AMD Launches A520 Entry-level Desktop Chipset - No PCIe 4.0

erek

erek

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(Courtesy of KarateBob ) See: https://hardforum.com/threads/rumor...n-september-600-seies-by-end-of-year.1996960/

"Motherboards based on the AMD A520 completely lack PCIe Gen 4 support, even with a Ryzen 3000 "Matisse" processor. Even the PCI-Express x16 and M.2 NVMe slots wired to the AM4 SoC are limited to PCIe Gen 3. On the B550, these two slots run at Gen 4 speeds when paired with a capable processor. Much like the B550, the downstream (general purpose) PCIe lanes from the chipset run at PCIe Gen 3 speeds, although unlike the B550, the chipset only puts out 6 lanes. Other platform I/O includes up to five 10 Gbps USB 3.2 ports (includes two from the AM4 SoC), two 5 Gbps USB 3.1 ports, four SATA 6 Gb/s (AHCI-only) ports, and six USB 2.0 ports. At launch, A520 motherboards only support Ryzen 3000 "Matisse" processors, with support planned for 4000G "Renoir" processors when they launch in the retail channel, and future "Zen 3" processors, through firmware updates."

https://www.techpowerup.com/271119/amd-launches-a520-entry-level-desktop-chipset-no-pcie-4-0
 
Right. Zen 2 is still running on the same old PCIe 3.0 video card slot speed, but AMD did us the favor of increasing the link width to 16x. This was built to run Zen 2 APU.
 
Outside of some storage solutions there are nothing out there in the consumer space that is going to take advantage of PCIE4. And even then on a budget system you would never reasonably see one of those, if anything this board is a year late to the party, but they needed to get those 300 series chipsets off the shelves, so I get it.
 
If these did support PCIe 4, people would be screaming about chipset fans instead of screaming about no PCIe 4.
 
This will be exactly what is needed for SFF boxes intended to house just an APU and a couple drives. Which is a niche market I know, but zen2/zen3 in sometring like as asrock deskmini will be great. (I really liked the first gen one they did).
 
I'm interested in Zen3 APU + a single x16 slot so I can throw a dual port 10G nic in it and run FRR on linux....should make a great router.
 
deruberhanyok said:
This will be exactly what is needed for SFF boxes intended to house just an APU and a couple drives. Which is a niche market I know, but zen2/zen3 in sometring like as asrock deskmini will be great. (I really liked the first gen one they did).
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The deskmini A300 has beta bioses floating around for the Zen2 APUs that you can only currently buy grey market, but they can only take APUs, so zen3 is going to be a while. There's a new deskmini x300 with out of the box zen2 APU support, but I don't think that's available yet either.
 
1_rick said:
If these did support PCIe 4, people would be screaming about chipset fans instead of screaming about no PCIe 4.
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You don't have chipset fans for pcie 4.0 CPU lanes.... Just like b550 doesn't need chipset fans and still supports pcie 4.0 to GPU and first NVME.
 
/dev/null said:
I'm interested in Zen3 APU + a single x16 slot so I can throw a dual port 10G nic in it and run FRR on linux....should make a great router.
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Why would you need a x16 dual port? Each pcie 3.0 lane supports 1GB/s (8gbit/s)... For simple math, a single lane can almost saturate a 10gbe card. A x4 would easily provide enough bandwidth for dual 10gbe ports. Now if you just meant size wise an itx board (aka, one pcie slot) then that makes more sense and x16 is irrelevant just that's what the board would have.
 
Ready4Dis said:
Why would you need a x16 dual port? Each pcie 3.0 lane supports 1GB/s (8gbit/s)... For simple math, a single lane can almost saturate a 10gbe card. A x4 would easily provide enough bandwidth for dual 10gbe ports. Now if you just meant size wise an itx board (aka, one pcie slot) then that makes more sense and x16 is irrelevant just that's what the board would have.
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2 ethernet ports is useful for failover cable failure or connection to multiple physical devices. Just need one x16 slot. Most of the 10Gbit cards I'm interested come in x2 physical & the cheap ones are pci-e 2.0/3.0 only
 
/dev/null said:
2 ethernet ports is useful for failover cable failure or connection to multiple physical devices. Just need one x16 slot. Most of the 10Gbit cards I'm interested come in x2 physical & the cheap ones are pci-e 2.0/3.0 only
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I know why the dual port was useful, I was wondering why it needed to be x16 when it can't even saturate a x4 link with not ports utilized.
 
