PCIe 4.0 is finally here for the masses with the announcement of the AMD B550 Chipset. Based on the tried and tested AM4 socket, the new platform allows PCIe 4.0 connectivity possible for anyone who wants higher performance, bandwidth and speed.
Ready for the 3rd generation AMD Ryzen processors the new AMD B550 chipset features support for PCIe 4.0 with 20x PCIe lanes. That’s x16 for the graphics and x4 for the chipset to utilize. Storage wise, the B550 offers a x4 NVMe, a combination of SATA + x2 NVME or a dual x2 NVMe configuration. You pick either of the three – or the brands rather.
Compared to the recently released X570 chipset, the B550 offers PCIe 4.0 support via a compatible PCIe 4.0 CPU alone. This is an acceptable solution considering Intel’s Z490 chipset – which is an expensive platform to start and only has PCIe Gen4 support via the CPU too. Heck, some Z490 boards doesn’t support PCIe 4.0 via CPU at all.
The platform also supports USB 3.2 Gen2 via CPU and features overclocking. Downside here though is that the B550 only supports future Zen 3 processors and the Ryzen 3000 Series CPUs – which is not to be mistaken with the Ryzen 3000 Series with built-in graphics.
Finally, the AMD Ryzen 3 3300X and Ryzen 3 3100 are slated to launch with $120 and $99 USD MSRP with PCIe Gen4 support backing them up.
