Monday, March 27th 2023
ASRock A620 Socket AM5 Motherboard Pictured
Cost-effective Socket AM5 motherboards are finally on the horizon, as the first marketing pictures emerged of an ASRock-branded motherboard based on the yet-unreleased AMD A620 chipset. A successor to the A520 and A320, the A620 provides the bare-minimum feature-set for the platform, and cuts out certain premium features such as CPU overclocking. The chipset limits the x16 PEG connection from the processor to Gen 4, although motherboard vendors are free to provide just Gen 3 x16. The CPU-attached M.2 NVMe interface, too, is limited to Gen 4. This ASRock motherboard appears to be offering a Gen 3-capped M.2 NVMe slot, going by the "Hyper M.2" branding that ASRock uses for Gen 3 M.2 slots. The board offers an additional M.2 NVMe slot that's wired to the A620 chipset, and interestingly, an M.2 E-key slot for WLAN modules.
The ASRock A620M-HDV/M.2 from the pictures below, is a Micro-ATX motherboard that draws power from a 24-pin ATX and a single 8-pin EPS. It offers the simplest possible 6-phase CPU VRM, with what look like 50 A DrMOS. Besides the two M.2 NVMe slots, the only storage connectivity on offer are two SATA 6 Gbps ports. Display connectivity include DisplayPort and HDMI. We count at least four type-A USB 3.x ports on the rear I/O, besides one USB type-C, and a USB 3.x internal header. 1 GbE wired networking, and 6-channel HD audio using the most basic CODEC, make for the rest of the connectivity. An interesting touch is USB BIOS Flashback, with a button on the rear I/O, which sets even the oldest inventories of this board up for future-generation Socket AM5 Ryzen processors. Motherboards based on the A620 are expected to be priced well under the $100-mark.
Sources:
VideoCardz, HXL (Twitter)
The ASRock A620M-HDV/M.2 from the pictures below, is a Micro-ATX motherboard that draws power from a 24-pin ATX and a single 8-pin EPS. It offers the simplest possible 6-phase CPU VRM, with what look like 50 A DrMOS. Besides the two M.2 NVMe slots, the only storage connectivity on offer are two SATA 6 Gbps ports. Display connectivity include DisplayPort and HDMI. We count at least four type-A USB 3.x ports on the rear I/O, besides one USB type-C, and a USB 3.x internal header. 1 GbE wired networking, and 6-channel HD audio using the most basic CODEC, make for the rest of the connectivity. An interesting touch is USB BIOS Flashback, with a button on the rear I/O, which sets even the oldest inventories of this board up for future-generation Socket AM5 Ryzen processors. Motherboards based on the A620 are expected to be priced well under the $100-mark.
18 Comments on ASRock A620 Socket AM5 Motherboard Pictured
So I’m guessing a ‘budget’ tier board must have 100% identical specs to a more expensive board to satisfy you? Explain how that’s possible.
No what you want is more expensive, higher spec boards to come down in price. That’s a different topic.
Now back to reality. Lowering and taking away connectivity options is the main way to make different price tiers in the motherboard space. For instance, I rather have lowered PCIe gen rather than using lower quality components like capacitors.
Reminds me of the kind of stuff you'd see in cheap prebuilts, like ol' Bara here.
support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c05792694
The lack of connectivity doesn't bother me on a board in this price range, but what kind of CPU will fit into this? The unreleased Ryzen 3 7300 tops, maybe? Even a 7600 would burn this thing down, or at least seriously throttle by the looks of it.
As for this particular board, capping storage to Gen3 isn't great - PCIe Gen4 drives are very affordable now and the limitation isn't one enforced by AMD for A620. The rest of the compromises are fine given that the goal is to keep costs low.
I'm waiting for Asus to make some A620 boards priced like everyone else's B650 boards so that I can have another laugh about how terrible Asus are at the entry-level.
Mobo makers are taking everyone for a ride, no surprises there.
I'm not sure what's going on with the other two weird phases (1+1 VSOC and Vmisc??), but it's definitely a 4-phase Vcore with some low end 50A(? Vishays are ASRock's fave) DrMOS. Take 4x50A DrMOS and slap a regular sized heatsink on it, and you'll still be hitting 80C+ at 100A, so you can guesstimate how this board would perform.
Not much else I can say, it's a bottom of the barrel ASRock board. AMD can try all they like with stripped down A620, nothing is changing anytime soon about AM5 board costs.
I would usually say that 2DIMM is a bonus, but this is also DDR5 so these 4-layer and 6-layer boards still fall flat on their face regardless of how many DIMM slots they have. Lack of layers isn't helping VRM heat dissipation either.
It was funny seeing ASrock's B650m-HDV on sale for $15 less than Gigabyte's announced board, the day after the press release. AsRock is really trying to be competitive this generation.