News Why AMD’s Ryzen 7000 and Motherboards Cost So Damn Much

[TJ Hooker]

You're right. They did say the 5800X3D was great. I stand corrected.

Their article: They did it in a $300 case with the best air cooling there is, showed benchmarks where the 7950X beat it in all but the best cooling scenario, the published an article with the tagline, "...but you don’t lose that much performance if you go with budget-priced air cooling." They actually demonstrated a 12% loss, which would put the chip well behind Ryzen in all benchmarks and never mentioned it.

Sure, but if you were to use that SFF cooler with a 7950X it would also lose performance in heavily threaded loads like cinebench (where the 13900K lost 12%). They probably didn't compare the results from a 13900k using a SFF cooler to their results of the 7950X using a 280mm water cooler because it wouldn't be a fair comparison.

Unfortunately I can't find results for a 13900K and a 7950X both using the same air cooler for a real apples to apples comparison of how they perform with mid tier coolers.

 

[edzieba]

It's just optimize copper and fiber-glass. You are falling for marketing narratives.

Again, compeltely wrong.

Tackling the design challenges of PCIe 5.0 - Tech Design Forum Techniques

Moving up to PCIe 5.0 speeds demands rethinking everything from silicon design through choice of PCB material and connectors up to track layout and validation.

www.techdesignforums.com

 

[dalauder]

No, that was 1151. The Skylake/Kaby Lake version was slightly different than Coffee Lake/Coffee Lake R. There was one board I heard of that would span all 4 generations, but it was a niche industrial board.

Ah, 1151. Thanks. I guess it doesn't matter a ton anymore, but I do have an old 6th Gen motherboard so it might end up mattering to me.

 

[dalauder]

Sure, but if you were to use that SFF cooler with a 7950X it would also lose performance in heavily threaded loads like cinebench (where the 13900K lost 12%). They probably didn't compare the results from a 13900k using a SFF cooler to their results of the 7950X using a 280mm water cooler because it wouldn't be a fair comparison.

Unfortunately I can't find results for a 13900K and a 7950X both using the same air cooler for a real apples to apples comparison of how they perform with mid tier coolers.

You're absolutely right. I just want to see a real apples to apples comparison. Unfortunately, the author doesn't have a Ryzen system to compare with yet.

 

[bit_user]

Your diagrams are proving my point. There is a CPU and one South Bridge (or two in the case of some AM5 boards). Traces of copper aren't hard to design.

It's not just traces of copper. As the article clearly explains, the VRMs are vastly more sophisticated. Boards now have to handle a lot more power, which adds costs and complexity.

PCIe 4 and above need retimers. There are also more signal integrity challenges, forcing boards to use more layers and more expensive materials. These days, boards also have more PCIe lanes, due to NVMe. Here a brief outline of the challenges PCIe 5.0 poses to board designers:

• https://resources.altium.com/p/what-goes-pcie-50-layout-and-routing

I don't understand why you think it makes such a difference to the board designer whether the memory controller lives in a separate chip on the board. I'm sure the difference between routing memory to the North Bridge vs. routing it to the CPU isn't very significant.

 

[Bamda]

To some extent, but it does seem like AMD will have trouble addressing the budget segment, with AM5. I wonder if there are any tweaks they can make, going forward, that allow for cheaper AM5 boards which don't support the power-delivery requirements of the highest-tier Ryzens.

Or, maybe they go a completely different route and push for boards with BGA/laptop CPUs, into the lowest tier desktops (i.e. the "NUC" route).

The B650 and B650E motherboards will address the lower-cost segment of the market. In time the cost of those MBs will drop even more with rebates or discounts. The only issue is that people have zero patience and expect prices to be amazing on release. That is why I never purchase anything after release since I know there are growing pains associated with these new devices and the price of items will drop in time. I mean just look at the 4090 with the melting adapters. I always take the wait-and-see approach.

 

[SSGBryan]

To some extent, but it does seem like AMD will have trouble addressing the budget segment, with AM5.

AMD has budget AM5 cpus - the price range is the same as the 5000 series (albeit the 7950x is cheaper than the 5950x). Newegg has half a dozen B650 motherboards below $200, X670E boards start at $259.

A 7600x + B650 MB starts at $460. This is the same launch prices the 5000 series had.