MSI B760 Motherboard Prices Revealed And Even The DDR5 Models Are Affordable
Have you built a current-generation system yet, loyal HotHardware reader? If not, one of our first guesses as to why could be the high price of motherboards. While AMD has its budget B650 chipset out and the cheapest boards are in the $150 USD range (loosely), Intel's 700-series platform is currently limited to the Z790 chipset, and as a result, those motherboards start at around $200 street price. Some relief is on the way, though; a new leak purports to produce pre-release pricing for MSI's B760 motherboards.
Fresh off of someone's screen showing an Excel spreadsheet is a screenshot from regular leaker chi11eddog (@g01d3nm4ng0 on Twitter) that would seem to list what is likely all of MSI's B760-chipset motherboards. The line-up includes both DDR4 and DDR5 motherboards, and ranges from the PRO B760M-A WiFi DDR4 at $169 on up to the MAG B760 Tomahawk WiFi at $229.
As the leaker notes, a couple of motherboards on the list include MAX in the name, which may indicate that these boards include fancy overclocking features like the MAG B660M Mortar MAX WiFi. That hard-to-find model included an external clock generator on the motherboard to support BCLK overclocking, allowing users to take locked processors well beyond their intended clock rates.
Source: Expreview
Intel hasn't actually announced any 700-series chipsets besides the extant Z790, so we don't really know the specifications, but Chinese tech site Expreview seems to have the details. Poring over the chart, we see the usual drop in PCIe and USB connectivity as you move down the stack. The cut from eight DMI 4.0 lanes to just four in B760 seems pretty significant, although it has to said that the budget chipset drops many of its high-speed connectivity options as well, reducing the need for lots of throughput to the CPU.
As Intel hasn't announced these products yet, we don't know when they'll launch, but it's a fair bet that we'll find out more at CES next week.
