https://www.techpowerup.com/305707/first-amd-am5-motherboard-now-available-under-usd-125 While AMD was promising cheaper AM5 motherboards back in August last year, specifically talking about a starting price of $125, it took some time before we actually got them, as now, ASRock's B650M-HDV/M.2 microATX motherboard is listed at $124.99. The motherboard in question is still not available and it has a launch price of $139.99,
but has been discounted down to $124.99 on Newegg, which means it still fits the "starting from $125" announced by AMD during the launch of Ryzen 7000 series CPUs. Previously, the cheapest motherboard, based on the same B650 chipset, was listed at around $150.
The motherboard listing was rather proudly pointed out by David McAffee, AMD's CVP and GM of Ryzen channel business, over at Twitter. He also noted that his "timing might have been a bit off," but nevertheless, it should be available soon.
The ASRock B650M-HDV/M.2 is a microATX motherboard with 8+2+1 Dr.MOS VRM, supports up to 64 GB of DDR5-6400+ memory in two slots, and can happily run AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPUs. Bear in mind that the B650 chipset lacks PCIe 5.0 support for graphics cards but does come with PCIe Gen 5 x4 M.2 slot. This means that you get one PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, one PCIe 4.0 x4, and one PCIe 4.0 x1 slot, as well as one M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 5 x4. There is also another M.2 2230 for WiFi/BT PCIe module, one M.2 PCIe Gen 4 x4 slot, and four SATA 6 Gbps ports.
The rest of the specifications include a couple of USB 3.2 Gen 1 and Gen 2 Type-C and Type-A ports, a couple of standard USB 2.0 ports, Dragon 2.5 Gb Ethernet based on Realtek's RTL8125BG chip, and 7.1-channel Realtek ALC897 audio.
Priced at $124.99 for pre-orders is definitely a good deal, as the next in line is Gigabyte's B650M DS3H motherboard which is similar and selling at $149.99, also on Newegg.com. In Europe, the least expensive AM5 motherboard over at Mindfactory is the ASRock B650M PGR,
listed at €182.72, while the least expensive available motherboard is the MSI PRO B650M-A WiFi,
selling at €200.99.
Perhaps the low price might entice some consumers to go for an AM5 CPU setup.
