GIGABYTE Technology, (TWSE: 2376), an industry leader in high-performance servers and workstations, today announced supporting products for the new AMD AM5 platform starting with two GIGABYTE motherboards, MC13-LE0 & MC13-LE1, that pair a consumer CPU with IPMI management functionalities via BMC. Additionally, a new desktop workstation, W332-Z00, was released using the same motherboard series platform that supports remote management, but the W332 does so with a Realtek NIC that enables DASH.

The new GIGABYTE products designed to support host systems are deceivingly powerful with a small micro-ATX form factor motherboard and enterprise rich out-of-band management features on top of PCIe Gen 5 and DDR5 technologies. These new client friendly products will be found in office settings under a desk rather than a rack in a data center, as they be managed from anywhere, provided there is a network connection. Furthermore, these new products are purpose built for the mainstream AMD B650E chipset with AMD Zen 4 architecture for AMD Ryzen 7000 Series desktop processors.

AMD's recently announced Ryzen 7000-series Socket AM5 processors are expected to go on sale from September 27, but on that day, you'll only be able to choose between the top-grade AMD X670E chipset, and the second-best X670. Although AMD announced the mid-tier B650E and B650 chipsets, they will be available from a later date. We're not getting confirmation of at least one important date—October 4, 2022. On this date, various motherboard manufacturers are expected to announce their products based on the B650E and B650, and we'll probably hear retail availability closer to that day. The table below shows the key specs differentiating the B650E/B650 from the X670E/X670. The B650E/B650 are a single-chip chipset, as opposed to the X670E/X670 being a dual-chip solution. You get fewer downstream PCIe lanes, one less 20 Gbps USB port, six less 10 Gbps ports.

With AMD announcing an October 2022 debut of its mid-range Socket AM5 motherboard chipset, the AMD B650E and B650; manufacturers appear to be ready with a fairly broad selection of products targeting various price-points. The B650E and B650 are expected to have a lighter I/O feature-set than the X670E/X670, and will enable manufacturers to sell motherboards at prices starting at $125. Two of the leading manufacturers, ASUS and ASRock, are ready with their product lists.

The initial ASUS motherboard lineup for the AMD B650E and B650 chipsets include just one product in the mainline Prime series, as many as four from the TUF Gaming series, and two from the ROG Strix series. From these, only one is based on the B650E (meaning, it gets a PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slot besides the M.2 Gen 5 slot). The others are based on the vanilla B650 (PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slot besides M.2 Gen 5 slots). None of the boards has more than 4 SATA 6 Gbps ports. The board to watch out for will be the ROG Strix B650E-E Gaming WiFi, as it could bring several high-end features into the mid-range, and if previous generations of AMD chipset are anything to go by, the B650/E retains CPU overclocking support.

ASRock is planning to introduce a new line of motherboards probably targeted at value-conscious creators, with the new LiveMixer series. The company's first LiveMixer product is based on the AMD B650 mid-range chipset. The Socket AM5 motherboard's PCB was leaked to the web, revealing a fairly mid-range feature-set, notwithstanding the 17-phase VRM. We spy at least three M.2 slots, from which one should be Gen 5, an M.2 E-key slot for the WLAN card; addon slots that include a PCI-Express 4.0 x16, and two Gen 3 x4 slots. For all its talk of live-mixing, the onboard audio solution appears to be rather basic, with jacks for just 6-channels, and the CODEC pin-out seems to be made out for an entry-level CODEC, such as the ALC892.

Possible launch SEP pricing of AMD's Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" desktop processors leaked to the web by Wccftech, which appear to be similar to those of the Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" at launch. AMD will launch a slim set of four SKUs in its first round of these processors—the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X (16-core/32-thread), followed by the second-best Ryzen 9 7900X (12-core/24-thread), the Ryzen 7 7700X (8-core/16-thread), and the mid-range Ryzen 5 7600X (6-core/12-thread).

