AMD Ryzen 7000 Series – The ULTIMATE Guide!

Compatibility

Now, while AMD have made transitioning as easy as they can, and in the past we’ve seen boards sporting DDR2 and DDR3 on the same board, this time we have no such luck and as we move to AM5, we see a farewell to DDR4, as unlike Intel, we won’t be seeing any DDR4 based AM5 boards and across all 4 series of boards, we will only have support for DDR5, which brings me onto what was my biggest concern.

For those of you who remember, AMD’s initial Ryzen launch saw its biggest problems revolving around DDR4 memory support. So much so, that memory had to be meticulously tested and branded with a Ryzen compatible sticker. Something that Intel seemed to have got right on every platform. So with the move to DDR5, I want to admit, I was a bit worried, but after talking to AMD directly at the ASUS motherboard launch at Gamescom (video is on Youtube, so definitely check that out) they put my mind at ease and this has now been double confirmed through the announcement, especially with the likes of AMD EXPO technology which allows for 1 click memory overclocking.

Considering the price of DDR5 which still demands a premium over DDR4, we’ve had our fair share of kits pass through our offices that can overclock beyond your wildest dreams, so for those who are budget conscious, this may be the way forward if wanting to go with the latest platform, without spending unnecessarily and instead, spending less and just overclocking with ease. How easy this will be in practice and how many kits will be supported at launch is still a mystery, but time will tell.

For now, with the fact that more DDR5 kits are available than ever before due to the time it’s had on Intel’s Alder Lake platform, I’m hopeful that any memory issues won’t be nearly as bad as we saw on original Ryzen. At least we can hope.

Storage

Now with the talk of PCI-Express 5, the main crux of it will come down to storage, which is said to offer, in the beginning, speeds of around 13,000MB/s read and 12,000MB/s write but will of course get slightly faster as the technology matures.

It’s said that the first set of drives will be around in November, and much like when gen 4 drives initially launched, they will come with a premium, and being honest, for gamers, they’ll offer no noticeable difference, while content creators everywhere will be rejoicing.