It looks like ASRock has integrated full support for PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSDs on its new AMD A620 lineup of motherboards.
ASRock’s AMD A620 motherboards fully support PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSDs
AMD and its partners recently introduced the A620 chipset and the respective motherboards aimed at the entry-level segment. These motherboards start at $85 USD, which is 32% less than the starting price of B650 motherboards, allowing budget gamers and PC builders to build cost-effective PCs using the many processor options available in the Ryzen 7000 family.
In our AMD A620 motherboard roundup, we revealed how the chipset fully supports Gen 4.0 hardware design with core specifications that include a PCIe Gen 4 x16 slot and PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot.
However, it turns out that this is not quite the case from what we can find in the tests conducted by our sources who managed to get hold of one of the latest ASRock A620M Pro RS WIFI motherboards that should cost around 100 USD and come with a very decent design featuring two M slots. 2 (1 with heatsink). The motherboard is paired with an AMD Ryzen 5 7600 & CFD Gaming NVMe Gen 5 SSD with speeds up to 10GB/s.
In the CrystalDisk and ATTO tests, it can be seen that the CFD Gaming Gen 5 NVMe SSD fully supports the PCIe Gen 5.0 x4 interface, and ATTO also shows that the drive performs at its rated performance of 10 GB / s without problems. As we know, PCIe Gen 4.0 x4 interface allows maximum transfer rate of 8Gb/s through the protocol while Gen 5.0 x4 supports up to 16Gb/s. It’s really a lot of fun and we’re told it was even more interesting.
Speaking with motherboard vendors, it was revealed that A620 motherboards can support NVMe Gen 5 drives. ASRock Pro offerings come with the necessary hardware to support this, so you can just pop in a Gen 5 SSD and use the benefits that come with it.
However, the limitation comes from AMD itself, and while Gen 5 SSD support may be enabled on A620 motherboards for now, future AGESA updates may limit this again. And while that support is really nice, it doesn’t make much sense to have a Gen 5 SSD running on an entry-level platform like this since SSDs cost about $300-$400, more than you’d pay for an entry-level Ryzen. 7000 processor.
You can see from the above builds that AMD is specifically targeting the A620 as a PCIe Gen 4.0 platform and you can also see this from the above configurations. As expected, AMD suggests that the Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU will pair well with the A620 platform, and with good reason, too. The CPU has a lower TDP, is aimed solely at gamers and doesn’t benefit much from overclocking, although you still have the PBO and Curve Optimizer tuning options. For users who want higher multi-threaded performance, they can choose one of the 65W Ryzen 9 7900 processor options.
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