Reported Specifications on AMD B550 Chipset Surface

[Raevenlord]

We've known for some time that AMD's mainstream-segment B550 chipset wouldn't bring all the bangs and whistles of its bigger, enthusiast-class cousin X570. For one, it wouldn't make sense to increase development and implementation costs of both the chipset and motherboards built for mainstream enthusiasts by adding PCIe 4.0 support and the more stringent signaling and power requirements the new standard entails. As such, B550 reportedly cuts down fully on PCIe 4.0 support, as well as on the latest USB standards, to offer a product that's sufficiently rounded up on I/O while offering overclocking support for users that demand it.

Reportedly, AMD's B550 will only support up to 2x USB 3.2 Gen2 devices, 6x USB 2.0, 4 + 4 SATA3 connections, and the interlink between the chipset and the CPU occurs via a 4x PCIe 3.0 interface, which means there's less bandwidth for communication between the CPU and the chipset than on X570 - not that that was a real problem on AMD's previous-gen Ryzen products, though, so that's more of a technicality at this point. Ryzen 3000 CPUs still offer 4x PCIe 4.0 ports, though, so these could be used for speeding up a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, for instance. The launch of B550-bound products is expected towards October.



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[kapone32]

So the thought process is that we will have a M2 slot connected to the CPU. Will not the first PCI_Ex 16 slot not also be connected to the CPU?

 

[aredanecyfna]

Looks like a rebranded chipset to me, nothing new accept for the name.

 

[Hardware Geek]

Am I reading this correctly? It soubds like they are offering pcie 4 on one nvme drive slot and running the rest of the expansion at gen 3 speeds. Sounds like a decent compromise to reduce the price of the boards. I'd personally go for the 570 if I wasn't waiting for the next threadripper, but most users, especially those who buy a complete system off the shelf, won't know the difference or care.

 

[Mussels]

Features may be very similar to B450, be interesting to see the final results for whats actually changed

something as simple as the faster m.2 slot might well be enough to convince a lot of people

 

[1d10t]

These chipset is DoA in my opinion, too much "unequal" compare to B450 vs x470

So the thought process is that we will have a M2 slot connected to the CPU. Will not the first PCI_Ex 16 slot not also be connected to the CPU?

Kinda agree with this, at least giving a GPU slot PCIe gen 4.0 wouldn't hurt, and that will makes older chipset less attractive

 

[kapone32]

Features may be very similar to B450, be interesting to see the final results for whats actually changed

something as simple as the faster m.2 slot might well be enough to convince a lot of people

Not sure about that one many people have been lamenting

These chipset is DoA in my opinion, too much "unequal" compare to B450 vs x470



Kinda agree with this, at least giving a GPU slot PCIe gen 4.0 wouldn't hurt, and that will makes older chipset less attractive

According to the OP it looks like the x16 slot(s) will not be wired at 4.0. My confusion is with the new 3000 series CPUs that have 20 lanes of PCI _E 4.0. One could possibly have 2 x16 3.0 slots wired as such on these boards. I doubt we will see anything like that though.

 

[Joss]

Sounds like passively cooled chipsets.

 

[tabascosauz]

16 x PCIe 4.0 comes from the CPU. That's a given, as there would be zero reason to replace B450 if 4.0 was "locked out" with AGESA on boards the way it is with B450/X470.

The uplink between Ryzen 3000 and B550 is said to be the same 4 x PCIe 3.0 as has been for X370/X470/B450, which means that:

- the chipset is likely made by ASMedia
- the chipset uplink reserves lanes outside of the advertised 20 x 4.0 from the CPU, as it has been since the beginning of Ryzen, meaning you get an SSD and GPU's worth of lanes without having to cannibalize x16 for 4.0
- if the board vendors have at least three brain cells, you can run a single PCIe 4.0 SSD to draw out those remaining lanes from Ryzen 3000
- you won't be able to run more than 1 PCIe 4.0 SSD.

Which all sounds pretty good, and nothing out of line with what has been rumored previously. X570 already provides the support for multiple storage devices without bandwidth sharing, so why repeat that? I just want a passively cooled PCH for my SFF applications.

You guys are all forgetting that mini-ITX X570 boards are costing $200 USD at MSRP, pushing them north of $300 CAD over here, thanks to the active cooling and VRM choices of components. A nice ASMedia chip will allow most users to leverage 4.0 while pushing prices down a bit; X570 has been outright crazy.

 

[Mussels]

Sounds like passively cooled chipsets.

These ones are asmedia, x570 are AMD's design

Gunna be interesting to find out what the differences are, or if this is just a B450 rebadge (if so, wooo, no mobo upgrade for me!)

