First photo of AMD Socket AM4 and Bristol Ridge APU hit the web

Over the weekend, the first high-quality shots of a motherboard with the new Socket AM4 and AMD's Bristol Ridge APU hit the web. As you may remember, AMD announced OEM availability of its Bristol Ridge earlier this month, this chip is still based on the Excavator but is AMD's first product to use the new AM4 socket that will be shared by the upcoming Zen architecture.

Enough introduction, here is the very first clear photo of a retail Socket AM4. AMD sticks with a Pin Grid Array (PGA) design and the AM4 design features a grand total of 1331 pins. That's significantly more than the 942 pins supported by the AM3+ socket, and also quite a bit more than the 1151 pins used by the Intel LGA 1151 socket. The first motherboards with Socket AM4 are expected in October but we're not sure if there's going to be a wide availability of the Bristol Ridge APUs.



Next there's also a shot of the rear side of the Bristol Ridge APU, which shows off its 1331 pins.



While the new socket is the same size as previous AMD sockets, it appears CPU cooler compatibility will be a problem because the socket's mounting holes had to be relocated due to the increased amount of traces required on the motherboard. Cooler maker Noctua already said it will provide a mounting upgrade kit to make its HSFs compatible with Socket AM4.

The first Zen-based "Summit Ridge" CPUs are expected in early 2017, with the "Raven Ridge" APUs following in the second half of the year.