Question B550 chipset, so AMD joins the dark side after all.

[Shivansps]

I just read the article...

So let me get this straight, this chipset is coming out like a year later, they did not even bother to add CPU PCI-E 4.0 uplink support or to increase the number of sata ports that is ALREADY a problem on every 6 sata B450 motherboard (NVME x4 disables the 2 SOC Sata, thus 6 sata B450 mbs losses 2 sata if NVME is used), and they even dare to futher reduce backguard compatibility?

I was not expecting for the PCI-E lanes FROM the chipset to be 4.0, but only USB 3.2 G2, no more satas, CPU link still 3.0 and the PCI-E lanes 3.0 is beyond disappointing.

 

[Zepp]

Even though zen4 is expected to be new socket with DDR5, could it be conceivably possible that Zen4 has both DDR4 & 5 controllers and is compatible with 500 series AM4? thus giving the chipset at least 2 gens.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I have a USB 3.0 cable, costed under 10 bucks and it powers a 7200rpm hard drive. Granted it’s not for every workload, but for most desktop systems it is more than sufficient. I haven’t tried installing Windows (I am a Linux guy these days), however I have used it to successfully set up RAID via software with no issues.

2.5"? Those are zero issue, even the 7200RPM variety. Even one of my 2.5" WD Blacks doesn't use more then about ~600mA full tilt. That's well within the USB3 specifications max of 900mA. I'd be careful running one off USB2 though.

You can get a 500gb m.2 SSD these days for $50-$75 or a smaller one for less. Users should not be booting off a hard drive anymore IMO.

Ironically, you can get a 120GB-class SSD for less then any HDD at retail here in Denmark. If that's not enough reason, I don't know what is.

 

[eek2121]

B550 will have affordable offerings just like B450. The 300 and 400 series chipsets have had 3 generations of CPU support at this point and it absolutely would not surprise me for the 500 series to have at least 2, if not 3 more.

This is especially true if the rumors I am hearing are true.

Compare that to Intel where you have to get a new board every generation.

If the issue is cost, the A520 series will be out later on as well.

 

[Rigg]

First we never show any Mini-iTX A300 boards for the DIY market.
Then the X570 came at ridiculous prices and the cheap X570 models are worse than cheaper B450 boards.
Now B450/X470 will not be able to get the new ZEN 3.

Im going to buy a Intel Comet Lake with B460 board thank you

Even the bottom of the barrel x570 boards are better than 95% of the x370 and x470 motherboards much less the b450's.

Im eyeballing the Core i5 10400F, if B460 boards are not released with ridiculous prices im going for it

Good luck with that. That combo will be lucky to break 4ghz in gaming. A 3600 will almost certainly be faster with a RAM speed advantage.

 

[eek2121]

Even though zen4 is expected to be new socket with DDR5, could it be conceivably possible that Zen4 has both DDR4 & 5 controllers and is compatible with 500 series AM4? thus giving the chipset at least 2 gens.

Zen 4 is not expected to be anything, FYI. It may very well be on AM4.

 

[Shivansps]

PCIE 4 was blocked for good reasons. Anyone that claims they have stable PCIE 4 working on an older board is full of it. Tell them to hang their boot drive off it for a while.

Again, that is true for existing motherboards, but nothing stopped OEM from producing new B450 motherboards with PCI-E 4.0 support until it was blocked on AGESA and it was no-go.

I have nothing against AMD but it is now clear that blocking B450 was just a move to sell new, more expensive, chipsets. And some people seems to react too badly when someone point this out.

As Harware Unboxed said, AMD only changed his mind on 300 series chipset after the huge outrage, this things must be mentioned out loud, sometimes they will listen.

 

[eek2121]

2.5"? Those are zero issue, even the 7200RPM variety. Even one of my 2.5" WD Blacks doesn't use more then about ~600mA full tilt. That's well within the USB3 specifications max of 900mA. I'd be careful running one off USB2 though.



Ironically, you can get a 120GB-class SSD for less then any HDD at retail here in Denmark. If that's not enough reason, I don't know what is.

The 7200rpm drive I tested was actually a 2TB 3.5” Western Digital Black. I copied around a TB of data to it without issue.

I normally use 2.5” drives.

