Motherboards based on a chipset that had never been mentioned before: the A620.
Launched last September to accompany AMD's new Ryzen 7000 "Zen4" processors, the AM5 platform has many advantages. First of all, it allows AMD to get back into the race with the latest technologies by offering, like the latest Intel platforms, support for DDR5 and PCI Express Gen 5. Designed to go hand in hand with the Ryzen 7000, the AM5 is also more modern and more optimized in many ways, but it suffers from a crippling flaw in the eyes of many: its price.
While we keep talking about decreasing purchasing power and inflation not so far from double digits, the cost of the AM5 platform is obviously a problem for many users. A problem that has caught AMD off guard, which had deliberately not supported DDR5 too quickly in order to give manufacturers time to bring down the cost of these new chipsets. Problem is, while Intel still allows the use of DDR4 - much cheaper - AMD is a bit stuck. The only solution found by the American company was to lower the prices of its processors (a little) only three months after their launch.
But it seems that AMD has thought of another solution. Indeed, a member of the HardwareLuxx community has unearthed the BIOS of a still unknown motherboard, the ASUS TUF Gaming A620M-Plus. As its name suggests, this motherboard is not based on any of the four AM5 chipsets currently marketed by AMD: the X670/X670E on one side and the B650/B650E on the other. Indeed, we are talking about the A620 chipset, which seems to be a lower cost version of the B650.
According to the information in this BIOS, the A620 would logically be less robust than the X670 and B650, and would abandon the PCI Express Gen 5 socket, whether for the graphics subsystem or for the M.2 format storage units. The A620 would of course be compatible with AMD Ryzen 7000 processors and could be an even cheaper entry point than the B650. The only downside is that the BIOS in question dates back to October 14 and, since then, AMD has not given the slightest hint about the release of a new chipset. To be continued..
