After four years in development, the AMD Ryzen was finally unveiled and made available for sale beginning March 2. Touted to be the primed and a threat to Intel's Core i7 processors, it comes in several flavors or models, starting at $329.
Amid criticisms that the AMD Ryzen did not actually meet up to gaming expectations, the new CPU is reportedly selling well. Accordingly, it occupies multiple spots on Amazon's best-selling CPU list. This is no surprise since new architecture from any processor vendor is usually going to attract attention from serious hardware lovers and testers, add to the fact that AMD Ryzen is reasonably priced for its promised performance.
However, there seems to be a slight snag for builders who are looking forward to building their own AMD Ryzen system. The processors themselves are easy to find, but not the motherboard it needs to house it.
Legit Reviews reported that most AMD motherboards based on the X370 and B350 chipsets are out of stock and back-ordered. It does not matter what motherboard brand you are looking for, they seem to be selling out due to limited quantities available.
Apparently, the demand for AMD Ryzen was high worldwide that it exceeded AMD's motherboard partners' initial expectations, says John Taylor, corporate vice president, worldwide marketing at AMD. The chipmaker informs that its partners are ramping up shipments, and there should be ample supply of AM4 motherboards for the Ryzen in a few weeks.
However, though motherboards may be coming, anonymous motherboard makers are telling a different story. The short supply might not be based entirely on the demand for the new CPU. One manufacturer cites that bad coordination, bad communication, bad support and bad timing are the cause of the low motherboard supply.
The anonymous mobo manufacturer says that none of them could start manufacturing the boards sooner. Apparently, the company pulled in AMD Ryzen's launch date, which was expected to be launched later in Q2.
Further, AMD kept the CPU quantity from the manufacturers under wraps, disclosing it only two weeks before AMD Ryzen's launch. Additionally, the manufacturer charge AMD's BIOS team for not fully supporting them for the BIOS microcode updates, driver updates and providing CPU samples for testing.
The anonymous manufacturer adds that AMD might have forgotten how to properly launch a new CPU, considering it has been too long since the company did it last. It seemed to them that AMD did not care about the eco-system for the new platform. For that reason, the eco-system suffered causing delayed stocks.
ExtremeTech learned that various motherboard vendors have been frustrated by AMD's approach to AMD Ryzen's launch. Pushing the launch in with an extremely aggressive rollout did not help the situation any.
