AMD Ryzen 3000 processors have been out for a while now, and for some reason we've been stuck with X570 motherboards since then, with anyone wanting a cheaper motherboard forced to deal with updating the BIOS on a B450 board – but those days are over, kind of.
Leaked specifications for a B550A motherboard have been spotted by PCGamesN, sporting support for PCIe 4.0 and beefy enough VRMs to actually overclock the beefy 3rd Generation Ryzen chips. Here's the catch, though: you can't just go to your local PC components shop to pick one up.
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In fact, it seems like these motherboards have actually been available to OEM PC manufacturers for a while now, with SIs (system integrators) like CyberPower PC offering them in their builds, rebranding the motherboards as their own. Tech YouTube channel Gamers Nexus picked up a CyberPower PC build with one of these motherboards installed and dug more into the details.
Turns out that it may just be a glorified B450 board with PCIe 4.0 enabled – something that AMD disabled over stability concerns right after processors like the Ryzen 9 3900X launched back in July 2019, according to this TechPowerUp report. According to Steve from Gamers Nexus, this "AsRock B550AM Gaming" motherboard may just be a rebranded B450 board. This isn't an unheard of practice when it comes to components sent to OEMs for prebuilt gaming PCs, but it's still disappointing nonetheless.
As disappointing as this is, we just hope that this means that these motherboards will actually make it to retail shelves. Even if they aren't especially new it would be nice to see budget-friendly motherboards that don't require a BIOS update to install an AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation processor – though really they should already be out.
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