MSI Slyly Confirms AMD Zen 6 CPU Support On These Motherboards

AMD's socket longevity has always been a strong point for the company. AMD supported Socket 7 longer than anyone, and aside from a few missteps (with Slot A and later, some of the APU sockets), the company has typically tried to offer at least a measure of motherboard compatibility across processor generations. Heck, it just released more Socket AM4 CPUs this year, and that platform came out in 2016, nearly ten years ago.

That's why it's really not surprising when MSI Jason acknowledges that MSI's Socket AM5 motherboards are green for launch of AMD's next-generation Zen 6 processors—at least, the 800-series boards, anyway. That's not exactly what he said, but it's pretty close; here's the relevant Discord messages:


In essence, the user "Himself" is asking about an upcoming MSI motherboard—the X870I Edge Ti EVO Wi-Fi—that MSI Jason admitted had been delayed. Responding to the inquiry as to whether the board "has been updated for zen 6 and its requirements (memory, etc)", MSI's representative says "It will be future ready," signaling that the X870I Edge Ti EVO Wi-Fi will be compatible with AMD's next-generation chips.

While he only made that remark about the board that the users was inquiring after, it's pretty reasonable to expect that most Socket AM5 motherboards, and particularly those with 800-series chipsets, will see updates for Zen 6 CPUs. AMD specifically promised to support Socket AM5—presumably with new CPUs—through 2027, and that support doesn't mean much if you still need to buy a new mainboard. It's also pretty unlikely that AMD would release new CPUs on the same socket that are nevertheless completely incompatible, although we have to remark that Intel did just that with its 300-series chipsets and 8th/9th-generation CPUs.


As for the MSI X870I Edge Ti EVO Wi-Fi, it's not hard to understand why enthusiasts might be after it. It's a gorgeous Mini-ITX Socket AM5 motherboard with a stunning white-out color scheme and a very attractive feature set, including triple Type-C ports (two of which are USB4) and four M.2 sockets, as well as Wi-Fi 7 and 5-Gigabit Ethernet.

If you're keen to grab one in anticipation of Zen 6, you'll be waiting until "mid-November" at least, although Uniko's Hardware says that he thinks that's a China date and that the US launch will be a month later. But you've got plenty of time, because AMD's Zen 6 desktop CPUs aren't expected to manifest until the second half of 2026, so there's no rush.