Ready4Dis said:
I know why the dual port was useful, I was wondering why it needed to be x16 when it can't even saturate a x4 link with not ports utilized.
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Ask the manufacturers of the nics. They are mostly Physical/Electrical x8 pcie-2.0 or pci-e 3.0. Since x8's aren't common on consumer motheboards, so I need an x16 slot.

Why are most sata cards like x2 & x4 pci-e 2.0 when they could be pci-e 3.0 x1.....? No idea.
 
/dev/null said:
Ask the manufacturers of the nics. They are mostly Physical/Electrical x8 pcie-2.0 or pci-e 3.0. Since x8's aren't common on consumer motheboards, so I need an x16 slot.

Why are most sata cards like x2 & x4 pci-e 2.0 when they could be pci-e 3.0 x1.....? No idea.
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Yeah I saw a few x4 and x16. If you are looking for an itx they only have one option, lol. Yeah, who knows why they make some decisions.
 
/dev/null said:
2 ethernet ports is useful for failover cable failure or connection to multiple physical devices. Just need one x16 slot. Most of the 10Gbit cards I'm interested come in x2 physical & the cheap ones are pci-e 2.0/3.0 only
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And why the fuck are you talking about building a server off an entry-level platform like this? They already have B550 for your needs.

This chipset is aimed at barebones systems like these, or entry-level OEM systems.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/n...come-in-amd-ryzen-4000-intel-10th-gen-flavors
 
“I’m going to build a router out of it” is usually just another way of saying “I just want to buy it for no particular reason but I’m going to say I’ll turn it into a router because then people will think it makes sense and leave me alone.”

I wouldn’t build a router (or any kind of appliance) out of any motherboard that didn’t have some kind of ipmi. And I doubt A520 is going to be on Supermicro or asrock rack’s list.
 
deruberhanyok said:
“I’m going to build a router out of it” is usually just another way of saying “I just want to buy it for no particular reason but I’m going to say I’ll turn it into a router because then people will think it makes sense and leave me alone.”

I wouldn’t build a router (or any kind of appliance) out of any motherboard that didn’t have some kind of ipmi. And I doubt A520 is going to be on Supermicro or asrock rack’s list.
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You have no idea what my needs/use case are, but have a nice day. Welcome to my ignore list for being ignorant.
 
deruberhanyok said:
“I’m going to build a router out of it” is usually just another way of saying “I just want to buy it for no particular reason but I’m going to say I’ll turn it into a router because then people will think it makes sense and leave me alone.”

I wouldn’t build a router (or any kind of appliance) out of any motherboard that didn’t have some kind of ipmi. And I doubt A520 is going to be on Supermicro or asrock rack’s list.
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What "you" wouldn't do really isn't relevant. There are a LOT of guys on this forum with home labs running very nicely on consumer hardware. I'm on that list. IPMI is hardly a must.
 
whateverer said:
And why the fuck are you talking about building a server off an entry-level platform like this? They already have B550 for your needs.
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This one is gonna be cheaper. Save $10 on the motherboard = more money for 10g or a nicer cpu or ram. Ipmi is pretty nice, but those don't come on dirt cheap motherboards so that's not happening at my house.
 
whateverer said:
And why the fuck are you talking about building a server off an entry-level platform like this? They already have B550 for your needs.

This chipset is aimed at barebones systems like these, or entry-level OEM systems.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/n...come-in-amd-ryzen-4000-intel-10th-gen-flavors
Click to expand...

To be fair he said router.

Also, people do buy used SFF PCs (sometimes 10-12 for $1K and under) and build home labs out of them. For $4-600 you can build a decent multi node K8, Esxi/whatever vs. a single B550 build.
 
