Tuesday, December 3rd 2019
AMD X570-successor to be Third-Party Sourced
AMD X570 chipset is the industry's first PC platform core-logic to support PCI-Express gen 4.0, but has proven to be expensive and hot. Its 600-series chipset successor will be third-party sourced much like its 400-series predecessor, according to a MyDrivers report citing sources in the motherboard industry. AMD is reportedly sourcing its 500-series mid-range chipset, the B550, from ASMedia. The B550 uses PCI-Express 3.0 x4 as its chipset bus, and puts out eight PCIe gen 3.0 downstream general purpose lanes, however, B550 motherboards could still feature PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots from the socket AM4 SoC (provided a 3rd gen Ryzen processor is installed), and at least one of the M.2 NVMe slots on B550 motherboards could have PCI-Express 4.0 x4, since they're wired to the SoC instead of the chipset.
The MyDrivers report predicts that the successor to X570, the supposed "X670," could be sourced from a third-party firm, much like the B550, and implement PCI-Express gen 4.0, not just as chipset-bus, but also putting out PCI-Express gen 4.0 general purpose lanes. A possible design goal of the X670 could be to implement PCIe gen 4.0 switching fabric without running too hot, resulting in a cooler chipset than can make do with fanless cooling solutions, much like the X470. AMD will continue to make "chipsets" in the form of I/O controller dies for use in its MCM processors, although the relatively low-margin motherboard chipset business could be axed.
Source:
MyDrivers
The MyDrivers report predicts that the successor to X570, the supposed "X670," could be sourced from a third-party firm, much like the B550, and implement PCI-Express gen 4.0, not just as chipset-bus, but also putting out PCI-Express gen 4.0 general purpose lanes. A possible design goal of the X670 could be to implement PCIe gen 4.0 switching fabric without running too hot, resulting in a cooler chipset than can make do with fanless cooling solutions, much like the X470. AMD will continue to make "chipsets" in the form of I/O controller dies for use in its MCM processors, although the relatively low-margin motherboard chipset business could be axed.
28 Comments on AMD X570-successor to be Third-Party Sourced
As for the chipset cooling i feel like most manufacturers have gone overboard with their chipset fans on X570. Personally i see no reason for active cooling on X570 and tests by Der8auer for example have shown as much.
On my X570 Aorus Master i replaced the stock thermal pad with Kryonaout and unplugged the chipset fan cable. Never have i seen temps exceeding 45c.
Call it B550, call it whatever. It would have been great to have.
But realistically, there's no need for B550. In order to make it easier for OEMs and consumers, AMD pushed for "ryzen 3000 - ready" instead. Most of the stuff on shelves today is Zen2-compatible(B350/450, x370/470). AsRock even pushed as far as updating their A320 lineup and DeskMini A300 (which recently gave me a headache due to cut-down Bristol Ridge support).
boards are super expensive,and only thing they offer is pci-e 4.0,which in turn also has a huge markup for the nvme drives and provides zero returns except for copying files between two such drives.
x470 was cheaper,if they upgraded it for the ability to run two 3.0 nvme drives at the same price point it'd be a hit.
I think x570 was ambitious, but not necessarily a ideal chipset at this point in time in the tech industry given how hot it runs requiring a cooling fan. It's not a huge deal, but just enough for people to quip about and if margins are already low to begin with it makes sense to kind of axe the custom motherboard chipset's. To me it seems like AMD's way of signaling they intend to integrate more chipset features directly to the CPU SoC itself which makes more sense for efficiency and latency. I think eventually at least with APU's they might be able to integrate everything directly and still be able to cool it sufficiently. Integrating everything to the CPU SoC itself also free's up the motherboard chipset area to both shrink down the board size for SFF PC cases and more enthusiast level ones with dual sockets perhaps with twin crossfire APU's or having a CPU SoC that's heavily multi-core and another CPU SoC on another socket that's more geared for single thread high performance high frequency scaling giving the best of both. It probably wouldn't cost a "abundance" more for a dual socket board if you axe out the motherboard chipset itself. At that point the difference might be negligible.
AMD could even use the vacant motherboard chipset space to place a I/O die to control discrete AMD Crossfire MCU-GPU's and tweak the I/O die itself further when they shrink it to 7nm. It's hard to say what AMD will do. Another thing I had thought of recently is AMD could utilize that extra die chip space on certain CPU SoC's and integrate a PCIe express microSD slot on it and just have a open slot in the heatspread to insert the microSD into it prior to installation though I'm not sure how worthwhile it would be though see it as a interesting option none the less.
I really feel AMD will continue to integrate more features to the CPU SoC itself over time freeing up the need for a motherboard chipset entirely or requiring a smaller more efficient one that occupies less motherboard space to further shrink the PCB size down.
Another irony is that now that AMD actually has good CPU progress to offer, the whole idea of keeping old boards and upgrade from there is starting to turn sour quickly. There's a pretty sudden progress in standards and features on these boards and we've already had reports of the necessity to upgrade a board regardless.
Oh well, can't have it all I guess.
And if you really want fast storage then X570 exists. For example ASUS TUF X570 costs around 200$ and is a decent X570 board according to many.
I have no problem with X570 pricing. People sometimes act like X570 starts at $500 or something.
Its not a big miss, but could do with some offerings.
I did find this article but it's out of date right now and does not consider Ryzen 3000 improved memory controller: www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-x470-intel-z390-showdown,38212.html
But assuming you have decent airflow in your case it's not a problem. I can't speak for other manufacturers but on my Gigabyte X570 there is chipset fan control setting in BIOS and you can make your own fan curve.
14:00
And also this: