports. It also has an "Azalia" HD audio bus, so the motherboard's audio solution is directly wired to the SoC. Things get very interesting with the connectivity put out by the X570 chipset.Update May 21st: There is also information on the X570 chipset's TDP.
Update May 23rd: HKEPC posted what looks like an official AMD slide with a nicer-looking platform map. It confirms that AMD is going full-tilt with PCIe gen 4, both as chipset bus, and as downstream PCIe connectivity.