Thursday, March 30th 2023
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Possible MSI A620 Chipset Motherboard Drawing Surfaces
A PCB drawing of a possible AMD A620 chipset Micro-ATX motherboard by MSI has surfaced. The drawing looks like that of a product designed to be priced well under the $100-mark. The Socket AM5 motherboard draws power from a 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors. A simple 8-phase VRM with LFPAK discrete MOSFETs condition power for the processor, which is wired to two DDR5 DIMM slots, an M.2 NVMe slot (possibly limited to Gen 4 bandwidth, if not Gen 3); and a PCI-Express x16 with Gen 3 bandwidth, if not Gen 4. The only other expansion slot is a PCI-Express 3.0 x1. There are four SATA ports on offer, Display connectivity appears to include HDMI and D-Sub. 6-channel HD audio and a 1 GbE wired network connection make for the rest of it. AMD is expected to begin rolling out cost-effective motherboard based on the A620 later this week.
Source:
Hassan Mujtaba (Twitter)
7 Comments on Possible MSI A620 Chipset Motherboard Drawing Surfaces
I thought VRMs were supposed to *improve*, not regress. Good doubled 4-phase w/ heatsink is doable but situational and on the edge for even 105W TDP (142W) processors. Take away a theoretical 25% of current handling and where does that land you? And that's assuming MSI keeps using relatively good parts (4C024 and 4C029).
I've been seeing midrange B650 mATX boards on sale at $250cad lately, which isn't all that bad considering decent B550 mATX boards (Mortar, TUF Wifi) started at $200-250 back in 2020. These barrel-scraping A620 boards are just funny.
Also, is that a space for DrMOS on Vmisc?? Really? How hard is it to just make it all DrMOS? Low end Vishays are so cheap, at some point you have to question the value proposition of these not-entry-level 4C029s.
Heck, there are even some cheap B550 boards that use the exact same VRM config - just a run of the mill 3+2+1 PWM controller, cheap-o mosfets that they've stockpiled, and bare minimum labor to make it work together. I'm pretty sure they won't add CPUs with TDP over 65W to QVL until most of these will have expired warranty (just like AsRock likes to do)
Yes, it's a crap board, but if the price is right - it still has its place on the market.
Not sure where you got the idea; neither ASRock nor MSI is so kind as to keep CPUs off the QVL because the VRM cannot handle their PPT. Literally not a thing for any of the board vendors on AM4 or AM5. If SMU support is there, CPU is on the list. Exact same deal when they list 13900K on unheatsinked LGA1700 boards.
Even ASRock are keeping with the times. Their B650M HDV is a $120 ($140?) board with a liberally heatsinked 8+2+1 with 50A DrMOS. It's pretty optimistic to believe that any of these budget A620 boards will be priced "far" below $100 as stated. Like you just said, DDR5 comes with SMT slots and basically 6-layer is the new 4-layer - so at that point you spend slightly less than a significantly better B650 board?
Tech forum lol...
It is Top Silk Layer, Silkscreen.
www.msi.com/Motherboard/PRO-A620M-E