Apparently, the series debuts with the Ryzen 5 7600X at $299, or the same SEP of the Ryzen 5 5600X at launch. The Ryzen 7 7700X launches at $449. The Ryzen 9 7900X comes in at $549, and the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X at $799, which again, is identical to that of the 5950X. Besides processors, motherboard vendors are expected to launch their first Socket AM5 motherboards, debuting with the AMD X670E and X670 chipsets. There's talk of mid-range chipsets such as the B650 and B650E, but we haven't seen any confirmed products show up on motherboard vendors' websites, yet. Pre-launch pricing for the X670E and X670 put them at a significant premium over the current Socket AM4 flagship boards based on the X570. Besides processors and motherboards, we could see announcements from memory vendors launching their first DDR5 memory products to feature AMD EXPO technology.

AMD's upcoming launch of Ryzen 7000 series processors will bring an entirely new AM5 platform that will enable newer technologies and protocols. We have DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 connection with everything at level five. However, the upcoming chipsets AMD has designed to work alongside the new processors will be available in several variants. There will be regular X670 and B650 versions that support either a PCIe 5.0 GPU or a PCIe 5.0 M.2 NVIMe SSD. Today, we got a confirmation that not only the big X670 chipset has an "E" or "Extreme" version, but its smaller brother B650 as well. With X670E and B650E, users get both PCIe 5.0 connectivity for their GPU and M.2 NVIMe SSD. For more information, we have to wait for AMD's official launch information later today.

Courtesy of Planet 3DNow! we now have an idea when AMD might be launching the Ryzen 7000-series of CPU's, as the site posted about an upcoming AMD event called Meet the Experts on Twitter. The event registration page reads "Supporting the recent launch of AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors," which suggests that the new Ryzen 7000-series is likely to launch on or before the 4th of August. The event takes place at 11:00 in the morning, CDT (Central Daylight Time) or 16:00 UTC.

The event will showcase motherboards from AMD's partners and representatives from ASRock, ASUS, Biostar, Gigabyte and MSI will be attending the online event. There's still no mention of the B650E chipset, but apparently X670E and X670 products will be shown, but not even B650 at this point. Based on the short summary blurb, we're also likely to see a PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD being shown off. AMD will obviously have a separate launch event for the Ryzen 7000-series, but if that will take place on the same day, or on a different date, is unknown at this point.

Although AMD has not as yet announced its B650E chipset, rumour about such a chipset started before Computex. To date, no specific motherboard models have been mentioned by model name, but courtesy of Videocardz, we now have a list of several upcoming models from ASRock. The company has already announced its X670E range of motherboards, which consists of five models, of which four can already be seen on the ASRock website. ASRock appears to be planning five B650E boards, plus another six B650 SKU's. The company also appears to be the OEM for NZXT's second AMD motherboard, which appears to be called the N7-B65XT, which might also be a B650E based board.

Unfortunately we don't know any of the technical details about the upcoming B650/B650E boards from ASRock, but the model names give away that two of the five B650E boards will be Mini-ITX boards. It doesn't look like ASRock will be offering a high-end B650E model, but at least there will be an upper mid-range Steel Legend board. ASRock will also have a couple of mATX B650 boards, one should be a more gaming focused mid-range model, with the other being what appears to be a fairly basic model. One peculiar addition is a B650 SKU with the prefix LiveMixer, which is a new series from ASRock as far as we're aware. ASRock doesn't appear to be offering any X670 motherboards at all, at least not based on the current information.

There has been a fair bit of confusion about AMD's upcoming AM5 platform when it comes to connectivity and we're going to break things down and explain what the difference is between the B650 and X670 boards. We're also going to cover the processor connectivity, since that's an integral part of any motherboard these days. All the information in this article is based on what we've been told by various sources during Computex.

