AMD Ryzen 3 3100 CPU Review

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AMD B550 Chipset

Along with this new launch of AMD Ryzen 3 CPUs, AMD is also launching a new budget chipset to go hand-in-hand.  Budget this chipset may be in price, but feature-rich it also is.  The new AMD B550 chipset replaces the previous B450 chipset.  This chipset is still based on the AM4 socket for forward compatibility with the next generation of CPUs.

The new B550 chipset will be available on June 16th of this year.  The big feature upgrade is to PCI Express 4.0 for NVMe storage and graphics cards.  The motherboard also now supports dual-GPUs, whereas this support was previously only on X470/X570 class motherboards.

In addition, the general-purpose lanes have been upgraded to PCI Express 3.0 from PCIe 2.0 on AMD 400 series chipsets.  The USB support has also been upgraded to USB 3.2 Gen2 versus USB 3.1 Gen1 previously.  The chipset also fully supports overclocking and high-speed DDR4 memory.  The chipset is all ready for 3rd generation Ryzen CPUs up and down the stack.

From the B550 chipset motherboard manufactures ca configure different scenarios and configurations.  There are 10x flexible PCIe Gen 2 lanes.  This can be turned into 2×4 NVMe + 2x SATA 6Gbps, or 1×4 NVMe + 6x SATA 6Gbps or 2×4 NVMe + Controllers.  You’ll find PCIe 4.0 x16 Graphics supported, with 8x general-purpose Gen 4 lanes for 6x SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps, or 2x SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps ports or 6x High-Speed USB 480Mbps ports.  There is so much flexibility from this chipset it would device you that it is just a budget-friendly chipset.  AMD packs a lot of features for such a low-cost motherboard option.

The new B550 chipset is geared to run the next-generation Zen 3 core-based architecture CPUs as well.  That means buying it, or X570 now for use with Zen 2 3rd gen CPUs also means you have compatibility for the next architecture release on AM4 socket.  In order to do this, there is a new programable BIOS, and due to the file size, the limitation is that Zen 3 chips will not work on previous B450, X470, X370 motherboards.  More information is provided in this news update post.

Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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