Thursday, June 13th 2024
B650 Chipset and Micro-ATX Form-factor Dominate Socket AM5 Motherboard Sales: Research
A market research of AMD Socket AM5 motherboards sold in South Korea by Danawa, provide some interesting insights on how gamers approach the platform. This research is confined to Korea, but can be extrapolated to other similar markets. The research studies the chipset model, and form-factor of Socket AM5 motherboards sold in the market. The most interesting finding of the research is that the AMD B650 is by far the most popular chipset for the platform, dwarfing even the entry-level A620 chipset by a factor of 8. A staggering 80% of the Socket AM5 motherboards being sold are based on the B650.
It's important to note here, that this figure does not include the B650E, which is separately shown making up just 2% of the volumes. The B650 (non-E) has nearly all platform features, with motherboards based on the chipset providing at least one Gen 5 M.2 NVMe slot that doesn't eat into the lanes of the x16 PEG slot; and with the current generation of GPUs not featuring the PCIe Gen 5 host interface, customers seem more than happy with the Gen 4 x16 PEG slot provided by B650 motherboards. What's more, you get CPU overclocking and memory overclocking on this mid-range chipset, so it appeals to a very wide demographic. The B650E, on the other hand, provides a Gen 5 x16 PEG slot, and motherboards based on this chipset tend to offer premium I/O features, such as a high-end onboard audio solution, premium wireless networking, among others.
It's interesting to note here that the top-spec X670E chipset has a respectable 5.6% of the volume, which is higher than both the B650E, and the X670 (non-E). This is because the chipset targets the high-end market, with customers who want the best possible platform to go with their Ryzen 9 or Ryzen 7 X3D processors. The X670 loses out on this market because motherboards based on this chipset don't tend to be as premium as the ones based on the X670E, and customers are instead drawn to the B650.
The A620 is unsurprisingly, the second most popular chipset, since it covers the entry-level market. It should ideally be more popular than the B650, but is heavily compromised in terms of I/O (such as Gen 3 PEG), and those shopping for DIY PCs continue to be drawn to a combination of Intel Core i3 and H610 chipset.
The most popular B650 motherboard form-factor is Micro-ATX, which holds a staggering 88% of the volumes. The 240 mm x 240 mm PCB size has everything buyers of the platform would want, since there aren't too many add-on cards to use these days besides a graphics card. The standard ATX (or larger) demographic is 11%. Mini-ITX remains a novelty, and it only has 1% of the market.
Sources:
Danawa, harukaze5719 (Twitter)
It's important to note here, that this figure does not include the B650E, which is separately shown making up just 2% of the volumes. The B650 (non-E) has nearly all platform features, with motherboards based on the chipset providing at least one Gen 5 M.2 NVMe slot that doesn't eat into the lanes of the x16 PEG slot; and with the current generation of GPUs not featuring the PCIe Gen 5 host interface, customers seem more than happy with the Gen 4 x16 PEG slot provided by B650 motherboards. What's more, you get CPU overclocking and memory overclocking on this mid-range chipset, so it appeals to a very wide demographic. The B650E, on the other hand, provides a Gen 5 x16 PEG slot, and motherboards based on this chipset tend to offer premium I/O features, such as a high-end onboard audio solution, premium wireless networking, among others.
The A620 is unsurprisingly, the second most popular chipset, since it covers the entry-level market. It should ideally be more popular than the B650, but is heavily compromised in terms of I/O (such as Gen 3 PEG), and those shopping for DIY PCs continue to be drawn to a combination of Intel Core i3 and H610 chipset.
The most popular B650 motherboard form-factor is Micro-ATX, which holds a staggering 88% of the volumes. The 240 mm x 240 mm PCB size has everything buyers of the platform would want, since there aren't too many add-on cards to use these days besides a graphics card. The standard ATX (or larger) demographic is 11%. Mini-ITX remains a novelty, and it only has 1% of the market.
31 Comments on B650 Chipset and Micro-ATX Form-factor Dominate Socket AM5 Motherboard Sales: Research
AM5 AMD MB prices has gone full retard. Way overpriced that's why people did not move on from AM4 not worth the price.
Even though Ryzen 5 7600 and X are below 200€, 32gb DDR5 is still much more expensive (from 120€) than DDR4 (from 60€).
Platform longevity goes out the window and gets negated when you/we/i can only buy into the platform lately and expensively.
Though i admit going from 7600 to 7800x3d is probably a pretty major (and expensive) jump.
Most full-sized B650 boards have some 3 M.2 slots, at least 2 of which CPU-derived, breaks out most of the 4 10Gbps USB slots of the CPU SoC and that 20Gbps slot from the chipset, adds half a dozen more 5Gbps USB with hub chips, often at minimum the customary WiFi 6(E) and the 2.5Gb Ethernet, and at least a couple more PCIe slots for those who still need them. The only thing apparently less common is USB-C DP connectivity. All but the cheapest also have sufficiently good VRM for anything on default wattage, as well as non-extreme OC. Memory OC support is also universal.
Wonder whether that mATX share would fully translate across markets, though. Are smaller form factor builds popular there? Or is this just a result of them tending to be slightly cheaper than the equivalent full-sized boards, unlike ITX boards?
Another thing that just popped into my head - these are stats from Korea. The land of PC Bangs. Those places buy a ton of hardware and often try for the affordable stuff, as well as space efficient. I would not be surprised if the statistics are skewed by them buying a ton of inexpensive mATX B650 boards to shove into basic mini-towers. Just to drive home what @Assimilator said with his “different cultures” point.
I just checked on Newegg and there are fifteen B650 motherboards for $150 or less, that's not too bad in my opinion.
Typical machines use onboard everything so the only slot required is the graphics card, typically.
mITX as a form factor for a dGPU build stopped making sense when GPUs became dual-slot, and now they're often triple-slot. mITX case manufacturers adapted by moving the GPU away from the motherboard using riser cables but they introduced plenty of problems with the change from PCIe 3.0 to 4.0 and the rumour mill suggests that PCIe 5.0 riser cables are going to be an expensive and potentially very fussy set of headaches.
RETVRN TO BTX already!
Yes, I know you can buy PCIe M.2 risers, but your average joe just wants to add a second or third M.2 drive without extra fuss, and without blocking the air intake of his GPU fans.
I don't really understand the trend they're trying to identify here looking at a small market and one very different than American and European markets, looking at AM5 ATX boards are missing the same IO mATX generally do, half boards also come with a single slot and maybe a second slot cut down to x4, difference being mostly 1 or 2 extra m.2 in favour of the ATX.
The problem is it's hard to tell if this was AMDs own deliberate dumb move, rather than another "cooperation" between intel and their partners.It was definitely cheap, and bang for the buck, with B550 more or less following the suit. The problem is, the "current" B650 and even X670 have the feature set as bleak as the eight years old budget motherboard. Even considering the inflation, there's no way the current B650 series MBs have the manufacturing cost higher, than X570/X470 ones. Especially those lacking PCIE 5.0 slots.Unfortunately the list doesn't end here. The motherboard makers for a very long time, deliberately "degraded" the cheaper motherboards quality, especially of those with lower class chipsets, treating them and their buyers as a second class citizen. But what happens now is too much, and is inacceptable. The irony is, that this time, the "lower" class AMD chipsets are not actually anywhere inferior, they are the same.
But I agree. The more people will buy the "cheapest" and worse products, the more it will put the bottom price in stone, and actually will give the companies an incentive to jack up prices on the higher end stuff, even more.