My original point was that they should include a couple USB 3.1 ports internally and ditch SATA altogether. They would not only be useful for internal drives, but could also be used for other internal USB devices like RGB stuff. Interestingly enough, there are a couple recent external USB SSDs that apparently run far faster than the SATA spec would allow for. Doing this opens up the possibility of “mid-range” performing SSDs. For all of the SATA stuff, a backwards compatible cable could be used.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Seriously though, who actually has an A320 board? They only seemed to sell to OEMs for most of their life AFAIK.

Not me, but there are some for sale on NewEgg. Maybe I should get one, for science.

Im eyeballing the Core i5 10400F, if B460 boards are not released with ridiculous prices im going for it

Personally, I am still waiting for the FIVR desktop SKUs to be back

 

[sandorski]

Has AMD ever promised that current Chipsets would support Ryzen after 2020? I don't recall any such thing. At some point old Chipsets need to be retired.

 

[AtenRa]

Good luck with that. That combo will be lucky to break 4ghz in gaming. A 3600 will almost certainly be faster with a RAM speed advantage.

I dont see why not.

 

[eek2121]

Again, that is true for existing motherboards, but nothing stopped OEM from producing new B450 motherboards with PCI-E 4.0 support until it was blocked on AGESA and it was no-go.

I have nothing against AMD but it is now clear that blocking B450 was just a move to sell new, more expensive, chipsets. And people seems to react too badly when someone point this out.

As Harware Unboxed said, AMD only changed his mind on 300 series chipset after the huge outrage, this things must be mentioned out loud, sometimes they will listen.

Your assertions are incorrect. I don’t think you understand how things work on the technical side. Specifically regarding the B450, PCIE 4.0 would never have worked. The lanes to the chipset were 3.0, The lanes for the single NVME slot and GPU slot possibly could have worked, but how would AMD determine whether to enable it or not? It isn’t physically possible without modifying the chipset. They can’t trust vendors to do firmware lockouts, vendors can’t even be bothered to release decent firmware to begin with.

Also, who said B550 was going to be more expensive?

 

[Rigg]

I dont see why not.

Power/core usage limiting turbo speeds and duration under sustained loads.

 

[AtenRa]

Power/core usage limiting turbo speeds and duration under sustained loads.

Core i5 10400F single core turbo is 4.3GHz and all core turbo at 4.0GHz.
I dont see it having any problems keeping those clocks when earlier SKUs can maintain higher clocks.

 

[Shivansps]

Your assertions are incorrect. I don’t think you understand how things work on the technical side. Specifically regarding the B450, PCIE 4.0 would never have worked. The lanes to the chipset were 3.0, The lanes for the single NVME slot and GPU slot possibly could have worked, but how would AMD determine whether to enable it or not? It isn’t physically possible without modifying the chipset. They can’t trust vendors to do firmware lockouts, vendors can’t even be bothered to release decent firmware to begin with.

Also, who said B550 was going to be more expensive?

B550 chipset lanes are 3.0, B550 CPU uplink interconnect is 3.0 as well, B550 only brings PCI-E 4.0 on the first NVME and the first PCI-E 16x slot, you can do that with any chipset, it fully depends on the PCB. I waited until i knew about B550 CPU interconnect to be sure about this. It is the same the B450 has.

There is no reason to belive that you cant do PCI-E 4.0 on B450 just like B550 does after a PCB revision, im not talking about PCI-E 4.0 on old motherboards.

 

[amrnuke]

I'm actually really happy that they are rolling out B550 months before Zen3 release. This will make it far easier to find a solid mobo option with what we anticipate is almost certain to be a great CPU.

 

[amrnuke]

Core i5 10400F single core turbo is 4.3GHz and all core turbo at 4.0GHz.
I dont see it having any problems keeping those clocks when earlier SKUs can maintain higher clocks.

Exactly, with proper cooling will likely be fine. As is the case with almost all modern chips.

 

[eek2121]

B550 chipset lanes are 3.0, B550 CPU uplink interconnect is 3.0 as well, B550 only brings PCI-E 4.0 on the first NVME and the first PCI-E 16x slot, you can do that with any chipset, it fully depends on the PCB. I waited until i knew about B550 CPU interconnect to be sure about this. It is the same the B450 has.

There is no reason to belive that you cant do PCI-E 4.0 on B450 just like B550 does after a PCB revision, im not talking about PCI-E 4.0 on old motherboards.

