Saturday, May 22nd 2021
AMD Socket AM5 an LGA of 1,718 Pins with DDR5 and PCIe Gen 4
A reliable source with AMD and NVIDIA leaks, ExecutableFix has shared some interesting bits of early information on AMD's next-generation Socket AM5. Apparently this will be AMD's first mainstream-desktop socket that does away with pins on the processor package, shifting them to the motherboard, in a Land Grid Array (LGA) format. This won't be AMD's first client LGA, though, as it was the Quad FX platform from 2006, which used a pair of Socket F LGAs. Socket AM5 will have a pin-count of 1,718 pins, 18 more than Intel's upcoming Socket LGA1700, on which its 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake-S" is expected to be based.
AMD will give the I/O of its client desktop platform a major update, with the introduction of DDR5 memory. Socket AM5 processors are expected to feature a dual-channel DDR5 memory interface. With Intel "Alder Lake-S" implementing DDR5, too, you now know why every major memory manufacturer is unveiling their first DDR5 U-DIMM product development. Interestingly, the PCI-Express interface on Socket AM5 will remain PCI-Express 4.0, even though PCI-Express 5.0 is being rumored for "Alder Lake-S." The switch to PCI-Express 5.0 may not be significant from a graphics cards perspective immediately, but paves the way for next-gen M.2 NVMe SSDs with double the transfer-rates of current drives that use PCI-Express 4.0. AMD is developing the new 600-series chipset to do with its next-generation Socket AM5 processors.
Source:
ExecutableFix (Twitter)
AMD will give the I/O of its client desktop platform a major update, with the introduction of DDR5 memory. Socket AM5 processors are expected to feature a dual-channel DDR5 memory interface. With Intel "Alder Lake-S" implementing DDR5, too, you now know why every major memory manufacturer is unveiling their first DDR5 U-DIMM product development. Interestingly, the PCI-Express interface on Socket AM5 will remain PCI-Express 4.0, even though PCI-Express 5.0 is being rumored for "Alder Lake-S." The switch to PCI-Express 5.0 may not be significant from a graphics cards perspective immediately, but paves the way for next-gen M.2 NVMe SSDs with double the transfer-rates of current drives that use PCI-Express 4.0. AMD is developing the new 600-series chipset to do with its next-generation Socket AM5 processors.
145 Comments on AMD Socket AM5 an LGA of 1,718 Pins with DDR5 and PCIe Gen 4
The reason I'm anti-PCIe 5.0 right now is cost. PCIe 4.0 came at a pretty significant price hike over PCIe 3.0 boards. B450 vs B550 is a pretty good example of 50+% cost increase across all vendors, and the two boards are very similar if you ignore the +1 increment on the PCIe version.
Nowadays there are many cases where ripping a CPU out of PGA socket is unavoidable, even if you don't apply gorilla-force to it. For example, the same shitty low-end foxconn sockets(it's basically a plated copper foil on contacts that suffers wear and tear over time), or when some idiot decides to put Conductonaut on a bare-copper heatsink and fuses it to a heatspreader a year later, or with those stupid clamps on Wraith Prism, which presents you with "chicken and egg" problem (you have to take off clamps in order to twist it, but in order to take off clamps you have to detach it from IHS and tilt it) etc. etc. etc.
I can go on forever without even resorting to "people are stupid" arguments. It's a technical problem, not a human problem.
Most of the time its not the Speed of the PCI-E lanes that are a bottleneck on a more mainstream build but the amount of lanes available to add in all the things people want (Graphics cards, PCI-E SSDs, WiFi, Sounds cards etc etc etc etc)
Being able to use something like:
www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/Accessories/HYPER-M-2-X16-CARD-V2/
That fully populated uses 66% of the available PCI-E lanes in a current "mainstream" build
If we can get up to 32-36 or 40 lanes on a mainstream build, yes it will cut into Threadripper sales, but a LOT or Threadripper builds arent really being purchase JUST because of the PCI-E lanes.
Shorter trace length equals fewer possible lane placements.
There were concerns when PCIe 4.0 launched and the cost of boards went up, partially due to the redrivers, partially due to new PCB materials being needed etc.
With PCIe 5.0 this is only going to get worse.
But yeah, it's not really a problem, as the requirements are built into the motherboard :rolleyes:
The cost and power savings over X570 are hard to argue with, and I definitely appreciate the lack of a chipset fan.
i'd say it's the same after a few months with zen 4
I can only see increased number of power pins and wider DRAM interface as possible reasons. Neither will be a necessity in the beginning but both would be good for some future-proofing if the number of cores on consumer platforms keeps growing.
We don't know enough about either platform to be sure what else comes with it.
As you can see from the presumably leaked diagram from Intel above, it looks like Intel is planning a fatter pipe between the CPU and chipset, which also takes up a lot of pins.
Intel is seemingly planning more display outputs as well, which again requires more pins.
In isolation it doesn't sound like much but don't forget that most of the lifting is done by the CPU, something the B550 board (not the chipset) is responsible for delivering. The CPU holds the majority of the 10Gbps, PCIe lanes, and NVMe lanes that were locked away without PCIe 4.0 slots/connectivity on B450 boards.
The job of the B550 is to be cheap for the masses, not all-encompassing for high-end systems. That's what X570 is for.
I've never heard my chipset fan in the year and half I've been on this platform and my system is also very quiet.
Tiny chipset fans have shitty bearings because they're tiny and cheap. Can't beat the laws of physics!
Considering how "feature light" the chipset is, most of those eight lanes then go to things like Ethernet, Wi-Fi, another M.2 and another USB 3.x controller, so that means if you want to plug in just about anything into the PCIe slots, you're going to lose something else. Hence why it needs another four PCIe lanes.
Also remember Power has to come through these pins and considering the AM5 is going BIG.little sort of architecture I can see a few more pins being set aside for more power planes for the different cores