(Edit: ASRock A520)More bandwidth on the budget - B550/A520 in production

[williamcll]

Update: It is believed that AMD will annouce A520 in August and release in September, meanwhile ASRock has registered some of the motherboard names already.

Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-a520-motherboards-ryzen-4000-zen-3

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Previous news below:

Spoiler

 

Manufacturing will be done from ASMedia and will deliver in the first half of this year.

Quote

AMD might soon be expanding its 500 series chipset beyond its sole offering, the X570. Over in China, there are rumblings about two additional 500 series chipsets making a debut soon, including the B550 and A520, both of which will represent more affordable options in the motherboard space for new and upgraded builds. This is not unexpected, given that AMD's 400 and 300 series chipsets both consist of multiple options as well—X470 (enthusiast), B450 (high-performance), X370 (enthusiast), B350 (high-performance), A320 (essential computing), and A300 (small form factors).

 

As things currently stand, the X570 is the top option for new and upgraded builds in the mainstream desktop space. It offers all the bells and whistles, including PCI Express 4.0 support with double the bandwidth as PCI Express 3.0, oodles of flexible I/O options, more support for USB 3.1 Gen 2, DDR4-3200 support (and higher via OC), and so forth. X570 motherboards also represent a wide range of price points. Over at Newegg, the most expensive option is the insanely priced ASRock X570 Aqua at $999.99, followed by Gigabyte's X570 Aorus Xtreme for $699.99. Meanwhile, the least expensive X570 motherboard currently listed is ASRock's X570 Phantom Gaming 4 at $148.99, followed by MSI's X570-A Pro for $159.99. The launch of B550 and A520 should see the field 500 series motherboards expand to sub-$150 and even sub-$100 models, depending on the specific board and features. Details are rather light at the moment, but according to a report in the China Times, chipset design factory Xiangshuo is expected to begin mass producing B550 and A520 parts in the first quarter of 2020, followed by shipments in the first half of this year. We'll have to wait and see what kind of features they support, and how they compare to X570 options.

 

There is also chatter of a new 600 series chipset entering production in the second half of the year. The X670 would presumably coincide with the launch of Zen 3 processors (Ryzen 4000 series on the desktop, not to be confused with the Zen 2-based mobile Ryzen 4000 series) later this year. It's said the 600 series will be fully PCIe 4.0 compliant, which we take to mean that every tier (X670, B650, A620) will support the faster spec.

According to OEM manufacturers, The chipset lanes itself does not support PCIe4, only the ones directly from the CPU. The B550 will have two USB3.2 Gen 2x2 as well as 4+4 SATA3.

 

Source:https://hothardware.com/news/amd-b550-a520-chipsets-lower-costs-ryzen-3000-pcs

https://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/20191014000307-260206?chdtv
Thoughts: the less PCIe lanes is a letdown, though the A520 could be really useful in some situations.

[TempestCatto]

Hopefully these chips will finally let me build a computer the size of my jon thomas.

[Princess Luna]

These are just like a year late and hardly makes sense at this point in time where we have the MAX b450's but sure why not.

 

Kinda hilarious they refreshed the A520 but I suppose it's good for APU office builds?

[Dabombinable]

I just want to be able to afford a motherboard that doesn't use a PCIe gen 2.0 or 3.0 PCH-CPU link, because I don't want to have a storage SSD gimped by the interconnect.

[Soppro]

Hopefully this isn't another bait (there were reports B550 was going into production late last year), but I don't understand why tf is it taking AMD so long to get their budget chipsets up and running. B350 and B450 were relatively quick to launch (just a few months after their respective Ryzen launches), but for some for some reason this time they're dragging their asses ..

[Dabombinable]

1 hour ago, Soppro said:

Hopefully this isn't another bait (there were reports B550 was going into production late last year), but I don't understand why tf is it taking AMD so long to get their budget chipsets up and running. B350 and B450 were relatively quick to launch (just a few months after their respective Ryzen launches), but for some for some reason this time they're dragging their asses ..

X570 if I remember correctly is pretty much just one of their I/O die re-purposed for use as a PCH. It's taken this long for B550 and A520 simply because Asmedia have had to design and then manufacture the chipsets, with a far less than good start date.

[schwellmo92]

12 hours ago, Princess Luna said:

These are just like a year late and hardly makes sense at this point in time where we have the MAX b450's but sure why not.

The B550 supports an additional 6Gbps SATA device and has USB 3.2 2x2 over the B450. It’s minor, but what’s the downside?

[schwellmo92]

10 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

I just want to be able to afford a motherboard that doesn't use a PCIe gen 2.0 or 3.0 PCH-CPU link, because I don't want to have a storage SSD gimped by the interconnect.

You’ll never saturate the PCI-E 3.0 x4 uplink in the real world. You usually have your primary NVMe SSD connected directly to the CPU.

[Dabombinable]

Just now, schwellmo92 said:

You’ll never saturate the PCI-E 3.0 x4 uplink in the real world. You usually have your primary NVMe SSD connected directly to the CPU.

In the case of my rig, I probably would. As you said I do have my 480GB NVME SSD connected to the cpu (benefits of Z97 SLi boards), but when I want to also add a far larger SSD later on for storage that I know will saturate the link (let alone with my SATA SSD, HDD RAID 0 array, Ethernet, WiFi & Bluetooth)...PCie 3.0 x4 isn't enough.

