I was shocked to learn today that B650 boards are available. That information didn't seem to make it anywhere near my usual technology news channels!
But... they start at $170 for a barebones motherboard. Having spent $200 not too long ago for a well-rounded mid-range X570 board, I find $170 for the starting line up quite steep. And it's unlikely builders want to pair their $300+ Zen 4 chips with the most basic board available.
The barebones right now would be $170 + $300 + $90 (16GB DDR5) = $560 before accounting for the rest of the parts (like a GPU).
Yup, doubling the memory bandwidth, doubling the memory channels, and doubling the PCIe bandwidth, and switching to DDR5 is placing a premium on the new AM5 platform for AMD. Similar happened with the Alder lake launch, which had the same upgrades and combined with sky high DDR5 memory prices.
Just wait a few months, pioneers are the ones that get the arrows (high prices) in the back side.
I'm waiting until around March/April... hoping that prices settle by then, also considering rDNA3 and hoping to see an R9 7950X3D model by then before making final decisions on a next build. Also, right now there's not really any good options for higher speed DDR5 at higher quantities and am curious to see which boards support ecc by then.
It seems like it has been bought out by scalpers after a few days of plentiful stocks in the EU. We'll see if they will prosper or if they keep listing them on eBay for a long time...
I was shocked to learn today that B650 boards are available. That information didn't seem to make it anywhere near my usual technology news channels!
But... they start at $170 for a barebones motherboard. Having spent $200 not too long ago for a well-rounded mid-range X570 board, I find $170 for the starting line up quite steep. And it's unlikely builders want to pair their $300+ Zen 4 chips with the most basic board available.
The barebones right now would be $170 + $300 + $90 (16GB DDR5) = $560 before accounting for the rest of the parts (like a GPU).