It’s taken some time to occur, particularly within the case of AMD, however in the end, we’re seeing new mainstream and price range motherboards for Zen 5 and Arrow Lake processors at CES. The stars of the present sport the B850 and B860 chipsets, however on condition that the names are nearly equivalent, there’s most likely going to be no finish of confusion leading to merchandise being returned to retailers. That’s as a result of B850 is AMD-only and B860 is Intel-only. Obviously.
In the case of the previous, AMD really introduced the B850 chipset again in July 2024, with the launch of the Zen 5 CPU structure, nevertheless it’s taken till now for motherboards utilizing it to look. ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI are all displaying off new fashions at CES, and I’ve one in for testing already.
While AMD X870/E motherboards all include PCIe 5.0 graphics card and first SSD slots, B850 boards are solely required to assist PCIe 4.0 for each as commonplace, although many supply Gen5. It’s an analogous story relating to USB4—necessary for X870/E boards, non-obligatory for B850.
In some instances, it may be fairly complicated. Take Asus, for instance, and its ROG Strix B580 motherboards. The B850-E Gaming WiFi has a Gen5 GPU and SSD slot (the remainder being Gen4) and a 40 Gbps USB4 port; the B850-F Gaming WiFi has the identical Gen5 slots however no USB4 port, only a ‘regular’ 20 Gbps USB.
And there’s the B850-A Gaming WiFi with a Gen5 graphics card slot, however no Gen5 SSD slot or USB4 port. Ah however then there’s the B850-I Gaming WiFi that has a Gen5 GPU slot, two Gen5 SSD slots, and no USB4.
To be truthful to Asus, it is not the one motherboard vendor that has a lot of very comparable however confusingly specified fashions. But what’s making all of it worse is the truth that Intel’s new mainstream chipset for its Core Ultra 200S processors is known as B860.
The similarity between the codenames implies that there are actually going to be instances the place somebody by accident orders the fallacious motherboard—the best-case state of affairs simply ends in a fast return to the retailer, and the worst-case state of affairs includes somebody making an attempt to jam an AMD CPU into an Intel socket or vice versa.
Comparing the 2 chipsets reveals that they’re very comparable in options, in addition to names. Neither supply PCIe 5.0 lanes (simply Gen4), nor sport USB4 ports (that is carried out by way of a separate chip within the case of B850 motherboards).
Intel’s B860 has two extra PCIe lanes than AMD’s B850 however the latter has built-in WiFi 7, whereas the previous makes use of WiFi 6E (although some B860 boards use a separate WiFi 7 chip).
Down on the backside finish of the chipset scale, you’ve got bought AMD’s B840 and Intel’s H810. The latter is healthier than the previous however until you are actually working with a really tight price range, neither are nice choices for constructing an affordable gaming PC. You’re higher off with last-gen merchandise that may be purchased for a a lot cheaper price than at launch.
As these new motherboards have solely simply been launched, there aren’t many in shops simply but so that you may wish to wait a month or two simply to what the evaluations of them are like. I think a few of them are going to be fairly costly, although, so that you could be higher off getting an X870 or Z890 board should you get extra options for a similar cash. We’ll let you understand as soon as we’ve extra information.
