Everything we learned about AM5 and X670 at Computex 2022
Alongside the announcement of Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs, AMD also announced the brand-new AM5 socket and 600-series chipsets that AM5 boards will feature. These new motherboards for Ryzen 7000 will bring new features and more performance across the board.
To get you up to speed, we rounded up everything you need to know about AM5 and X670. You’ll need one of these new motherboards if you plan to upgrade to Ryzen 7000 later this year, so it’s best to start planning now.
The new AM5 socket
AMD announced the new AM5 socket back in January, but didn’t disclose any new features. That wasn’t because there weren’t many new features to talk about, thankfully, as AM5 has plenty of them. The new socket brings support for DDR5 memory and will feature 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes, which are twice as fast as PCIe 4.0 lanes. Unlike Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs, there won’t be support for DDR4 memory, so upgrading to DDR5 is a must.
With socket AM5, AMD is switching from a PGA (pin grid array) socket to an LGA (land grid array) socket. LGA sockets support more pins, and AM5 comes with 1,718 of them. That could bloat the cost of motherboards as we’ve seen with some Intel motherboards since the pins are on the motherboard.
X670 and B650 motherboards will have up to 14 USB ports at 20Gbps each, and support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. AMD is also bumping up the number of displays you can connect to the motherboard from two to four (either HDMI 2.1 or DisplayPort 2), since all Ryzen 7000 CPUs now come with integrated graphics.
Perhaps AM5’s most important feature is that it supports socket AM4 coolers, which means AM4 users won’t need to buy a new cooler or get an AM4 to AM5 bracket to use the one they already have.
X670E
X670E is the chipset for hardcore overclockers and people who need all the performance possible. Motherboards with this chipset will have the most overclocking headroom of all, copious amounts of power stages, and PCIe 5.0 support across all storage and PCIe slots.
So far, Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte have announced X670E boards, all of which are EATX size. Asus’s ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme sports two x16 slots, five M.2 slots (though only four support PCIe 5.0 x4), and 20+2 phase VRMs, which are cooled by a fairly large heatsink. MSI’s boards are similarly beefy, and we expect most motherboards with this chipset to target enthusiasts.
Gigabyte announced the names of its X670E boards, the X670E Aorus Xtreme and the X670E Aorus Master, but doesn’t seem to have provided any specs. However, from the pictures it provided on social mediathey both are EATX size, have three x16 slots, and beefy VRM heatsinks.
X670
The successor to X570, X670 is for the high-end enthusiast who overclocks not necessarily as a hobby, but just for some extra performance. Aside from having fewer hardcore overclocking features, X670 differs from X670E in one key area: PCIe support. AMD says motherboard manufacturers can opt for PCIe 4.0 instead of 5.0 on the x16 slot, which is used for the GPU. However, all X670 motherboards will support at least one PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD.
MSI and Gigabyte are so far the only companies to announce X670 boards. MSI unveiled just one, the Pro X670-P WiFi. It has two x16 slots, but since MSI doesn’t mention PCIe 5.0 support for either, the board might only support 4.0 graphics. MSI also doesn’t mention how many M.2 slots it has, but judging by the photo on its website, there are at least two.
We’ll likely see far more options as we come closer to launch. For now, we only have the motherboards that were announced at Computex 2022.
B650
AMD’s lowest-end 600-series chipset is B650, for low-end to mid-range PCs. Just like the previous B-series chipsets, B650 supports overclocking, but no B650 boards will have PCIe 5.0 support on the x16 slot. B650 motherboards are guaranteed, just like the other chipsets, to have one NVMe slot with PCIe 5.0, however. As of yet, no company has announced B650 boards, but we can imagine that they’ll have fewer x16 slots, fewer M.2 slots, and fewer VRM phases than the X670E and X670 boards.
We still don’t have word on A-series chipsets from AMD. These are budget-focused motherboards without overclocking, and we suspect they’ll arrive shortly after the launch of Ryzen 7000. AMD hasn’t announced anything yet, though.
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