ASRock A520M Pro4 Motherboard Pictured, A520 Platform Lacking PCIe Gen4 Confirmed

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Here's the first picture of an ASRock A520M Pro4 Micro-ATX Socket AM4 motherboard based on AMD's upcoming A520 entry-level chipset that succeeds the A320. The picture reveals a spartan, well laid out motherboard that appears to cover all the segment essentials needed for entry-level builds using AMD's Athlon 3000 processors, or Ryzen 3000 and 4000G processors. Among its segment first features are the inclusion of two M.2 slots, from which one is wired to the AM4 socket, and includes an SSD heatsink. The board also features an M.2 E-key slot so you can add a WLAN card (provision for rear-panel antennae also offered). USB connectivity includes a type-C port on the rear panel. Surprisingly, the only display output is a D-Sub. Perhaps there are variants of this board that come with HDMI or DP.

 

Another striking detail from this VideoCardz-sourced picture is the printed marking near the top M.2 NVMe slot (wired to the processor) which reads "PCIe Gen 3 x4." On AMD B550 based motherboards, ASRock marks this as "PCIe Gen 4 x4." This is a confirmation of the AMD A520 platform being segmented from the B550 with lack of PCI-Express gen 4.0 support. The lack of gen 4.0 ancillaries could slim the bill of materials for motherboard manufacturers, letting them sell motherboards based on the A520 around the $50-$70 mark. This shouldn't be a problem for people with Athlon 3000G, Ryzen 3000G, or even new 4000G, as none of these processors offer PCIe Gen 4.

 

 

Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/270953/a...firmed#g270953

 

 

 

Looks like A520 is stripping PCIe Gen 4 completely which should lead to some amazingly priced boards.

 

As long as A520 doesn't get segmented strictly to budget boards and we still see high and mATX boards with VRM's that can handle at least a 12-core Ryzen CPU alongside a full Gen 3 x16 GPU and a Gen 3 NVMe M.2 SSD, could be a real help to system builders.

[ENTERPRISE]

This could be ideal for those on a budget, PCIe 4 is nothing people really NEED right now, so forcing that premium on people seems silly, so why not save the money. Though I have to agree with the article that it is odd they went for D-Sub, DVI at the very least...but preferably HDMI.