ASMedia to produce AMD B550 and A520 chipsets based on PCIe 3.0, PCIe 4.0 only in 2020

We know that the flagship AMD X570 chipset (and probably the X590 as well) was developed in-house and will be the only one to offer PCIe 4.0 interconnects for now. However, X570 boards can put big dents in the wallet so early mid-range and budget Ryzen 3000 buyers can opt for last gen B450 or X470 motherboards and perform a BIOS upgrade for drop-in compatibility. Or, you can wait out till ASMedia starts offering the mid-range B550 and entry-level A520 chipsets later this year.

According to a report by DigiTimes, ASMedia has received orders for producing AMD B550 and A520 chipsets. These chipsets will continue to be PCIe 3.0-based, and will be available to motherboard OEMs some time in Q4 2019. You won't be losing out much by staying on PCIe Gen 3.0 as most consumer GPUs, including the likes of the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti, do not yet saturate PCIe 3.0 speeds. Storage devices, however, stand to gain a lot with PCIe 4.0 with Phison has already announcing NVMe 1.3 controllers that can hit 5 GBps read speeds. 

DigiTimes also reports that ASMedia is expected to complete tape-outs for PCIe Gen 4 chipsets by end of 2019, which means motherboard OEMs will start incorporating them in their designs some time in 2020. Right now, PCIe 4.0 is exclusive to AMD and ASMedia is expected to win orders from AMD once the tape-outs are satisfactorily done. For those not in the know, a tape-out is the final phase of an ASIC design before it is sent to the fab. Motherboards based on these new chipsets will conform to AMD's PCB requirements for PCIe 4.0 and will also offer a PCIe Gen 4 x16 slot for discrete GPUs. They will also sport new wiring specifications for the VRMs, CPU, and memory that allow for improved overclocking.

ASMedia will also be rolling out USB 4.0 controllers in 2020 with major PC and motherboards makers expected to land orders for the same.