Two weeks back I picked up the ASRock AB350 Pro4 for a low-end AMD Ryzen motherboard for use with some of the Ryzen 3 CPUs and it's been working out well for those wanting a Ryzen Linux system and not looking to spend much money. With it working out well for my purposes and currently being on sale, I figured I'd pass along this quick recommendation for those wanting to assemble a budget Ryzen Linux system.

For those drawn by the performance of AMD's Ryzen processors for its performance/value and thinking about building a Kodi/HTPC media box for the living room, a Steam Linux gaming PC / DIY Steam Box, or just want a small form factor PC, Gigabyte's AB350N-GAMING WiFi is a mini-ITX motherboard that plays fine with Linux and offers a lot of functionality for its small size.

The motherboard I've been testing the past week paired with the Ryzen 7 1700 is the MSI B350 TOMAHAWAK, a board in short supply that will set you back only $110 USD.

For those looking to purchase a newer Intel Z270 motherboard for use with the new Kabylake processors, the ASUS PRIME Z270-P is what I've been using the past two weeks for my initial Kabylake benchmarking. So far it's been working out great and haven't run into any issues.

The MSI X99A RAIDER is a sub-$200 LGA-2011 v3 motherboard. I've been using it for almost two months now on one of the daily Linux benchmarking systems and it's been running great.

The past few weeks I've been testing out the MSI X99A Workstation motherboard courtesy of MSI Computer and it's been working out very well across a spectrum of open-source Linux (as well as BSD) use-cases for those in need of a LGA-2011 v3 motherboard.

If you are looking for a low-cost LGA-1151 motherboard for an Intel Xeon E3 v5 CPU, the ASUS E3 PRO GAMING V5 is a sub-$150 ATX motherboard using Intel's C232 chipset while supporting USB 3.1, an M.2 slot, and other features normally reserved for the higher-end products.

Recently I picked up the ASRock C236M WS motherboard as a micro-ATX board for supporting Skylake LGA-1151 Xeon processors. This motherboard has been running nicely under Linux.

For the past month and a half I've been battering the MSI C236A Workstation motherboard with an arsenal of benchmarks and various workloads on Linux and BSD. This MSI motherboard for Xeon E3 v5 "Skylake" processors has been working out great.

With having my first Skylake motherboard fail on me recently, a sub-$60 Gigabyte H110 motherboard, for its replacement I decided to spend a few bucks more and ended up going for a nicer MSI Skylake motherboard. For those curious, here are a few words I wanted to share this weekend about my experience so far with the MSI B150M Mortar.

When recently buying the Intel Pentium G4400, a ~$60 Skylake dual-core processor, for Linux testing I was also looking for a Skylake motherboard that wouldn't cost an arm and a leg. The motherboard I ended up pairing for this Pentium G4400 in the test lab was the Gigabyte GA-H110M-A, a micro-ATX board using Intel's H110 chipset.

Since I started delivering my Skylake Linux tests back in August, I've received many inquiries from Phoronix readers curious about what motherboard I've been using, etc. Long story short, all of my initial Intel Skylake Linux testing has been done with the MSI Z170A GAMING PRO motherboard, which has been working out well.

For those in the market for an LGA-2011v3 motherboard this holiday shopping season, a very reasonable and affordable choice is the ASRock X99 Extreme3. For just over $200 USD you can get this DDR4-3000+ motherboard that supports Thunderbolt, ten Serial ATA 3.0 ports, 18-core Xeon processors, three PCI Express x16 slots, and numerous other connections for offering a feature-packaged motherboard at a modest price compared to other LGA-2011v3 motherboards.

While Habey may not be a household name to most Linux desktop users, they are known in the embedded world and do produce Linux-friendly systems and motherboards. Habey recently engaged with Phoronix and today we are checking out our first Habey motherboard: the MITX-6771 that's a mini-ITX motherboard with Intel Bay Trail quad-core SoC.

