AMD’s reasonably priced B650 and B650E platforms for its Ryzen 7000-series CPUs in AM5 packaging may be closer than expected as the company’s partners are already set to showcase them in early October.
AMD will host its Meet the Experts presentation called ‘An Exclusive First Look at B650 and B650E AM5 Motherboards’ on October 4 (at 10AM CDT) where its partners will reveal details of their reasonably-priced motherboards for AM5 processors. Among the highlights of the new platforms AMD mentions support for its Ryzen 7000-series processors, dual-channel DDR5, and PCIe 5.0 interconnection.
Asus, ASRock, Biostar, Gigabyte, and MSI will reveal their AMD B650 and B650E lineups as well as highlight their key features at the event.
The biggest question, of course, is when motherboard makers will actually start selling their products based on AMD’s B650 and B650E chipsets — AMD and partners pre-announced their flagship AMD 670/670E platforms a little less than two months ahead of actual sales. With B650/B650E, the lag between announcement and sales will hopefully be shorter.
AMD’s high-end enthusiast-grade AMD X670 and AMD X670E platforms for Ryzen 7000-series CPUs that are set to hit the market on September 27 promise very advanced connectivity and impressive overclocking capabilities. Unfortunately, as listings of Asus and MSI motherboards have demonstrated, many of them are going to be prohibitively expensive, which will make them a prerogative of die-hard enthusiasts and gamers with deep pockets.
To make Zen 4 generation processors more accessible for the masses, AMD and its partners are preparing AMD B650 and B650E platforms that will support key capabilities of AMD’s Ryzen 7000-series processors but will have a cut-down feature set as well as considerably lower costs and prices.
But even with the launch of AMD’s B650/B650E platforms, do not expect Zen 4-based machines to get cheap any time soon. The lowest-cost Ryzen 5 7600X is priced at $299, DDR5 memory is sold at a premium over DDR4 modules, and we do not expect B650/B650E motherboards to be bargains. But if you want to have the latest platform, you should probably be prepared to pay for this.
