Ryzen 5000 series is now available on X370 & B350 motherboards.
Finally, support for Ryzen 5000 series CPUs has been added to older 300 series motherboards, all thanks to a new experimental BIOS update.
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Do you own an X370 or B350 motherboard? Well, you’re in luck. AMD has announced that the 300 series of motherboards will be gaining support for AMD’s latest and greatest CPU line-up, the Ryzen 5000 series.
This support will include the up and coming 5800X3D as this is still a 5000 series processor based on the AM4 platform. Some motherboard manufacturers have toyed with the idea of providing advanced support for the 5000 series of Ryzen CPUs, such as ASRock.
ASRock offered support on its flagship 300 series chipset, the X370. However, we no longer have to worry about exclusive per manufacturer support, as this update will be available to every 300 series motherboard.
If you’d like to know more about the up-and-coming AMD Zen 4 or AM5 socket, we have dedicated pieces on those.
We wouldn’t recommend throwing a top-of-the-line Ryzen 5950X in a very budget A320 motherboard. The most notable reason is performance – you won’t be able to run the CPU anywhere near its maximum potential, due to the outdated technology on the motherboard. And you’ll be missing support for some hefty features like PCIe 4.0.
This update opens the door to you and all other budget orientated gamers. Say you bought a 1700X back in the day. Now if you so wish, you could drop in a 3700X without skipping a beat. Unless of course, you have an A320 chipset motherboard.
For some unknown reason, either due to preferences or hardware/software incompatibilities, support for 3000 series Ryzen processors will not be added to A320 motherboards at this time. Although that may change in the future.
Why the change now?
Interesting question. We believe AMD chose now to add the new support to older motherboards, because it will benefit the sales of the new 5800X3D it will be launching on April 20.
The state of the world is tough right now and this affects sales of every kind globally. Making the CPU available to even more people makes perfect sense.
The BIOS
The BIOS update itself is as straightforward as any other, you just want to make sure you’re grabbing the right version of the AGESA update, version 1.2.0.7.
The exact name of the BIOS will differ depending on the motherboard manufacturer supplying it. You can check a BIOS’ AGESA version in the support tab for that BIOS.
