Asrock A320M Pro4

[Dirk Broer]

I bought my first AM4 board today, an Asrock A320M Pro4.
Why this board?

• it is cheap (so I have money left for other things).
• it has four RAM slots, so I can expand the RAM in the future (up to 64 GB).
• it has two PS/2 ports, so connecting to my KVM switch is easy.
• it has two M2 ports, so connecting new, high speed SSDs is no issue.
• it has no RGB lighting, as I have a crunching farm -I'm not the local Coney Island annex.
• it fits all present AM4 CPUs and APUs (up to and including 95 Watt TDP ones).

I bought 16 GB Crucial Ballistics Sport DDR4 240 MHz RAM sticks (2x 8GB)
-mostly because that it the max speed an AMD APU of the Bristol Ridge generation supports, but the colo(u)rs of the sticks go well with the board too.

And last, but not least, the total and utter king of cool AMD Excavator APU-ness: The 35 Watt TDP AMD A12-9800E.

My next purchase -with a little care your euro goes a long way!- will be an Asrock AB350M Pro4 with a Raven Ridge APU, the quad-core/octo thread Ryzen 5 2400G
-a mbo/cpu combination that should be even better the new A320 board.

First out goes the old and trusty FM1 A6-3500 triple-core, that was a stand-in for my Core2Q-8200 after its mobo died.
I will give the Core2Q-8200 to my daughter, as a replacement for her Core2-5300. Perhaps she can even use the RAM too.

Second out goes a FM1 A8-3850, that was a stand-in for my i7-3770 after its mobo died.
I will give the i7-3770 to my son, as he also crunches under my account -presently with my old i3-2100.

After that I am all AMD, as far as X86-based crunchers go. Only the wife and the kids use Intel -which might change when I build a new, silent PC for my wife, using an AMD SOC.