A620 vs B650(E) vs X670(E): AMD 600-Series Chipset Comparison

  • Post last modified:May 14, 2023

With AMD’s newest Zen 4 processors and their associated AM5 socket type, we also received a new generation of motherboards with which to pair these.

The A620, B650, B650E, X670, and X670E chipsets are all compatible with 7000-series AMD CPUs such as the Ryzen 5 7600X, Ryzen 7 7700X, Ryzen 7 7800X3D, Ryzen 9 7900X, Ryzen 9 7900X3D, Ryzen 9 7950X, and Ryzen 9 7950X3D, but don’t support processors from past generations.

See Also: Motherboard Naming Conventions Explained

AMD 600-Series Chipsets in Descending Order of Power/Cost | Credit: AMD

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With five new chipsets, it may feel difficult to figure out which one is best for your new Ryzen 7000-series PC. In this article we’ll compare the A620, B650, and X670 chipsets (as well as the latter two’s E-series counterparts) in regards to cost, typical form-factor, connectivity, hardware support, overclocking support, and more, as well as which CPUs each is best paired with.

What is Chipset?

First, it’s essential to understand what chipset means. In the most literal sense of the word, the chipset (also called the Southbridge) is a component that is built into the motherboard. It’s directly connected to many components in the motherboard, and the CPU communicates with components through the chipset.

See Also: AMD 500-Series Chipsets Comparison

Chipset defines certain functionalities in a motherboard, but so does the manufacturers’ design. For instance, look at the specs below pulled from Intel’s H610 Chipset Specifications Page:

The H610 chipset supports a maximum of PCIe 3.0. However, if we look at the specs for the Asus Prime H610M-E D4, we find that it includes a PCIe 4.0 slot.

This slot communicates directly with the CPU, while the Chipset controls the x1 slot. In other words, if a manufacturer wanted to create an H610 motherboard with PCIe 5.0, they certainly could. You most likely won’t ever see this though, since H610 is targeted towards consumers who want an affordable build. If someone wanted the latest technologies they’d buy a top-of-the-line Z690.

As you can see, chipset doesn’t define every aspect of a motherboard, as third-party input has a role in this. Still, there are certain trends that tend to remain true across most models of a chipset, and this is what we’ll be looking at.

Keep in mind that some features (such as memory overclocking) are strictly determined by chipset. For instance, in no case will you be able to overclock your RAM past the maximum XMP limit on an H610 board. We’ll cover this side of things as well. After reading this article, we hope you have a more complete idea of what each chipset entails, and which one is best for your specific needs.

AMD Extreme Chipsets

Before we get into any comparisons, it’s essential to understand what the “E” at the end of two of these chipset names means. It stands for “Extreme” and denotes the chipset’s support of either a x16 or two x8 PCIe 5.0 lanes. The end result is that Extreme chipsets support up to 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes, while non-Extreme models, even of the highest-end X670 variety, will max out at 8.

Note that this does not mean a non-Extreme motherboard won’t have a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot or other PCIe 5.0 lanes. The chipset’s lanes make up only a portion of total lanes since CPU lanes must also be accounted for, so many non-Extreme motherboards will still be equipped with a PCIe x16 slot for use with your video card.

In short, Extreme motherboards support more PCIe 5.0 lanes than non-Extreme models. This won’t have a very noticeable impact on performance with the current generation of technology, so in general users are best off opting for a non-Extreme motherboard if it’s cheaper than the comparable Extreme make.

A620 vs B650 vs B650E vs X670 vs X670E: Overview

Before we get into a lower-level breakdown of each individual chipset (excluding Extreme varieties, since we’ve already covered the slight difference that these present), let’s look at a side-by-side comparison of each AMD 600-series chipset:

AMD 600-Series Chipset Specifications | Credit: AMD

A620 vs B650 vs B650E vs X670 vs X670E: Similarities

While each of these chipsets differ in many aspects, they share some similarities. Most glaringly, they’re all designed with the same AM5 socket for use with Ryzen 7000-series processors. Any 7000-series CPU can be paired with any 600-series motherboard, although not all of these motherboard-CPU combos are an ideal match.

Since all Ryzen 7000-series SKUs are DDR5-exclusive, all 600-series motherboards, even the cheapest A620, support only DDR5 RAM. This shouldn’t present too much of an issue these days, since DDR5 memory has come down massively in price since its release. At least a few 16GB 4800MHz kits can be had for under $50, so buying the newest RAM won’t necessarily break the bank.

Speaking of memory, all of these motherboards allow users to overclock their RAM with AMD’s EXPO (which is essentially their equivalent of XMP).

A620

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AMD’s A620 chipset is by far the cheapest, with many A620 boards costing less than $100 and several going as low as $85 at the time of writing. Features are strongly correlated to price, so it should come as no surprise that A620 is the most bare-bones chipset by far.

It’s the only chipset that doesn’t allow users to overclock their CPU. AMD’s A-series boards have historically done this, so this wasn’t unexpected.

The A620 chipset doesn’t support any PCIe 5.0 lanes, and as it has no Extreme version there isn’t any variation that does. Since it’s the lowest-end type of motherboard, manufacturers are extremely unlikely to add any PCIe 5 lanes, so A620 boards will almost exclusively be limited to PCIe 4.0, even in the x16 graphics card slot. This isn’t much of a concern, since virtually no GPU currently maxes out the bandwidth of PCIe’s 4th revision.

A620 boards also have the least amount of connectivity overall. The chipset itself supports a maximum of 32 PCIe lanes, which is four less than B650/B650E and twelve less than X670/X670E. Generally, you’ll only see a single PCIe 4.0 x16 lane, and perhaps a couple 3.0 x1 lanes if you’re lucky. That’s the configuration on Asus’ TUF Gaming A620M-PLUS, which is one of the nicer A620 boards available; many feature only a single x16 slot.

You’ll usually find 4 SATA ports on an A620 motherboard, which is more than enough for most users, as that will easily accommodate up to 80TB of storage, not to mention NVMe SSDs.

A620 boards’ thermals will usually be less impressive, so expect fewer and less powerful VRMs, as well as minimal heatsinks. Since you can’t push your CPU’s limits by overclocking it with one of these boards, there’s no reason to manufacturers to provide these boards with over-the-top horsepower.

Finally, A620 boards are almost exclusively available in the Micro-ATX form-factor. Micro-ATX tends to be the cheapest to manufacture, so budget-friendly boards usually adhere to this size specification. Since A620 is supposed to be AMD’s budget-oriented line, this makes perfect sense.

Best CPUs for A620

10/10/2025 05:05 am GMT Lasso Brag

Barry Gates

Barry Gates is a long-time PC hardware enthusiast and author of "The Beginner's Guide to Building a PC." The owner and founder of Art of PC, he enjoys creating informational content to help veteran and new PC builders alike.