Early pricing for AMD's upcoming X670E and X670 motherboards briefly appeared on a German reseller's site suggesting that upgrading to Zen 4 is going to be a very costly affair. This was already expected to some extent due to the shift to DDR5 and the fact that the first motherboard chipsets are high-end offerings.
If the pricing for the Asus motherboards on the site are real, you're looking at paying up to €1,475 ($1,499) for the top Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme motherboard and €483 ($490) for the most affordable Asus Prime X670-P offering. Gulp.
ｱｻｽ pic.twitter.com/b8PZmORvcCAugust 16, 2022
This pricing was spotted by eagle-eyed hardware leaker @momomo_us, who posted a shot of the listings on ipc-computer.de on Twitter. These listings have since been taken down, which could suggest the pricing is correct, although it's not a given either way.
This is just one reseller of course, and the pricing could change when the boards are officially released. More info on Zen 4 and the AM5 platform is expected on August 29 with a livestream, and we'd assume that this is when we'll get the official launch date. Hopefully, we'll get some official pricing at that time too.
AMD recently showed off some of the AM5 motherboards that are on the way, focusing on the high-end offerings from Asrock, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI. This included the Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme, which does have an impressive feature list, although I'm not convinced it can really justify that $1,499 price tag. Even so, it's the fact that the most affordable board is so expensive that is more shocking.
If you're wondering about the difference in the core chipset specifications, then the main difference between the X670E and X670 is the underlying PCIe 5.0 support. The top-end "Extreme" chipset has PCIe 5.0 everywhere, while the X670 leave graphics card PCIe 5.0 support as an option, but does offer PCIe 5.0 storage support. There's also a difference in overclocking support, with the X670E offering "Extreme Overclocking" with the X670 making do with "Enthusiast Overclocking" which doesn't sound too different.
There is a third chipset on the way though, and that's the B650 which has PCIe 5.0 storage support and is aimed at "Mainstream price points". This isn't in the initial salvo of boards, but if that leaked pricing is accurate, it's probably going to be the one worth waiting for the vast majority of builders.
The only notable downside with B650 motherboards is the lack of overclocking support, but we'll have to see how well the Ryzen 7000-series overclocks before that becomes a real factor.
