AMD’s upcoming A620 chipset for Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs and AM5 boards has been spotted at the Eurasian Economic Commission regulatory office and on the Goofish selling platform, with offerings from Asus and Gigabyte.
The list of A620 boards includes:
- Asus TUF GAMING A620M-PLUS D5
- Gigabyte A620M D3H
- Gigabyte A620M DS3H
- Gigabyte A620M S2H
- Gigabyte A620M H
- Gigabyte A620M K
AMD’s promise of $125 boards may finally become reality, but not as many imagined it to be. It seems that cheap AM5 motherboards will be based on the entry-level A620 chipset, instead of B650, as many have wished, following the wide availability of affordable B550 for AM4.
While AMD is yet to confirm the chipset capabilities, looking at previous generations, the A series will likely have fewer PCIe lanes, fewer or slower USB ports compared to B650, PCIe Gen 4 or Gen 3 instead of Gen 5, and, most importantly, locked overclocking.
If the latter is correct, the meagre $30 or so saved by moving down to the A620 chipset may not be worth it, since a good portion of those who would be buying a board of this tier are looking to extract the maximum potential of their purchase.
Seeing how the barebones starting point for an AM5 build costs around $420 – $230 for a Ryzen 5 7600, $125 for a motherboard (assuming one exists at this price), and $65 for a cheap 16GB DDR5-4800 kit – plus add in a chassis, PSU, storage, and any part not already owned, then for an extra $30, for B650, availing more options and maybe also better board build quality, may not be a far stretch.
With that said, A620 chipsets will surely be widely used by OEMs on their low-end or basic office PCs. Machines that don’t need overclocking, 10+ USB ports, or PCIe Gen 5. Heck, the majority won’t even include a discrete GPU now that AMD has integrated RDNA GPUs on all desktop Ryzen 7000 CPUs.
For now, Intel seems to have the cheapest entry point with its affordable, $80 H610 boards and DDR4 memory. Both can also be found even cheaper on the second-hand market. Yes, we say goodbye to futureproofing, but hey, choices must be made at this range. Nothing is stopping us from hoping for an $80 AM5 board, be it with basic components and minimal build quality.
