You can sign up to get a daily email of our articles, see the Mailing List page.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

AMD Zen 3 will work with older 400 Series motherboards

By - | Views: 12,864

AMD recently announced that for Zen 3, it wouldn't work on older motherboard chipsets but they've taken on feedback and found a way around it.

In a post on Reddit, an official AMD employee gave a detailed answer on their new plans and they said clearly that they will be working with motherboard vendors on this. Thankfully this means for the next generation Zen 3, AMD B450 and X470 motherboards will be supported.

Our experience has been that large-scale BIOS upgrades can be difficult and confusing especially as processors come on and off the support lists. As the community of Socket AM4 customers has grown over the past three years, our intention was to take a path forward that provides the safest upgrade experience for the largest number of users. However, we hear you loud and clear when you tell us you would like to see B450 or X470 boards extended to the next generation “Zen 3” products.

Before getting too excited and popping open a bottle of the good stuff, do keep in mind it's not going to be easy and there's plenty of caveats as they outlined. Including: it will be a one-way upgrade, it will disable support for other CPUs and they plan to only offer it to "verified customers" of 400 series motherboard who have purchased a Zen 3 processor when they become available. They said it's their plan to reduce people getting into a "no-boot situation".

Obviously they're also going to only recommend the latest AMD 500 Series motherboards "for the best performance and features with our new CPUs". There's a lot of details they're working on towards this and they've started the planning with a promise of more blog style posts when the time comes closer.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: AMD, Hardware
20 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
8 comments

Arehandoro May 19, 2020
Great for AMD. Considering the process to update will require CPU purchase verification, I'd like to see a graph in the future with how many actually end up updating to Zen 3 without updating MoBo after so much racket the last days...


Last edited by Arehandoro on 19 May 2020 at 8:53 pm UTC
lejimster May 19, 2020
B350 user here, I have a hard tube water cooling setup, so I was hoping to just drop in a 8 core Zen 3 no fuss. Love the look of hard tubing, but not ideal for quick or simple upgrades when you're changing over too much hardware


Last edited by lejimster on 19 May 2020 at 6:50 pm UTC
dpanter May 19, 2020
I laughed a little upon hearing the news. Then I sighed as I realized this will inevitably cause problems in the coming years. Oh well.

Anyone think AMD learned something this time?
cusa123 May 19, 2020
"I trusted when you were sinking x370 Amd ryzen 4000."
__xdbc May 20, 2020
Quoting: dpanterI laughed a little upon hearing the news. Then I sighed as I realized this will inevitably cause problems in the coming years. Oh well.

Anyone think AMD learned something this time?
What problems?
Guppy May 20, 2020
Quoting: dpanterI laughed a little upon hearing the news. Then I sighed as I realized this will inevitably cause problems in the coming years. Oh well.

Anyone think AMD learned something this time?

Other than the used marked for B450 boards becoming a minefield I fail to see what problems this will cause.
soulsource May 20, 2020
Quoting: Guppy
Quoting: dpanterI laughed a little upon hearing the news. Then I sighed as I realized this will inevitably cause problems in the coming years. Oh well.

Anyone think AMD learned something this time?

Other than the used marked for B450 boards becoming a minefield I fail to see what problems this will cause.

I have doubts about the average user's ability to understand the term "one-way upgrade".
QuoteI installed this one-way upgrade, and now my old CPU does no longer boot! I demand to speak to the manager!
dpanter May 20, 2020
:|

I highly recommend grabbing Gamers Nexus (currently) 3 part Youtube series on this whole debacle. Even with their hard work and excellent investigating, there's plenty questions left unanswered at this time. Some of my thoughts below are addressed in these vids, at least partly, while some cannot currently be answered.


A couple quick thoughts...

What about the current stock of motherboards which can support Zen3 with a BIOS update, but won't support it out of the box, and cannot boot with a Zen3 CPU?

Will AMD once more eat the cost of shipping upgrade kits? Gamers Nexus mentioned that not all kits they shipped last time returned.

The used 400 series motherboard market is quite correctly heading for nightmare territory. You better hope the seller supplies correct information, or sells working mobo+CPU combo.

What happens if the an update fails mid-flash or there's a power outage, etc?

Good luck trying to troubleshoot a non-booting board with unknown BIOS version.

What will the RMA situation be like?

Will you void your warranty by doing, or even attempting the Zen3 upgrade?

How much risk is there of bricking your board?

Will downgrades be possible at all?

Can BIOS Flashback save the day?

If you download the non-Zen3 version later on and try flashing it on a Zen3 upgraded 400 board, what then? Error message, brick, or stuck with a board which can only boot with a pre-Zen3 CPU?
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.