AMD B550 Specifications and Details

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 09/24/2019 07:51 AM | source: | 20 comment(s)

Many who made the move towards a Ryzen 3000 processor, also treated themselves with an X570 motherboard for PCIe Gen 4.0 and AX WIFI. Other went towards a more affordable X470 motherboard. So one chipset series that has been missing is the affordable B550, until now.

In a nutshell, the B550 chipset is close, very close towards X470. Meaning PCIe Gen 3.0 is the biggest change compared to X570. That also means the interlink between the chipset and CPU is running over four Gen 3 lanes. The good news is that with four extra Gen 4 lanes from the CPU, you can still opt to go with an M2 PCIe 4.0 slot. The rest, incl videocards thus is gen 3.0. But let's compare the two:

Chipset	End-user	USB 3.2 Gen 2	USB 2.0	SATA3	Interconnect	OC Support
B550	Mainstream	2	6	4+4	x4 Gen3	Yes
X570	Enthusiast	8	4	4+8	x4 Gen4	Yes

So compared to the top-end X570, it offers fewer USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gb/s) ports, does not support PCI Express 4.0, and communicates with the Ryzen processor via four PCI-E 3.0 lines (instead of PCI-E 4.0), which limits the total bandwidth controllers built into it. That said, that's pretty much it though. Well, that and likely pricing.

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AlmondMan
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#5713943 Posted on: 09/24/2019 08:13 AM

Pretty nice to see

Expand the platform, grow support. It's actually interesting to be in to hardware again for the first time in many, many years. Actually doing analysis on requirements, software support, use cases and such instead of just going "We're going with Intel". So fun, challenging and exciting! Good times!

sverek
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#5713946 Posted on: 09/24/2019 08:34 AM

Patient consumers win, as usual.

Exodite
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#5713950 Posted on: 09/24/2019 09:03 AM

With PCIe4 off the table it's kinda hard to imagine why you'd pick up a B550 board over a B450 one, unless the former are very competitively priced.

Hilbert hit the distinguishing feature on the head I think, you could potentially get PCIe4-enabled lanes from the CPU still - though I struggle to see how that would keep pricing in check and thus be worth it vs. B450. We'll see I guess, this just feels kinda shrug-worthy to me.

Evildead666
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#5713954 Posted on: 09/24/2019 09:10 AM

OK, so the B550 is very close to the X470.

Considering the 300/400 series chipsets were made on 55nm, maybe its a die shrink to 40nm or even 28nm ?

Kaarme
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#5713955 Posted on: 09/24/2019 09:14 AM

Should be cheap with those specs. Really cheap compared to X570.

H1TMANza
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#5713965 Posted on: 09/24/2019 09:56 AM

Patient consumers win, as usual.

Yes let's wait for PCI Gen 5

FM57
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#5713968 Posted on: 09/24/2019 10:10 AM

Tempting....

anticupidon
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#5713975 Posted on: 09/24/2019 10:38 AM

Hmm, well let's see what VRMs will have and how well will overclock.
More, let's really see the SSD, NVMe and S ATA performance.

Undying
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#5713980 Posted on: 09/24/2019 10:52 AM

Pairing it with a r5 3600 would be a killer combo.

warlord
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#5713987 Posted on: 09/24/2019 11:07 AM

At least you can finally now build a ram +mobo +cpu set cheaper than price of most expensive x570. It just works.

Silva
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#5713988 Posted on: 09/24/2019 11:09 AM

OK, so the B550 is very close to the X470.
Considering the 300/400 series chipsets were made on 55nm, maybe its a die shrink to 40nm or even 28nm ?
55nm, really? What dodgy factory did they came from? Probably costed a few cents each too...
I know I/O doesn't scale that well with die nodes, but I'd imagine they'd do it around 22nm on an old fab.

Evildead666
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#5713997 Posted on: 09/24/2019 11:50 AM

55nm, really? What dodgy factory did they came from? Probably costed a few cents each too...
I know I/O doesn't scale that well with die nodes, but I'd imagine they'd do it around 22nm on an old fab.
Its from the AMD Chipset wiki, that references an Anandtech interview with Lisa Su, where they state "Q6: It has been noted that AMD has been working with ASMedia on the chipset side of the platform, using a 55nm PCIe 3.0x4 based chipset. ..."

I would expect the next step to be 28nm, should be really cheap by now, and would have a lot of die area benefits over 55nm.
Then again, 40nm might be enough.

Kaarme
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#5714016 Posted on: 09/24/2019 12:38 PM

ASMedia is surprisingly antiqued company, working on 55nm still, yet trying to be a part of the latest generation of mobos. But then again, mobo manufacturers would like to only pay pennies for the components, no doubt, like Silva said. After all, the B series won't be the high profit margin series, so every cent matters.

AcidSnow
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#5714045 Posted on: 09/24/2019 01:31 PM

Hmmm, I've been researching X570 boards for the past few days trying to find a good one that doesn't have a bunch of stuff I don't need. These B550 boards sound right up my ally!

schmidtbag
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#5714062 Posted on: 09/24/2019 02:30 PM

A bit disappointing the chipset runs at PCIe 3.0. I suppose this is still an overall better option than X470, but not much. To me, the whole point of getting the 500 series over older generations is PCIe 4.0.

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