For Intel Core i7 5960X Haswell-E Linux testing I originally bought an MSI X99S SLI PLUS motherboard as it was one of the most interesting, lowest-priced boards available at the time of the Intel X99 chipset debut. While I initially ran into some problems, those issues have now been confirmed to be isolated, and with a replacement X99S SLI PLUS motherboard I have been stressing it constantly for the past few weeks on Fedora and Ubuntu. The X99S SLI PLUS has now proven itself to be a reliable motherboard that's still among the least expensive X99 ATX motherboards on the market.

Now that the MSI X99S SLI PLUS is running great on Linux, I've been working with the company towards some other Linux improvements along with some other interesting Linux hardware reviews to come thanks to our renewed cooperation. One of the items I've been voicing has been regarding better supporting Linux users with regard to a smoother BIOS/UEFI update process. Well, there is a utility they support for updating your MSI motherboard BIOS from the Linux desktop!

Last month following the launch of Intel's Core i7 5960X Haswell-E platform I ran into a rather odd situation with the first system assembled using the X99 chipset and eight-core, $1000+ processor: the motherboard failed. Coincidentally it happened at the same time as another motherboard failure at a fellow review site. Fortunately, since then, there's been no other major reports of failures with Intel's new platform. MSI has been helpful in this matter and I've since received a new MSI X99S SLI PLUS to confirm there's no fundamental issues with their board.

This weekend I was planning to publish the first Linux benchmarks for Intel's incredibly powerful Core i7 5960X Haswell-E processor with X99 motherboard and DDR4 system memory. Unfortunately, all I can tell you now is that it's smoking, quite literally!

Those looking for an Intel Z97 motherboard that's Linux-friendly and jam-packed with features should checkout the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 as it should cost you less than $170 USD.

For those looking towards purchasing a new motherboard with an Intel Z97 chipset that's compatible with Haswell Refresh and Broadwell processors, the Gigabyte GA-Z97-HD3 is a nice option and will set you back just over $100 USD.

For those looking out for an affordable mini-ITX motherboard for AMD's new AM1 APUs, the ASRock AM1H-ITX is a very interesting and versatile motherboard.

The Gigabyte AM1M-S2H motherboard is an AMD AM1/FS1b motherboard that's sized for micro-ATX enclosures, offers a fine set of budget features, and costs just over $30 USD.

For those looking at purchasing hardware for a low-cost socketed Kabini APU system build following our many AMD AM1 Platform tests under Linux that found the low-end hardware to play well with the open-source operating system, one of the motherboards worth considering is the ASUS AM1I-A.

For those after a low-cost mini-ITX board for use within an HTPC, SOHO file server, or other low-power situations, AAEON has out an interesting board called the EMB-BT1, or more formally the AAEON EMB-BT1-A10-3825. This mini-ITX motherboard has onboard an Intel Atom E3825 "Bay Trail" SoC for delivering decent performance out of the six Watt SoC and having open-source-friendly graphics under Linux.

The MSI B85M-P33 is a micro-ATX motherboard that's friendly with latest-generation Intel Haswell processors while the cost of this motherboard will only set you back about $60 USD.

For those in the market for an AMD Kaveri compatible motherboard that is micro-ATX and not too expensive, the Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H is a board worth considering that works well with Linux.

In a very good deal, the ECS KBN-I/2100 mini-ITX motherboard that features an AMD E1-2100 dual-core "Kabini" APU can be found for just over $30 USD. How though is the performance of this ultra low-cost motherboard + APU combination when it costs less than a Raspberry Pi? Here are some benchmarks and the Linux impressions.

For those in the market for an Intel Z87 Haswell motherboard, the ECS Z87H3-A2X Extreme is a great candidate and sells for less than $250 while packing a plethora of features and is mostly compatible with Linux.

For those Linux desktop users in the market for a micro-ATX motherboard for use with the latest-generation Haswell processors, the Intel DH87RL motherboard costs a little more than $100 USD and gets along mostly well with modern Linux distributions.

Now that a majority of the key Linux performance areas have been covered on Phoronix as it pertains to Intel's Ivy Bridge in dozens of different articles since its April launch date, it's time to say a few words about the "Panther Point" motherboard that was used for many of these Phoronix tests: the ECS Z77H2-A2X Ultimate Golden Edition Extreme.