 

[Crackong]

16 x PCIe 4.0 comes from the CPU. That's a given, as there would be zero reason to replace B450 if 4.0 was "locked out" with AGESA on boards the way it is with B450/X470.

The uplink between Ryzen 3000 and B550 is said to be the same 4 x PCIe 3.0 as has been for X370/X470/B450, which means that:

- the chipset is likely made by ASMedia
- if the board vendors have at least three brain cells, you can run a single PCIe 4.0 SSD to draw out those remaining lanes from Ryzen 3000
- you won't be able to run more than 1 PCIe 4.0 SSD.

Which all sounds pretty good, and nothing out of line with what has been rumored previously. X570 already provides the support for multiple storage devices without bandwidth sharing, so why repeat that? I just want a passively cooled PCH for my SFF applications.

You guys are all forgetting that mini-ITX X570 boards are costing $200 USD at MSRP, pushing them north of $300 CAD over here, thanks to the active cooling and VRM choices of components. A nice ASMedia chip will allow most users to leverage 4.0 while pushing prices down a bit; X570 has been outright crazy.

Agreed.
B550 boards should at least allow 4.0 x16 for GPU and 4.0 x 4 for one SSD, then 3.0 for the rest of them.

 

[1d10t]

According to the OP it looks like the x16 slot(s) will not be wired at 4.0. My confusion is with the new 3000 series CPUs that have 20 lanes of PCI _E 4.0. One could possibly have 2 x16 3.0 slots wired as such on these boards. I doubt we will see anything like that though.

24 PCIe lanes from CPU , 2 down to chipset using PCIe 3.0 x4 CPU lanes or same as PCIe 4.0 x2 bandwidth, that's still leave plethora of lanes.
Unless AMD step up the game, give that B550 chipset 8 lanes PCIe Gen 3.0 ( that still way below X570 with it's 16 lanes PCIe Gen 4 so no one will bitching about fan ), but unlikely. So yeah, in the end this is just a re-badge B450 with USB 3.2 Gen 2

 

[Chrispy_]

B350 v3.

B450 was just a rebranding excercise. AMD had to add software incentives (StoreMi) just to provide some distinction between B350 and B450 on the comparison table, but there's nothing to stop you using other caching software on a B350. I'm not even sure StoreMi is the best option anyway, Linux users have better ZFS options, and Windows users won't get bitten by a motherboard change down the road if they use Windows tiered storage spaces instead.

Don't get me wrong though, there's nothing wrong with yet-another-rebrand for B550: Mainstream hardware requirements haven't really changed since B350 launched, so keeping the specs the same is fine too.

 

[Mistral]

Looks like a rebranded chipset to me, nothing new accept for the name.

And that would be perfectly fine, especially if we get a higher quality crop of mATX boards with it.

 

[PanicLake]

Sounds like passively cooled chipsets.

It better be!

 

[Kaotik]

The last part is wrong, Ryzen 3000 CPUs offer PCIe4 x16 for graphics, PCIe4 x4 for NVMe and PCIe4 x4 for chipset.
The last one will work in PCIe3 mode for B550, but the other two are still PCIe4, so unless AMD prevents it like with 3xx and 4xx motherboards, B550 motherboards will have PCIe4 gfx and NVMe just like X570 motherboards.

 

[bug]

This is a good option, but I feel AMD cut too much into X570. I get that only 2 ports are USB 3.2, but why are the remaining 6 only USB 2.0? And only 4 native SATA ports?
What will they cut to make their cheaper chipsets?

 

[danbert2000]

Am I reading this right: the B550 boards will only have two USB 3 ports? Even if they are the 10 Gbps Gen 2 type, that's just not enough. I'd expect a couple of the fast ports and then a lot of USB 3 Gen 1 (5 Gbps). If this truly is stuck at just two ports and the rest are USB 2.0, it's a pretty sad state of affairs. Perhaps most mobo makers will use a hub chip to split one of those fast ports out to many of the 5 Gbps ports, but then you're sharing 10 Gbps of bandwidth among a lot of ports.

Seems messy, I'm curious if they just didn't mention that 5 Gbps ports are supported as well.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Am I reading this right: the B550 boards will only have two USB 3 ports? Even if they are the 10 Gbps Gen 2 type, that's just not enough. I'd expect a couple of the fast ports and then a lot of USB 3 Gen 1 (5 Gbps). If this truly is stuck at just two ports and the rest are USB 2.0, it's a pretty sad state of affairs. Perhaps most mobo makers will use a hub chip to split one of those fast ports out to many of the 5 Gbps ports, but then you're sharing 10 Gbps of bandwidth among a lot of ports.

Seems messy, I'm curious if they just didn't mention that 5 Gbps ports are supported as well.

No, you're not. Some of the USB ports are built into the CPU and would still be usable.

