I Got This MYSTERY Motherboard From Reddit - AMD Z490

Instead of the trash, this confusing engineering sample motherboard found its way to China, then Reddit, and now our office! Let’s take a look at what it offers… and learn why AMD cancelled it!

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:21 AMD what now?
2:56 Let's build a PC with it
4:13 The secret sauce
6:41 Quirks & features
7:47 Das boot & Windows
9:55 What's in a name?
10:47 It works! Why cancel it?
12:25 Outro

[LinusTechTips]

Correction: the PLX chip on this motherboard is in fact a switch, not a multiplexer! A switch grants the possibility of using more than one device simultaneously, versus one at a time on a multiplexer. Also: all of the motherboards in the intro were taken from our pile of broken hardware - no PC components were damaged in the filming of this video!

[TRLTheRandomLab]

I'm old enough to remember when motherboards and their chipsets could take any socket-compatible x86 CPU from any vendor. Not just Intel and AMD either, but Cyrix and VIA too.

[DukeMadeBaits]

Engineering samples tell a massive story on the dev process of all the wacky ideas that could one day be in our pcs. LOVE IT !!

[BlackHoleForge]

I think it's about time we took the lid off the black bios box. I hope you guys and gals can do a video on how they make a bios, and what actually goes into engineering and designing them.

[ethans]

Man its been a while since we've had a motherboard video! Throwback to the old days of countless identical motherboard reviews, still loved it.

[olioxx]

The PEX8714 that's in that board is in fact a PCIe switch not a multiplexer. It has 12 lanes across 5 ports, which means you can put 3 4x ports downstream on a single x4 upstream port, for instance effectively adding in 2 extra x4 slots. A multiplexer would only let you use one device at a time, while they can work simultaneously on a switch. In my knowledge there are only 2 current gen manufacturers of PCIe switches Broadcom (owner of PLX) and Microchip (bought microsemi) Diodes incorporated also makes some Gen 2 and 3 switches but with lower lane counts compared to the big 2.

[Just_a_commenter]

Seeing those boards tumble out of that bin was just... pain. But a good hook, so credit where it's due!

[Archmage]

Fun thing: Aorus Master is the replacement name for the Aorus Gaming 7. Gaming 7 actually has the old Z370 era design, meanwhile Z390 already dropped the number naming scheme and switched to Elite < (maybe a Pro) < (maybe an Ultra) < Master < Xtreme

[thelynxdr]

What a perfect time to refresh so i can have something to watch.

[davidGA殿]

2:06 Who recorded that footage, I almost got a heart attack.
I’m amazed at how YouTubers can make such long videos based on very basic premises, like this random board that’s the same but with just an extra chip. It’s a cool piece of tech history tho.

[ctrlectrld]

I wonder how many people are spotting the audio edit on Linus' voice at 10:41, where the editor slapped "AMD" on top of Intel. Actually you can still hear a little piece of Intel's "i" right before "AMD".

[KawaiiMAS]

2:05 that made me die inside a little... I hope those poor pins are okay :(

[coalfactorys]

man hearing 300-350 for a motherboard sounds so good today compared to the $500+ boards we see for current gen stuff

[vitor]

You could try to add the missing CPU microcodes to the BIOS and it may be able to boot with 3Gen+
While there are a bunch of software tools that can mod AM4 BIOSes they require a decent amount of knowledge about BIOS modding to be used.

[n.stephan]

I've got an AM4 Gigabyte motherboard (Vision D or something like that) and the reason your last PCIe slot doesn't work may simply be, because it's shared with one of the NVME slots.

[davidb]

Would have been nice to see what the performance was for the various M.2 about individually and concurrently to see how the PLX multiplexing affected them.

[TechnoBabble]

I'm sad that more companies don't still use multiplexers. I remember my old P8Z77 WS allowing for four 8x PCIe slots on an Ivy Bridge chip. Like Linus mentioned, no extra bandwidth, but it allows for more devices that require a minimum number of lanes to be connected.

[williamnessanbaum]

13:03 I recognize those massive concrete columns. That Microcenter is at Liberty Square Industrial Park, in Brooklyn, NY.

[Dzone]

Man Linus doesn't always get it right but the dude knows how to express his passion for topics that he truly loves and is a genius at simplifying technologies just enough so it becomes accessible information to the majority of viewers. It's really quite impressive, even if he's a clumsy idiot 90% of the time.

[AlexForencich]

That PLX chip is a PCIe switch, not a mux. Mux chips are quite common; they are what enables the dynamic switching between a single x16 slot and two x8 slots on most motherboards.