If you’ve been eyeing up AMD’s wonderful Ryzen 3 3300X CPUs just lately, then you definately’ll be happy to listen to that AMD’s new mid-range B550 motherboards have lastly arrived to purchase alongside them. The long-awaited successor to AMD’s fashionable B450 chipset, the primary benefit of shopping for a brand new B550 board is that it’s bought built-in help for AMD’s subsequent CPU structure, at present code-named Zen 3, supplying you with loads of future-proofing to your subsequent improve.
The B550 chipset additionally helps the tremendous quick PCIe 4.Zero normal like AMD’s flagship X570 motherboards, which supplies you much more future-proofing for including PCIe 4.Zero SSDs and graphics playing cards to your system additional down the road. All of AMD’s current Radeon RX 5000 GPUs have help for PCIe 4.0, for instance, together with the budget-oriented RX 5500 XT, and there are extra PCIe 4.Zero SSDs beginning to change into accessible now, too, though the latter nonetheless value an arm and a leg just like the £270 / $230 1TB Gigabyte Aorus NVMe Gen 4 SSD.
PCIe 4.0, in case you’ve forgotten, provides you hundreds extra bandwidth than the present PCIe 3.Zero normal, permitting as much as 32GB/s of information flowing in every route as a substitute of the present 16GB/s. Provided you’ve bought PCIe 4.Zero appropriate {hardware} plugged in, this could result in considerably higher efficiency throughout the board – though how a lot profit you’ll see in the case of gaming stays to be seen in the mean time, as few games demand that form of knowledge circulation proper now. Still, with AMD’s {hardware} sitting on the coronary heart of each next-gen consoles come the top of the 12 months, it’s solely a matter of time earlier than PCIe 4.Zero begins coming into its personal.
The B550 chipset additionally comes with help for as much as two native USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (plus six USB 3.1 ports and 6 USB 2.Zero ports), in addition to as much as eight SATA ports for any current 2.5in SSDs you’ve bought knocking round, and overclocking help.
| Chipset | 1st Gen Ryzen CPUs | 1st Gen Ryzen APUs with Radeon graphics | 2nd Gen Ryzen CPUs | 2nd Gen Ryzen APUs with Radeon graphics | third Gen Ryzen CPUs | Future Zen 3 Ryzen CPUs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| X570 | X | X | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| B550 | X | X | X | X | Yes | Yes |
| X470 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Selective Beta BIOS replace wanted |
| B450 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Selective Beta BIOS replace wanted |
| X370 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Selective Beta BIOS replace wanted | X |
| B350 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Selective Beta BIOS replace wanted | X |
| A320 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | X | X |
The draw back? They’re solely going to be appropriate with third Gen Ryzen processors. Sadly, that doesn’t embody the Ryzen 5 3400G and Ryzen 3 3200G APUs, and it doesn’t appear like AMD will probably be issuing any BIOS updates in order that 1st or 2nd Gen Ryzen house owners will have the ability to use their current CPUs with it both.
Still, the truth that each B550 and X570 motherboards will probably be appropriate with AMD’s upcoming Zen Three structure means that AMD will probably be sticking with their AM4 socket for the foreseeable future, going approach past their 2018 promise of support until the end of 2020. However, the truth that solely 500-series chipsets will probably be appropriate with Zen Three additionally suggests we’ll see the same kind of state of affairs that Intel had with their eighth and ninth Gen Coffee Lake CPUs. These nonetheless used the identical LGA 1151 socket as Intel’s sixth Gen Skylake and seventh Gen Kaby Lake chips, however you needed to have a 300-series chipset to ensure that them to work. Indeed, with the launch of their 10th Gen Comet Lake chips, Intel have now deserted the LGA 1151 socket altogether and moved to a brand new LGA 1200 socket, requiring one more new motherboard buy for would-be upgraders.
Still, when you’re enthusiastic about shopping for the Ryzen 3 3300X, or certainly any of AMD’s different third Gen Ryzen CPUs equivalent to the superb Ryzen 5 3600 or Ryzen 7 3700X, then a B550 board is unquestionably the best way to go when you don’t fancy forking out for an costly X570 board. They’re accessible from all the same old suspects equivalent to Asus and MSI in all method of kind components, though it might take some time earlier than inventory begins trickling by way of. Asus have instructed me their boards will probably be accessible from June 16th, for instance, so be sure you preserve your eyes peeled when you’re out there for upgrading your PC quickly.
