News AMD Lists New Pro 500 Motherboard Chipset for the AM4 Socket

[Admin]

The Pro 500 joins AMD's list of motherboard chipsets for small form factor systems.

AMD Lists New Pro 500 Motherboard Chipset for the AM4 Socket : Read more

 

[twotwotwo]

The lower-end ($999) M75s SFF has, uh, an impressive markup. 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, and only integrated graphics. An ASRock A300 will get you there for about $150 (the case/mobo/PSU/wifi) + $100 (the 3200G) + $65 (500GB WD Blue NVMe, an upgrade!) + $35 (8GB laptop RAM) = $350. Assembly will cost you something but you can probably work that out if it'll save you $650 a unit. I know, big customers get discounts, some need the management features, businesses will pay lots just for support and like to use their chosen vendor(tm), but even considering all that, wowie.

 

[Gillerer]

If we had to make a guess, we suspect the Pro 500 chipset is based on a similar design as AMD's high-end X570 chipset.

Why make guesses that are counter to not only what we know about A300 and X300, but things already discussed in the article? (Besides the fact that I guess that statement can unwittingly kind of true if you choose to not use an APU, since the Ryzen CPUs include a chip very similar to the X570 chipset in the form of the I/O die...)

AMD's chipset listings include the quote:

... AMD’s X300, A300, and PRO 500 chipsets provide processor-direct access for excellent performance. ...

The A300 and X300 "chipsets" mean the motherboard is built for an SoC CPU/APU without an external chipset. Ryzen has some SATA and USB on the CPU/APU itself, so those can provide the needed connectivity for low-cost or small footprint systems.

If you check the connectivity listed, it matches that provided by the CPU - as long as you repurpose the 4 lanes usually used for a chipset for an extra M.2.

I would assume that AMD design rules for X300 - similar to the how the distinction works between the higher end X, B/A series chipsets - allowed bifurcating the primary x16 connection to x8/x8, while A300 didn't. (Although this doesn't really affect things much since most systems like this would be equipped with an APU that has only 8 lanes for the GPU to begin with.)