Affordable Gigabyte B650 Motherboards Begin To Emerge For Mainstream AMD Zen 4 PCs
BenchLife lists the models as the B650E Aorus Master, B650 Aorus Elite AX, B650M Aorus Elite AX, B650 AERO G, and B650I Aorus Ultra. We'll reproduce the photos here, but unfortunately there isn't too much to say about the models that you can't simply see for yourself in the pictures:
If you're not up to snuff on your Socket AM5 chipsets, the top-end X670 boards actually have a pair of physical chips onboard, making proper use of the term "chipset". Both of these chips provide the CPU (via a serial link, not in parallel) with additional connectivity, including more USB, SATA, and/or PCIe. B650, on the other hand, only uses a single chip, like most "chipsets" in the last few years. This will restrict its maximum connectivity, but the majority of the most-important I/O comes from the Ryzen CPUs themselves, so it may not matter to most users.
Unfortunately, BenchLife didn't get any pricing details with the pictures, so we don't yet know how much cheaper these boards will be compared to their X670 equivalents. The site does speculate that the difference could be as much as 30%. That would put the B650 Aorus Elite AX at around $200, and the B650E Aorus Master at about $350. Those are still not cheap motherboards—quite a bit higher than the $125 that AMD promised with the launch of Zen 4—but street prices may end up being a bit lower yet.
BenchLife also speculates that these boards will be available starting October 10th. That's about a week after AMD's presentation and less than two weeks away from today, so we'll see soon enough.
