First AM5 socket details get leaked: AMD consumer solutions switching to LGA

The days for AMD’s AM4 socket are numbered. AM4 was introduced back in late 2016, prior to the first gen Ryzen CPU launch, and Team Red initially planned to keep it around until 2020. However, we all know how 2020 turned out, and it looks like AMD decided not to switch sockets with the introduction of the Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 CPUs. Now, according to a leak coming from twitter user ExecutableFix, the next gen AM5 socket is right around the corner and could launch next year.

ExecutableFix also provided a few specs for the upcoming AM5 platform. Unlike the current AM4 socket that features a pin grid array (PGA), the AM5 will sport a land grid array (LGA) just like Intel’s sockets, so all pins will be transferred from the CPU to the motherboard socket. Thus, AM5 will feature 387 additional pins compared to AM4, upping the count to 1718 pins. The new socket retains the 40x40 mm CPU size, which means that the pins will get smaller. AM4 was the first AMD platform to support dual-channel DDR4, and AM5 is said to be the first to support dual-channel DDR5. Unfortunately, PCIe 5.0 will not be supported at launch and will remain an EPYC-only feature for a while.

AM5 is believed to arrive some time in 2022 together with the first 5 nm Zen 4 CPUs, while the first Zen 4 chipsets will most likely bear the 600-series moniker. Previous leaked AMD CPU roadmaps have posited that the first 5 nm CPUs would be codenamed Raphael, but the launch date is still fuzzy. Some sources suggest early 2022, others late 2022. Either way, it seems like Intel will be getting the upper hand this time around, since it plans to introduce the Alder Lake-S processors with DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 support in late 2021.

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