Lakados said:
An imbedded Epyc 3000 series would do the job better for less.
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Better? Probably, but I couldn't find it for less. I'm seeing in the neighborhood of $450? for a board with the Embedded Epyc 3101. An A520 board is $100ish and you can get a processor for less than $300. Maybe I couldn't find the right board or system though? I would definitely be interested if it were less!
 
toast0 said:
Better? Probably, but I couldn't find it for less. I'm seeing in the neighborhood of $450? for a board with the Embedded Epyc 3101. An A520 board is $100ish and you can get a processor for less than $300. Maybe I couldn't find the right board or system though? I would definitely be interested if it were less!
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Ok so not exactly less, but many come with 10G ports so could bring it in line or at least offset it. My suppliers get me much better pricing on business parts than consumer ones so that skews it a bit for me. So sadly may not be accurate.
 
bigddybn said:
What "you" wouldn't do really isn't relevant. There are a LOT of guys on this forum with home labs running very nicely on consumer hardware. I'm on that list. IPMI is hardly a must.
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Having been one of those guys in the past, I got tired of dealing with systems that didn’t have it. If you’ve got a setup where you can move monitors around to everything whenever you need, I guess that’s one way to do it. But I’m well past the point where I thought having a crash cart at home was fun. I don’t even like using them at work if I can avoid it.

I am really curious what the use case for a dual 10g capable router built on cheap consumer hardware would be, though. Obviously you guys feel very strongly about it, so i must be missing something really obvious.
 
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deruberhanyok said:
Having been one of those guys in the past, I got tired of dealing with systems that didn’t have it. If you’ve got a setup where you can move monitors around to everything whenever you need, I guess that’s one way to do it. But I’m well past the point where I thought having a crash cart at home was fun. I don’t even like using them at work if I can avoid it.

I am really curious what the use case for a dual 10g capable router built on cheap consumer hardware would be, though. Obviously you guys feel very strongly about it, so i must be missing something really obvious.
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The "obvious" thing you are missing is the ability to disagree with someone without being disrepectful. This is an enthusiast forum filled with folks who like to tinker with hardware sometimes purely for the purpose of tinkering. It's how you learn. That's pretty much the point of a home lab environment. Nobody is suggesting running critical production services on budget consumer hardware.
 
bigddybn said:
The "obvious" thing you are missing is the ability to disagree with someone without being disrepectful. This is an enthusiast forum filled with folks who like to tinker with hardware sometimes purely for the purpose of tinkering. It's how you learn. That's pretty much the point of a home lab environment. Nobody is suggesting running critical production services on budget consumer hardware.
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Isn’t that what I said, though? Just buying it for tinkering (or “No particular reason” as I put it)?

I guess you guys didn’t like my words but it doesn’t change my point?

I am still curious if there was an actual use intended for it, though. It’s such an oddly specific combination to want to build.

[edit] nm, finally thought up a reason a dual port 10g capable router could be useful in a home lab setup. Not sure why A520 and zen3 needed but that’s immaterial at this point. For anyone also wondering, I came up with inter-vlan routing, assuming the rest of the network is wired 10gbe already, but only L2 capable. An L3 routing capable 10gbe switch would cost more than an APU build, so that would be a good reason to do something like that. I’d probably go full firewall with pfsense but whatever routes your traffic. :)
 
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Entry level Ryzen 3000/4000APU ready motherboard? Yeah, why not. Not my use case, but if I was building a gaming machine on the strictest budget or smallest enclosure possible - absolutely.
B550 is a bit too expensive for "entry level" IMO, and a lot of people don't want to deal with BIOS flashing up to a 3000 series because they don't have a spare 1000 or 2000 series cpu sitting around.
 
AMD still has a reputation for being a second-tier manufacturer; the budget brand. They're going to need to fill that market segment for some time to come, and they shouldn't ignore it outright even if in the next year or two, they break through their legacy reputation.

OEMs are going to want a cheap option from AMD, too. Especially as AMD makes a stronger name for itself, when people might still be hesitant to try something more expensive even if they are interested in just trying something out by AMD.
 
Asus has an A520 in their CSM business line, does that include some sort of ipmi support? I know it allows some remote management, but not sure it's what you're looking for.
 
I find it interesting that the A520 has a HDMI port supports 2.1 which is nice but according to the specs it is locked at 60Hz, I thought HDMI 2.1 was capable of doing at least 144Mhz at 4K?
 
I expect they’re listing it that way because the current APUs don’t support hdmi 2.1.

a lot of the first gen AM4 boards (like B350 chipset) with APU support listed 4k30hz, because the APUs available at the time didn’t support hdmi 2.0. Even after the Ryzen APUs launched and it was shown that they did 4k60 just fine most board specs weren’t updated to reflect that until the second gen chipsets (B450).

probably the same here. Once AMD has an APU that supports hdmi 2.1, these boards will be ready.
 
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