AMD covered this with GN back in january, these were what became the x570 chipset, VideocardZ is recycling some old news.

Already discussed. AMD X590 Chipset Pops Up Again - 24 Extra Full PCIe 4.0 lanes?

Hope it allows for windows ver 1903 booting after installing.

Rather than that, shouldn't they be releasing B550? I've recently been looking at components, and I realised the situation is strange, even if it shouldn't be. This is because by default no 400 series motherboard supports the Ryzen 3000 CPUs. I don't know how things are in the USA, maybe better, but over here stores ask for ~20 euros to update the bios of a mobo. So, unless you already have an older Ryzen, you can't do anything with a 400 series mobo and a new Ryzen without spending a totally unnecessary amount of money that could buy a better mobo model instead (like take you a big step toward X470 from B450). Maybe in the USA stores update older mobos with the new bios free of charge? I can only assume that to make any sense of this AMD business decision of offering no "lesser" mobos for the new CPU generation, only the 200+ euros X570 mobos. And sure, AMD offers to send you a loan CPU for bios flashing, but based on the article, it's as cumbersome and slow as dealing with the government bureaucracy, plus apparently you also need to prove your component supplier doesn't offer the service, which they do, but not for free, but AMD would still likely deny you the service. More or less the only viable choice would be to get a mobo that can be bios flashed with no CPU installed. And pray it works.

@Kaarme i get what you are saying, but i struggle to imagine what the b550 will offer over the 450, most likely pcix4 is out of the question on the 80- 130 usd/ euro range ..... even the 450 over the 350 ... Was not something revolutionary had a taste of just rebranding . A sticker that says ryzen 3000 ready on the box would solve the problem

Venix:

@Kaarme i get what you are saying, but i struggle to imagine what the b550 will offer over the 450, most likely pcix4 is out of the question on the 80- 130 usd/ euro range ..... even the 450 over the 350 ... Was not something revolutionary had a taste of just rebranding . A sticker that says ryzen 3000 ready on the box would solve the problem

Hmm... I'll need to keep my eyes open and see if the B450 and X470 mobos start to carry such stickers at large, eventually. It would immediately solve the problem I complained about. So far all the store pages of the B450/X470 I checked carried warnings about the incompatibility.

Kaarme:

Hmm... I'll need to keep my eyes open and see if the B450 and X470 mobos start to carry such stickers at large, eventually. It would immediately solve the problem I complained about. So far all the store pages of the B450/X470 I checked carried warnings about the incompatibility.

MSI and Gigabyte both have BIOS flash setups that don’t require a CPU from what I’ve seen.

USB flashing perhaps, thought it would be something of a standard just press button, receive update but I guess it's something of a high-end feature and not entirely problem free either but I don't know, this old x79 board has it as a bit of a fancy feature but since 2011~2012 things have changed and the firmware or bios data is also larger and I suppose USB flashing, multiple bios slots and such is still varying from model to model even if it being standard would be convenient. 🙂 (Of all the extras and features something actually useful and convenient has to be a high-end thing, wouldn't surprise me and well the additional bios slot and functionality is a bit of a cost question as well to implement.)

Kaarme:

Hmm... I'll need to keep my eyes open and see if the B450 and X470 mobos start to carry such stickers at large, eventually. It would immediately solve the problem I complained about. So far all the store pages of the B450/X470 I checked carried warnings about the incompatibility.

to my understanding the b450 Max motherboards from Msi ... work of the get go with the 3000 series

Venix:

@Kaarme i get what you are saying, but i struggle to imagine what the b550 will offer over the 450, most likely pcix4 is out of the question on the 80- 130 usd/ euro range ..... even the 450 over the 350 ... Was not something revolutionary had a taste of just rebranding . A sticker that says ryzen 3000 ready on the box would solve the problem

Well, I'm running a b450 gigabyte cheap-o board and the BIOS says I can use PCI-E 4, so... I really don't think b550 will lack it. That's probably even why they're holding the launch back - to sell as many x570 as possible, before launching the b550 which would give roughly the same functionality for much less money.

that will be removed with a bios update.

Ricardo:

Well, I'm running a b450 gigabyte cheap-o board and the BIOS says I can use PCI-E 4, so... I really don't think b550 will lack it. That's probably even why they're holding the launch back - to sell as many x570 as possible, before launching the b550 which would give roughly the same functionality for much less money.

Well asus also implemented pcix4 to some boards with amd telling em no no no ....and having em strip it calling alleged stability issues ...they also say x570 boards are more expensive cause pcix4 ......are they true on their statement? Who knows but i really do not like amd making em remove the pcix4 support ....in this aspect if that was intel people would have been a lot more angry but seems most just letting it slide . But the "vrm" not able to handle the 3rd generation well asus seems that she manage to do that on all the boards ever released for ryzen gigabyte seems to be doing well msi also minus some bulldozer cpus and raid and some eye candy in bios, so the whole vrm at the start they tried to use as an excuse was b...... Ahm i mean ...untrue

I don't really think "removing" PCI-e 4 from boards that never advertised this functionality in the first place is a problem. If anything, having it is a bonus for me, even though I won't use it. The point is that having PCI-e 4 isn't as hard/costly as some people are making it to be. x570 boards are expensive now because new tech and exclusivity, not really component costs, IMHO.

Ricardo:

I don't really think "removing" PCI-e 4 from boards that never advertised this functionality in the first place is a problem. If anything, having it is a bonus for me, even though I won't use it. The point is that having PCI-e 4 isn't as hard/costly as some people are making it to be. x570 boards are expensive now because new tech and exclusivity, not really component costs, IMHO.

The boards that had PCI-Express 4.0 added on non-X570 aren't doing it through the chipset, but rather directly from the CPU. So they can't be compared the way you are trying to compare them, and you can't say that it's not expensive because of it. All they are doing on those are using the existing, not-to-spec lanes and passing a signal over them. To make assumptions of cost over this, even though X570 more often then not requires a chipset fan, which is something people don't want, and is something AMD and the motherboard manufacturers wouldn't do if they didn't have to, is useless.

Ricardo:

Well, I'm running a b450 gigabyte cheap-o board and the BIOS says I can use PCI-E 4, so... I really don't think b550 will lack it.

If it's not made by AMD, it almost certainly will not have PCI-Express 4.0. Then again it could have it directly from the CPU, but not via the chipset, if they force motherboard manufacturers to have those lanes to spec. This part may not cost much, though it'd probably cost more then current B450 boards if the materials cost more, but the chipset wouldn't have to be expensive to do it. But that's just theoretical.

Aura89:

The boards that had PCI-Express 4.0 added on non-X570 aren't doing it through the chipset, but rather directly from the CPU. So they can't be compared the way you are trying to compare them, and you can't say that it's not expensive because of it. All they are doing on those are using the existing, not-to-spec lanes and passing a signal over them. To make assumptions of cost over this, even though X570 more often then not requires a chipset fan, which is something people don't want, and is something AMD and the motherboard manufacturers wouldn't do if they didn't have to, is useless.

I didn't know about that. Thanks for the info.

Aura89:

If it's not made by AMD, it almost certainly will not have PCI-Express 4.0. Then again it could have it directly from the CPU, but not via the chipset, if they force motherboard manufacturers to have those lanes to spec. This part may not cost much, though it'd probably cost more then current B450 boards if the materials cost more, but the chipset wouldn't have to be expensive to do it. But that's just theoretical.

I think that would be the logical decision to make, but who knows. Maybe making lanes in-spec simply isn't enough to guarantee 100% reliability. Like you said, we can only theorize really.