Introduction

Over this past year, AMD has made huge strides in reclaiming the market share it has been losing to Intel over the past decade. The launch of the Ryzen line of processors finally gave AMD the foothold it needed to pull itself back into relevance. The rise of AMD stock may not directly excite many gamers or enthusiast, but the products that fueled that rise certainly caught the attention of many. AMD has now launched their refresh of the original Ryzen processor line, the Ryzen 2000 series. AMD has for quite some time now been a paragon of backwards compatibility, for which they have received well-deserved praise. The launch of the latest Ryzen CPUs should be no exception, but today, I will put that to the test.

ASRock, whose flagship X470 Taichi Ultimate was the first to put my Ryzen 5 2600X through its paces, has a not-quite-so-new board for me to test today: the ASRock AB350M Pro4. The ASRock AB350M Pro4 is based around AMD's B350 chipset and built into the Micro ATX form factor. This board's small dimensions as well as its price are deceptive as the ASRock AB350M Pro4 boasts many of the features and accommodations I would expect from a full fledged X470 board. Dual M.2 slots, AMD Quad CrossFire support, full overclocking support, 7.1 channel audio, and USB Type-C are just a few of these standout features on the ASRock AB350M Pro4.

The Pro4 is priced at less than a third of the MSRP of ASRock's own X470 flagship, the ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate. The Taichi Ultimate has some pretty impressive inclusions, such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet and some killer aesthetics, but the most mainstream features are present on both boards. On paper, the ASRock AB350M Pro4 seems like an irresistible bargain, but specification sheets can be misleading, and the truth won't be clear until the board meets the bench. Armed with this board, I shall attempt to find out if you really can fully enjoy the performance of AMD Ryzen processors without the cost of a high-end X470 flagship.

Specifications