Ryzen Release Thread

[SteelCrysis]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/msi-am...39593.html

The arrival of AMD's Ryzen 3000 series CPUs brings more multi-threaded heft to the mainstream desktop and sweet new technologies like PCIe 4.0. Unfortunately, according to what we learned in an interview with MSI CEO Charles Chiang and from other vendors at Computex 2019, the platform will also bring higher pricing for the next series of AMD motherboards. As a result, X570 motherboard pricing could be similar to Intel's expensive Z390 motherboards, if not higher. In fact, even the lowest-end X570 boards could cost more than most previous-gen X470 boards, though Chiang stressed that pricing decisions are still not finalized.
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The heightened motherboard pricing also stems from several other factors. Chiang told us that PCIe 4.0, which requires more power, complicates design and requires faster switches, which will "contribute a lot of cost on the motherboard." We already know that, courtesy of PCIe 4.0, AMD's chipset has also increased power consumption to above 10W, which is a big jump from the previous-gen's ~3.5W.

Chiang said that means most X570 motherboards will come with active cooling via a fan, sometimes paired with a heatpipe that extends to the beefier VRM coolers. So far we know of only one announced X570 board with passive chipset cooling, Gigabyte's top-end X570 Aorus Xtreme. Like other vendors we saw at the show, MSI is also beefing up its power circuitry with more phases, which ultimately requires more cooling and adds another layer of cost to the equation.

"So, technology-wise the cost will be higher because of that. And then from the market strategy-wise, AMD also want to put that in higher segmentation. So, it's a situation. You can really expect this motherboard pricing will [have] a lot of gap between the X470s and 570s," Chiang said.

Chiang noted that X470 motherboards will remain in the market and could serve as the value alternative, and when asked how long MSI intends to keep producing them, Chiang responded, "Will X470 stay in the market? It's good question. It depends on the price gap. If the price gap [is] there, people still looking for reasonable pricing, they might go for X470."