[Flying Sausages]

No chipset fan please.

[Bombastinator]

18 hours ago, Princess Luna said:

These are just like a year late and hardly makes sense at this point in time where we have the MAX b450's but sure why not.

 

Kinda hilarious they refreshed the A520 but I suppose it's good for APU office builds?

It may be that AMD wants to push pcie4. their new GPUs all seem to use it.  The computer market is artificial, so if someone said “pcie4” for some reason pcie4 there shall be.  It’s possible they’re more useful than b450.  I’m not holding my breath. 

[Doobeedoo]

These can be neat for new APUs to come. 

[CarlBar]

On 1/14/2020 at 2:46 AM, Dabombinable said:

X570 if I remember correctly is pretty much just one of their I/O die re-purposed for use as a PCH. It's taken this long for B550 and A520 simply because Asmedia have had to design and then manufacture the chipsets, with a far less than good start date.

 

Also PCI-E 4.0 has been giving MB manufacturer's absolute fits to implement, it's probably taken a while for everyone to get comfortable and experienced enough to make budget boards cheaply enough to actually make money.

[Unixsystem]

I wonder if this is a sign that they are going to skip B650/A620 altogether. Just put out Ryzen 4000 and an improved X670 for the high end in Q3/4, and then keep the B/A5xx boards for the low end. It wouldn't make much sense to put out these new chipset in 2H and then three or  four months later come out with B/A6xx. 

[Bombastinator]

7 hours ago, Waffles13 said:

I wonder if this is a sign that they are going to skip B650/A620 altogether. Just put out Ryzen 4000 and an improved X670 for the high end in Q3/4, and then keep the B/A5xx boards for the low end. It wouldn't make much sense to put out these new chipset in 2H and then three or  four months later come out with B/A6xx. 

Ddr5 isn’t out yet.  It’s close though.  They’ve got to get their ducks in a row for ddr5 on their CPUs before they can even design a motherboard for it.

[Unixsystem]

19 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Ddr5 isn’t out yet.  It’s close though.  They’ve got to get their ducks in a row for ddr5 on their CPUs before they can even design a motherboard for it.

Who said anything about DDR5? I'm talking about Ryzen 4000, which is out this year on AM4 and presumably will have X670 motherboards which are just more refined/less rushed versions of what we got with X570.

 

DDR5 isn't going to be until Zen 4/Ryzen 5000 in late 2021 or (more likely) 2022.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Waffles13 said:

Who said anything about DDR5? I'm talking about Ryzen 4000, which is out this year on AM4 and presumably will have X670 motherboards which are just more refined/less rushed versions of what we got with X570.

 

DDR5 isn't going to be until Zen 4/Ryzen 5000 in late 2021 or (more likely) 2022.

Ah.  I guess I sort of assumed we’d see at most one more iteration of am4 motherboards before ddr5 was moved on to.  X570 clearly could use more work though, and the rest of the 5 series wasn’t released.  I think of b450 and x570 as being contemporaries, which I guess just part of my stupid.

 So b550 and a550 make sense as does x670.  B650 and a650 I could see not happening though unless b550 and a550 have problems like x570 had (10w chipset! daaaang)

[williamcll]

Update: B550 motherboards will be announced on May 21st then launching on June 16th, comes with PCIe 4.0

Source: https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-b550-motherboards-to-launch-on-june-16th

[williamcll]

Update: ASRock recently added names for A520 motherboards, this includes:
A520M-ITX/ac, A520M/ac, A520M Pro4, A520M Pro4 R2.0, A520M Pro4 R3.0, A520M-HDVP, A520M-HDV, A520M-HDV R2.0, A520M-HDV R3.0, A520M-HVS, A520M-HVS R2.0, A520M-HVS R3.0

 

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[3rrant]

More sources:

https://www.techpowerup.com/268105/asrock-registers-10-new-amd-a520-chipset-motherboards-with-the-eec

 

"ASRock sought regulatory approval for as many as ten new motherboard models based on the upcoming entry-level AMD A520 desktop chipset. The A520 has a slightly cut down feature-set from the B550, such as the lack of CPU overclocking, fewer downstream PCIe lanes, etc. Among the new motherboards registered are the A520M Pro4, A520M Pro4 R2.0, A520M Pro4 R3.0, A520M-HDVP, A520M-HDV, A520M-HDV R2.0, A520M-HDV R3.0, A520M-HVS, A520M-HVS R2.0, and A520M-HVS R3.0, which cover a wide range of SKUs differentiated by board size, display connectivity layout, legacy connectivity, etc. AMD is expected to launch its entry-level A520 desktop chipset in Q3-2020, replacing the aging A320 chipset. The regulatory filing also points out some yet-unannounced B550-based models, such as the B550M DASH, B550M DASH R2.0, which could be released in the future."

 

https://videocardz.com/newz/asrock-preparing-a520-motherboards-for-ryzen-processors

 

"...Unlike the X570 and B550, the A520 does not have PCIe 4.0 support. The I/O connections are limited to 6 PCIe Gen3 lanes, 4 SATA, and 9 USBs. Similar to the A320 series, the new models won’t support overclocking..."

 

Seems pretty much a given at this point that it will launch "soon"