Press outlets have spotted two new B650M motherboard models on ASRock's product site; the B650M Pro X3D and B650M Pro X3D WiFi (6E). According to the manufacturer's descriptions, both are advertised as: "optimized for AMD Ryzen X3D processors, delivering superior stability, compatibility, and enhanced performance, making it ideal for gaming and creating." The "Pro X3D" SKUs have not launched at retail, so pricing information is not available at the time of writing. ASRock could publish a dedicated press release in the near future, but we are looking at a very quiet reveal. Curiously, the Taiwan-based motherboard and graphics card specialist has seemingly "downcycled" its fairly new B850M Pro "Race Sport" RS board design.

VideoCardz's coverage of the Pro X3D series includes a handy image comparison tool. When lined up against each other (visually), the B650M Pro X3D and B850M Pro RS designs are nigh identical. Two of the images (below) show a minor difference in printed-on model names. As expected, the ASRock website comparison tool reveals only minor disparities between respective specification sheets. The standard B850M Pro RS variant is currently on sale for $148 (normally $180). The B650M Pro X3D (non-WiFi 6E) equivalent could arrive at retail with a slightly lower price point. ASRock has signalled that its "Pro X3D" mainboard series will only be available within certain regions. According to VideoCardz, a comprehensive global rollout is not planned.

MSI introduced an impressive number of new AMD B850 and B840 chipset-based motherboards at January's CES trade event. According to a Wccftech report, the company's AM5—socketed lineup will expand in the near future—a leaked presentation slide provides an early preview of (allegedly) incoming budget-friendly offerings. MSI's leaked roadmap (Q1 to Q2 2025) shows new additions—mostly smaller form factor—across performance (MPG) and Pro Series product ranges. Their Arsenal Gaming (MAG) B850 range seems to be fully released, as of the first quarter of this year—consisting of models already unveiled at CES.

Five new models are seemingly lined up for release within the next couple of months—the Wccftech article listed the following SKUs: MPG B850I Edge WIFI (Mini-ITX), PRO B850M-P WIFI (M-ATX), PRO B850M-B (M-ATX), B850 Gaming PLUS WIFI PZ (ATX) and PRO B850M-A WIFI PZ (M-ATX). The publication commented on its discoveries: "as you can see, MSI will have at least one new variant within the MPG lineup which will feature a Mini-ITX design. The company has already released the full ATX-sized version of the EDGE TI WIFI, and it's nice to know that we will get a Mini-ITX variant too." The report proposes that MSI has prepped its new budget models with the latest connectivity features—most notably, Wi-Fi 7 rated at the full 320 MHz band. Support for Zen 4 and 5 Ryzen X3D CPUs is expected upon launch.

We're happy to share that DeepComputing's DC-ROMA RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13 is now in stock and shipping in the Framework Marketplace. This is very much a developer-focused board to help accelerate maturing the software ecosystem around RISC-V, so we recommend waiting for future RISC-V products if you're looking for a consumer-ready experience. We shared more detail on the Mainboard in an earlier blog post and video, but as a quick summary, this is powered by a StarFive JH7110 processor that uses the open source RISC-V ISA. The team at DeepComputing designed it to drop directly into a Framework Laptop 13 chassis or Cooler Master Mainboard Case. They have published setup guides for the hardware and for installing Ubuntu and Fedora.

To make it easier to jump into using a new partner-developed Mainboard or reusing an old one, we're also introducing the Framework Laptop 13 Shell today. This is a complete Framework Laptop 13 chassis with everything except for the Mainboard, memory, storage, and Wi-Fi. We're eager to continue making Framework products excellent platforms to extend on. Modularity and open source documentation is good for everyone!

Phanteks took the Computex 2024 show by force, showing off several new and improved cases, including the new Evolv X², the Eclipse G400A and G400N, which are successors to the P400 line, upgraded NV5 MKII and NV9 MKII cases, and the new Enthoo Pro II Server Edition XL case for the server market.

The star of the show is definitely the new Evolv X², a case that Phanteks says is redefined to fit modern consumer needs. It certainly has the modern and refined aesthetic to appeal to the wider audience, with brushed aluminium interior panels and full front to side glass panel. Some of the key features include integrated cable management, key fan positions to cool down and show off most hardware components, as well as support for rear-connector mainboard, something that most modern motherboards will have.

AEWIN provides a series of performant Network Appliances and Edge Server powered by single AMD Zen 4c EPYC 8004 processor codenamed Siena. The latest AMD Siena CPU is produced with 5 nm manufacturing technology to have up to 64 cores (extreme density of 2CCX/CCD) and 225 W TDP with lower energy consumption compared to EPYC SP5. Siena SP6 CPU has the best performance per watt and is with the support of rich I/O and CXL 1.1.

SCB-1945 (1U) and SCB-1947A (2U) are two performant Network Appliances supporting 12x DDR5 sockets and 4x/8x PCIe Gen 5 slots for AEWIN self-design NICs with 1G to 100G copper/fiber interfaces (with/without bypass function) or other accelerators and NVMe SSDs. Both models provide the flexibility to change 2x front panel PCIe slots to 1x PCIe x16 slot for installing off-the-shelf add-on card for additional functions required. It can support 400G NIC card installed such as NVIDIA Mellanox PCIe 5.0 NIC.

MSI released an intriguing AMI BIOS update on January 31 for their Intel 700 and 600 chipset mainboards—hardware tipster chi11eddog noticed this quiet announcement and proceeded to get his Z790 Carbon MAX WIFI motherboard running on beta version 7D89v1B1. This preliminary release enables "capacity support up to 256 GB" for DDR5 Memory—chi11eddog noted that you previously had to jump through several hoops to get this configuration in working order: "As per a friend in the industry, before this, it needs to disable Above 4G/Resizable BAR/remapping to support 256 GB on Intel systems. MSI has fixed this. No need to disable Above 4G/Resizable Bar."

His MSI Z790 test platform featured an Intel Core i9-14900K CPU and 256 GB (4 x 64 GB) DDR5-4800 of memory—Wccftech's reportage proposes some extra tests: "it would be interesting to see what the maximum speeds are supported when using high-capacity memory kits but for those who prefer capacity over speed, well the solutions are now out there." The Compression Attached Memory Module (CAMM) standard has been adopted by the laptop memory segment, and manufacturers are believed to be transferring technological innovations to desktop form factors. Upcoming 64 GB DDR5 modules offer twice the capacity over the best previous-gen solutions. The proliferation of non-binary DIMM kits—from 24 to 48 GB—in 2023 brought (total) desktop memory capacities to a maximum of 192 GB.

Yesterday we pre-announced that we're developing an SD Expansion Card. Normally we don't announce a product until we've fully locked the feature-set, brought up the necessary suppliers and manufacturing environment, completed most of the engineering and a substantial level of testing and validation, and are on a high confidence path to a specific release date at a specific price. This is because development of brand new products requires charting a course into the unknown. We set a target for what the product will be from the start, but as we proceed and learn, we often need to adjust the schedule, scope, and cost, and sometimes even need to outright pause or cancel development. Announcing just before shipping is how most companies operate to reduce churn and public uncertainty, but it means the product development process ends up extremely opaque.

We decided we're going to treat this one product on our roadmap a little differently. A full-size SD Expansion Card is consistently the most requested Expansion Card by the community, which makes it a great one to open up. We're just at the start of the process now, and Hyelim on our Marketing team is creating a new YouTube series to share updates and insights as we go through the New Product Introduction (NPI) process. Take a look at the first video (below) and let us know what you think as we complete (or don't complete) the product.