It appears that ASRock got a little bit too excited and posted a Computex video earlier today that contained a brief glimpse of its upcoming X670E Taichi motherboard. The screenshot that was captured by Wccftech doesn't give away too much details, but the board appears to have at least three M.2 slots and a pair of PCIe x16 slots, of which at least one is meant to be of the PCIe 5.0 variety. The rest of the board is covered in heatsinks and various shrouds. The board will feature Realtek's ALC4082 USB attached audio codec, as well as a ESS ES9218 DAC. It is also said to sport a 26-phase VRM setup. The board is also expected to have Thunderbolt 4 support. The video has unfortunately been taken down, so we'll have to wait until next week to find out more details.

In related news, @momomo_us has leaked details of several upcoming AM5 motherboards, of which four models are from ASRock and two from ASUS. The ASRock models are the X670E Taichi mentioned above, the X670 PG Riptide, X670 Phantom Gaming 4 and the X670 Steel Legend. The two ASUS models are the ProArt X670E-Creator WiFi and the ProArt B650-Creator. Finally Gigabyte has revealed that the company will be displaying its X670 Aorus Xtreme, X670 Master, X670 Pro AX and X670 AERO D at Computex next week. The company mentions PCIe 5.0 for both graphics and the M.2 interface, which pretty much cements the earlier rumors about AMD offering PCIe 5.0 support for the M.2 interface on the AM5 platform.

AMD is preparing to launch its highly-anticipated AM5 socket for the next generation of motherboards. And today, thanks to the sources over at Tom's Hardware, we have information regarding memory support for B650 and X670 motherboards. According to the report, both B650 and X670 chipsets will limit the user's memory option to the latest DDR5 memory standard, making it impossible for users with already existing DDR4 memory to perform a seamless upgrade to a new platform. So far, we don't have a lot of details about Zen4's integrated memory controller, and we can't be certain if it supports DDR5 only or carries legacy DDR4 support. However, it seems like B650 and X670 motherboards will have no plans to enable the DDR4 standard memory usage.

Additionally, the report confirms that the B650 chipset is connected to the AM5 socket via PCIe 4.0 x4 connection and has eight lanes of PCIe 4.0 (four of which are for M.2 SSD), four SATA, and lots of USB ports. Documents suggest that the chipset-socket connection is available using PCIe 5.0 for some AM5 processors, so we have to wait and see how it works. As far as high-end X670 is concerned, this chipset is a combination of two chipset dies, presumably a combination of two B650 modules. This doesn't work as the older north/southbridge type of a solution but rather doubled connectivity of a single B650 chipset. We have to wait for the official launch to confirm this information.

AMD is slowly gearing up to launch the latest 7000 series Ryzen processors codenamed "Raphael." Thanks to the famous hardware leaker @9550pro on Twitter, we have evidence of B650 motherboards for the next-generation hardware. According to the image posted by the leaker, it appears like AMD's Ryzen 7000 series Raphael processor is running on MSI's MAG B650 motherboard at a very high voltage of 1.5 Volts VCore. While we don't know the exact SKU running here, we see a note referring to it as an Engineering Sample, meaning that this is not a final product. It is expected to see the new AM5 platform make a debut alongside DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 technology, so we have to wonder what the B650 chipset can support.

As we approach the next generation of AMD's Ryzen processors, accompanying chipsets will follow the launch of their main co-host device. Enabling different levels of features across the new processor generation, chipset versions are limiting the number of options a platform offers to the end-user. AMD is designing its motherboard chipsets in collaboration with a Taiwanese design firm ASMedia. They usually develop a few chipset types covering low-end, middle-end, and high-end motherboards segments. However, it seems like the high-end motherboard segment could be populated with the same silicon as the middle-end section of the chipset stack; note a few Chinese forum members on BiliBili.

As they note, the high-end AMD X670 chipset could be a multi-chip module (MCM) design incorporating two middle-end B650 chipsets. A combination of two B650 dies is allegedly forming an X670 chipset, and that is what AMD could force motherboard makers to use. By doing so, the Mini-ITX motherboard form factor could be challenging to design and manufacture, meaning that the package of the X670 chipset could be rather extensive. This rumor should, of course, be taken with a massive grain of salt as we don't know how this would function. However, it financially makes sense as AMD wouldn't need to design and request manufacturing for an additional chipset variant.