Why are AMD chipset motherboards so expensive?

[SpellowHouse]

This is my first move to AMD, so I am a little confused at the moment. The cost of an AMD Chipset motherboard is just crazy. I can't help but think I am looking at the wrong boards!! I mean the average price seems to be a LOT higher than an intel chipset. Is that true?
I mean, I'd casually thought £250, but that seems to be bare minimum. Realistically it seems to be more like £350.

 

[jms198]

Depends what you are buying. A b650 is just over £100. If you are looking at 870s ask yourself if you are going to use all the features

To me that is pricey when an a320 hit £20, the b450s were £60.

 

[Joxeon]

£200 is probably around the price the average consumer should be looking, diminishing returns start to kick in past that point.

 

[Tetras]

This is my first move to AMD, so I am a little confused at the moment. The cost of an AMD Chipset motherboard is just crazy. I can't help but think I am looking at the wrong boards!! I mean the average price seems to be a LOT higher than an intel chipset. Is that true?
I mean, I'd casually thought £250, but that seems to be bare minimum. Realistically it seems to be more like £350.

£350 is a high-end board and not necessary for the vast majority of AM5 buyers.

£250 gets you a very good board that is more than fine for any CPU and graphics card combo and comes with the latest features.

£150 is enough for a decent board, though you would lose some of the newer features like PCI-E 5.0 and USB4.

What features do you actually want from the board?

 

[BornEvil]

I feel that recent am5 AMD motherboards have gone up in price as it is expected to last along time as is the am4 platform. That’s what I tell myself to make me feel better…

 

[Meaker]

The new x870 stuff is expensive but is not required. So long as the board has BIOS flashback capability that let you flash the BIOS without a CPU the shipping BIOS is pretty much irrelevant.

 

[SpellowHouse]

£350 is a high-end board and not necessary for the vast majority of AM5 buyers.

£250 gets you a very good board that is more than fine for any CPU and graphics card combo and comes with the latest features.

£150 is enough for a decent board, though you would lose some of the newer features like PCI-E 5.0 and USB4.

What features do you actually want from the board?

Frankly, almost none.

I don't need wifi. I don't need more than a few usb 2 ports.

A 2.5g lan is about the only relatively high spec I need, I already have a 2.5g network at home, but I don't need 5g or 10g.

PCIe 5.0 would be good, but USB 4, no, don't need that. I still haven't found an actual use for usb 3.

The PC is a gaming PC. It has nothing else connected to it. Gaming, gaming, gaming. That's all that's important.

 

[Tetras]

Frankly, almost none.

I don't need wifi. I don't need more than a few usb 2 ports.

A 2.5g lan is about the only relatively high spec I need, I already have a 2.5g network at home, but I don't need 5g or 10g.

PCIe 5.0 would be good, but USB 4, no, don't need that. I still haven't found an actual use for usb 3.

The PC is a gaming PC. It has nothing else connected to it. Gaming, gaming, gaming. That's all that's important.

Sounds like one of these is all you need then?

They are missing PCI-E 5.0, but you'd need to pay rather a lot for that.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Gigabyte B650 EAGLE AX (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-GIG-03573) = £134.99
• 1 x Gigabyte B650M D3HP AX (Socket AM5) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-GIG-03566) = £104.99

Total: £243.97 (includes delivery: £3.99)​

 

[JollyJamma]

Frankly, almost none.

I don't need wifi. I don't need more than a few usb 2 ports.

A 2.5g lan is about the only relatively high spec I need, I already have a 2.5g network at home, but I don't need 5g or 10g.

PCIe 5.0 would be good, but USB 4, no, don't need that. I still haven't found an actual use for usb 3.

The PC is a gaming PC. It has nothing else connected to it. Gaming, gaming, gaming. That's all that's important.

PCI-e 5.0 is a marketing thing and you don’t need it at all.

All motherboards are expensive these days but yes, AMD back in the early AM4 days had really affordable options.

Manufacturers just realised that AMD was now popular enough that they could charge more.

The huge advantage with AMD is that you don’t need an expensive motherboard with amazing VRMs as they run with far less wattage and so much cooler than Intel.