AMD 4800S Desktop Kit Might Be A Repurposed Xbox Series X Chip, What You Need To Know

Hardware enthusiasts may recall some fuss earlier this year about the AMD 4700S Desktop Kit. That was a pre-packaged motherboard-and-CPU combo bearing an eight-core CPU of Zen 2 lineage. Given the presence of GDDR6 memory on the mainboard, folks reckoned that the processor was probably similar to the chip apportioned for a PlayStation or Xbox Series X game console, considering that both brands' most recent releases include eight-core Zen 2 CPUs with GDDR6 memory.

Unfortunately, the one thing that could have made the 4700S a tantalizing product—the powerful GPU built into those processors—was disabled. The 4700S required a discrete GPU to do its thing, and yet despite that, it only had a PCIe 2.0 x4 link for a graphics card. Combine the high-latency GDDR memory with the slow PCIe slot and relatively poor clock rate, and you've got a recipe for a disappointing product, especially in the midst of a GPU shortage. 

The prolific rumor-reporters over at Videocardz, however, seem to have got their hands on some details of another console-derived desktop kit, this time called the "AMD 4800S Desktop Kit." It looks quite a bit different from the 4700S, and the site's sources shared some specs that seem quite superior to the older model. The 4800S is supposedly still an eight-core CPU based on Zen 2 cores, but it will apparently have a PCIe 4.0 slot as well. The source of this info didn't specify the bus width, but even at x4 that's still four times the peak bandwidth of the other board.

Plus, the 4800S desktop kit will have M.2 sockets for SSDs and for Wi-Fi cards. The 4700S version had neither, although it was a smaller board that would have required some finesse to fit the slots. It was also noted that where the previous version included a terrible cooler with a non-standard mounting mechanism, the 4800S Desktop Kit will support Socket AM4 CPU coolers, allowing users to bolt on a big ol' radiator if they want.