 

[voltage]

"bangs and whistles"

 

[Mistral]

Am I reading this right: the B550 boards will only have two USB 3 ports? Even if they are the 10 Gbps Gen 2 type, that's just not enough.

Do your keyboard and mouse need 10 Gbps? Maybe your mike? Your webcam?
I'm honestly curious, how many devices that need a 10 Gbps USB do you use simultaneously?

 

[tabascosauz]

Am I reading this right: the B550 boards will only have two USB 3 ports? Even if they are the 10 Gbps Gen 2 type, that's just not enough. I'd expect a couple of the fast ports and then a lot of USB 3 Gen 1 (5 Gbps). If this truly is stuck at just two ports and the rest are USB 2.0, it's a pretty sad state of affairs. Perhaps most mobo makers will use a hub chip to split one of those fast ports out to many of the 5 Gbps ports, but then you're sharing 10 Gbps of bandwidth among a lot of ports.

Seems messy, I'm curious if they just didn't mention that 5 Gbps ports are supported as well.

All you have to do is ask yourself whether a retail desktop board with only 2 ports beyond USB2.0 speeds would actually survive past the idea stage of R&D, let alone sell in 2019, and you will have your answer.

That said, the rumor articles about B550 on TPU have been rather questionably written as of late. They seem to demonstrate among other things, that some of the TPU news crew cannot distinguish between PCIe offered by the CPU and those from the PCH, as well as how the AMD chipset uplink works.

 

[1d10t]

16 x PCIe 4.0 comes from the CPU. That's a given, as there would be zero reason to replace B450 if 4.0 was "locked out" with AGESA on boards the way it is with B450/X470.
The uplink between Ryzen 3000 and B550 is said to be the same 4 x PCIe 3.0 as has been for X370/X470/B450, which means that:
- the chipset is likely made by ASMedia
- the chipset uplink reserves lanes outside of the advertised 20 x 4.0 from the CPU, as it has been since the beginning of Ryzen, meaning you get an SSD and GPU's worth of lanes without having to cannibalize x16 for 4.0
- if the board vendors have at least three brain cells, you can run a single PCIe 4.0 SSD to draw out those remaining lanes from Ryzen 3000
- you won't be able to run more than 1 PCIe 4.0 SSD.
Which all sounds pretty good, and nothing out of line with what has been rumored previously. X570 already provides the support for multiple storage devices without bandwidth sharing, so why repeat that? I just want a passively cooled PCH for my SFF applications.
You guys are all forgetting that mini-ITX X570 boards are costing $200 USD at MSRP, pushing them north of $300 CAD over here, thanks to the active cooling and VRM choices of components. A nice ASMedia chip will allow most users to leverage 4.0 while pushing prices down a bit; X570 has been outright crazy.

It depend on motherboard vendor I suppose, but really , I wanna see some improvement not some boring B350 V3 as other already said.If this B550 essentially the same as B450, why waiting so long to release it ? Hmmm...come to think of it, X570 was AMD in house, so yeah...munny
I really hope AMD design this chipset to be maxed out, at least 16 lanes PCIe Gen 3.0 from PCH, then we will have
- 1 PCIe 3.0 x16
- 2 M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4
- 2 USB 3.2 , 4 USB 3.1, 6 USB 2.0
- 6 SATA.
..and that what I call decent upgrade

 

[danbert2000]

Do your keyboard and mouse need 10 Gbps? Maybe your mike? Your webcam?
I'm honestly curious, how many devices that need a 10 Gbps USB do you use simultaneously?

If I have two external hard drives, now I can't plug my VR headset in. My ancient Z97 board has four USB 3.0 ports on the back and another two with the front panel header, so I guess that's what I would consider a minimum. I'm hoping that there are a bunch of 3.2 Gen 1 ports that just weren't included in the rumor. Because if there really are only two fast USB ports available, it's going to suck. Again, I said maybe this is just missing info or maybe one of those ports is going to be split out to run a bunch of slower 3.0 ports.

 

[bug]

Do your keyboard and mouse need 10 Gbps? Maybe your mike? Your webcam?
I'm honestly curious, how many devices that need a 10 Gbps USB do you use simultaneously?

I don't think that's the issue. If anything, I'd like to see a solution that multiplexes several slow devices over a single USB connection.
The issue is when I want to plug in a fast USB stick or something, I'd rather not have to hunt for the right port.

As pointed above, there are two more USB 3.2 ports coming straight from the CPU, so it's not all bad (but these will 100% go to the back of your case, so you will have to hunt for them), but it's disheartening to see everything that's not USB 3.2 is downgraded straight to USB 2.0. X570 does the same, but with 12 USB 3.2 ports available, that's not an issue.