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CES 2017: AMD Announces High Performance Ecosystem for Ryzen CPUs

By Joseph Bradford
Published on: 19:05 PST, Jan 4, 2017

AMD’s recently unveiled its Ryzen CPUs last month, and with the Consumer Electronic Show (CES 2017) happening in Las Vegas, the company further announced the ecosystem that consumers can expect to see once the CPU goes to market. At CES 2017, AMD have announced, via a press release, sixteen “cutting-edge” AM4 motherboards, PC designs for the Ryzen CPU from seventeen separate system makers, as well as new third-party cooler designs. The company touts this “robust” ecosystem as a way of supporting gamers, enthusiasts, and creators right at Ryzen’s highly anticipated launch.

The new AM4 motherboards were debuted today from makers ASRock, Asus, Biostar, Gigabyte, and MSI. The motherboards are all built upon Ryzen’s two upcoming chipsets: X370 and the X300. According to AMD, the X370 chipset-based motherboards are designed for those who need performance, cutting-edge features and superior I/O connectivity. These motherboards also support overclocking and dual graphics.

The X300 chipset-based motherboards support performance in a more compact size, giving players the ability to make AMD Ryzen-ready mini-ITX PCs for smaller PCs. Both the X300 and X370 Ryzen motherboards will support technology features such as:

  • Dual-channel DDR4 RAM
  • NVMe
  • M.2 SATA Drives
  • USB 3.1 Gen 1 and Gen 2
  • PCIe 3.0 Capabilities

AMD also unveiled “dream PCs” built with AMD Ryzen in mind. AMD didn’t reveal any pricing or exactly when these PCs would be available in the announcement, however. These PCs range from AMD Ryzen equipped water-cooled solutions or a standard air-cooled PC from makers such as:

  • Caseking
  • CSL – Computer
  • CyberPower PC
  • Cybertron PC
  • Icoda
  • IBUYPOWER
  • iPason Wuhan
  • Komplett
  • LDLC
  • Maingear
  • Mayn Wihan
  • Medion AG
  • Oldi
  • Origin PC
  • Overclockers UK
  • PC Specialist

AMD also announced that they are working with top cooler makers to create many aftermarket CPU cooling solutions, giving PC building enthusiasts a vast array of choices when deciding how to best cool their Ryzen CPU. AMD made special mention of Noctua, makers of some of the best CPU coolers on the market at the moment, the Noctua will offer its NH-D15 system as well as the NH-U12S. Additionally, EKWB will support AM4 with its custom water cooling kits.

It’s nice to see a full suite of PC makers giving their consumers the option of Ryzen once the CPU launches this year. While it’s nothing new either to see this at the launch of a new product such as a CPU, having this much support at its launch makes for a healthy breadth of options for people to choose from as well. Consumer choice is never a bad thing in the end.

AMD Ryzen was first teased as “Zen,” AMD’s high-end answer to Intel’s CPU designs. The company officially unveiled what Ryzen can do last month, when it showed off the first bits of information regarding the company’s new flagship CPU. Pitting the Ryzen CPU running at 3.4 Ghz against Intel’s top-level Core i7-6900K at its stock 3.2Ghz, the Ryzen CPU held its own, showing it can meet the Intel head to head in many applications. While this was in a controlled environment and obviously should be taken as such, AMD challenged viewers at home and in the audience last month to test their own CPUs against Ryzen’s benchmarks. Ryzen will sport a base clock speed of 3.4 Ghz or higher, at launch, be an 8-core 16-thread CPU with 20 MB of L2 and L3 cache.

AMD haven’t given exact details on when Ryzen will officially hit shelves, but it does mention that the Ryzen-based PCs, the AM4 motherboards and compatible cooling units will all be expected to be available Q1 2017.

[Featured Image byTweak Town Press Release]

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