This Ryzen 7000 motherboard is less than £100 - but supports AMD's fastest CPUs
The first A620 motherboard deal is upon us.
AMD's Ryzen 7000 processors are extremely fast for gaming and content creation, but the AM5 motherboards required to use them have been pricey compared to their AM4 predecessors. That's why AMD made its brand new A620 motherboards, which support Ryzen 7000 and DDR5 memory at the lowest possible price - and after a launch in the US, you can now pick up one of these motherboards for less than £100 at Amazon UK.
At CES 2023, AMD promised we'd see motherboards support AM5 for as low as $120, and with the current exchange rate, this A620M-E option from MSI makes good on that promise. So, why is this so cheap compared to the other AM5-supporting motherboards we're used to - which start above £200? Well, the key difference here is that the A620 chipset doesn't support PCIe 5.0 SSDs, which are blindingly quick... but not yet available and very expensive to support for motherboard vendors. These A620 motherboards also come with a handful of SATA ports and a singular PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. Other than that though, the big thing with the A620M chipset is that it makes mid-range AM5-based builds possible for reasonable money.
As much as this MSI motherboard may not support PCIe 5.0, it still supports DDR5 RAM and RAM overclocking up to 6400MT/s. With this in mind, I've also spotted a deal on a 32GB DDR5-5800MHz Corsair Vengeance RAM kit for £100 from Amazon. With AM5 motherboard, fast RAM and a Ryzen 7600 processor for £422 all-in - an incredible deal for the level of performance you're getting.
If you'd prefer the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which is on average the fastest gaming CPU we've ever tested, you'll pay £650 for the CPU, RAM and motherboard. Given that the competing Core i9 13900K costs £550 by itself, this is an awesome deal!
Moreover, this MSI motherboard also comes with all sorts of built-in I/O (I've been waiting to say I/O since the new Peter Gabriel song came out, this deal gave me the perfect chance!), with everything from VGA and PS/2 to an assortment of USB-As HDMI out. For networking, this MSI motherboard also supports WiFi-6, giving you some blazing fast internet speeds - handy if you're not able to connect via Ethernet for any reason, although there is Ethernet for wired networking, too.
The introduction of a new chipset certainly helps to make AM5 that bit more affordable, and for under £100 or so, it's definitely hard to ignore this MSI ProA620M-E motherboard.