Fast and stable. That's not a political comment! Was considering a Ryzen 1300+, but opted for this instead in the end as it was priced a little cheaper and all the benchmarks I've seen (even with the AMD overclocked) saw it run on a par or faster than the AMD.I had to get a z370 board, but there was an offer on Gigabyte z370-D3 for only about £15 more than the ASRock I was looking at and so far the gigabyte board paring has worked well. I figured I'm getting a better featured board anyway with the ability to expand in the future (over clocking a future processor/memory if I should require). I know that AMD though are going to support their AM platform until 2020, so maybe when I upgrade I'll need a new board anyway if I don't opt for a second hand chip when this intel socket/platform has been superseded.I hadn't built a computer for about 14 years, so just wanted it to work with the least hassle. Seems rock solid so far.