Because it isn’t possible. How does the CPU determine whether to operate in 3.0 mode or 4.0 mode? That is just one issue to consider.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I said there are right now B450 boards with 6 Satas that losses two if a x4 NVME is used due to chipset limitations, thats a problem. Thats not my perpective, thats a fact, then i pointed out that if you do need them or not thats personal". Then you come out saying no one needs SATAs because YOU dont need more satas, who is proyecting his perpective here?

Are you sure that you are talking about Ryzen CPUs? Because the APUs have a separate set of limitiations. It appears to me that you are talking about APUs, as my B450 boards and Zen2 CPUs have no such limitations.

 

[AtenRa]

Because it isn’t possible. How does the CPU determine whether to operate in 3.0 mode or 4.0 mode? That is just one issue to consider.

PCIe Gen 4.0 is backward compatible with Gen 3, no problem having the CPU lanes at Gen 4 and the external devices being Gen 3.
Same as we have with the GPUs.

 

[Shivansps]

Because it isn’t possible. How does the CPU determine whether to operate in 3.0 mode or 4.0 mode? That is just one issue to consider.

Maybe im missing something here, but that it is done on bios, just like you can make it work on 2.0 if you wish.

Are you sure that you are talking about Ryzen CPUs? Because the APUs have a separate set of limitiations. It appears to me that you are talking about APUs, as my B450 boards and Zen2 CPUs have no such limitations.

It is the same for both APU and CPUs.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well no, you use a proper RAID card. Also, they aren’t dongles, it is a single cable. With a bit of firmware magic it would operate the same as a SATA port, but offer power delivery and faster transfer speeds (not limited to 6gbps).

I would rather not go "backwards" to USB 3.0 / USB 3.1 Gen1 / USB 3.2 Gen2, but instead, what about those new NVMe-protocol HDDs?

And... as you well know, "mining rigs" have been using USB 3.0 shielded cables, to carry a PCI-E x1 signal to a riser board. Some mobos, designed specifically for mining, allowed you to plug those USB 3.0 shielded cables with Type-A plug, directly into the board.

Instead of USB as USB, why not stick a bunch of those external-style USB3.0 (carrying a PCI-E x1 signal) onto the mobo, instead of SATA ports, and then run the PCI-E signal over the USB3.0 cable to the drive itself, which would be using PCI-E NVMe. This could be used instead of SATA HDDs, and as well, PCI-E x1 NVMe 2.5" SSDs and whatnot.

 

[Zstream]

LMAO!!! Outrage definitely not found.

 

[Rigg]

Core i5 10400F single core turbo is 4.3GHz and all core turbo at 4.0GHz.
I dont see it having any problems keeping those clocks when earlier SKUs can maintain higher clocks.

Getting it to sustain 4ghz should be no problem. It might take a few bios tweaks to get around the power limits. It won't go above that in a gaming load. Don't plan on using the stock cooler and cross your fingers the VRM's on the cheapo board don't overheat and throttle.

For similar money you can get easily get a 3600 over 4.2ghz on a b450/b550. Not to mention you can buy this memory kit for $100 and use ryzen memory calculator to dial in 3600-3800 mt/s with super tight timings.
With a clock advantage of 200+ mhz and massively faster memory the Ryzen should be faster while using less power. Plus you get a chipset that doesn't suck nearly as bad.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It is the same for both APU and CPUs.

No, it's not. The Athlon 200GE has PCI-E x4 for GPU, and x2 for NVMe. The Ryzen CPUs have PCI-E x16 for GPU, and x4 for NVMe.

If you've seen a board that accepts an Athlon 200GE-family APU, and supports an x4 NVMe @ x4, then it is "stealing" lanes from somewhere else, maybe the SoC SATA lines.

 

[AtenRa]

I said there are right now B450 boards with 6 Satas that losses two if a x4 NVME is used due to chipset limitations, thats a problem. Thats not my perpective, thats a fact, then i pointed out that if you do need them or not thats personal". Then you come out saying no one needs SATAs because YOU dont need more satas, who is proyecting his perpective here?

This is only true if you use a second NVME drive or you install your NVME drive in the the second NVME slot that is connected to the B450 chipset and not the first NVME slot that is connected directly to the CPU.

If you only use a single NVME drive and you connected to the first slot that uses the PCIe lanes from the CPU you dont loose any SATA and you have 6x SATA ports available.