AMD has officially announced the B450 chipset for socket AM4 processor and APUs. It is set as a mid-range solution for the 400-series chipset family and motherboards in this range will be priced anywhere from $70 to $160. Like the X470 chipset it has lower TDP power draw so it runs cooler and make due with smaller heatsinks (compared to X370). It also has improved CPU VRM and memory wiring specifications which AMD introduced with the X470 chipset. B450 also supports XFR 2 “Enhanced” and Precision Boost Overdrive.
The B450 chipset is recommended for Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 chips, if of course you don’t need multi-GPU as these board do not support PEG lane bifurcation. But you still get an multiplier unlocked CPU overclocking support (which Intel’s B360 does not support), as well as memory overclocking. You also have support for AMD StoreMI, which stripes a portion of your memory, your fast SSD, and slower HDD, into a single volume, and juggles hot data in and out of the faster media in the background.
The rest of the features of the B450 chipset are the same as B350. You have two 10 Gbps USB 3.1 gen 2 ports, six 5 Gbps USB 3.1 gen 1 ports, and six SATA 6 Gbps ports. The network controllers (Ethernet and WLAN) are wired to the chipset’s PCIe gen 2.0 ports.
The B450 chipset will support every AM4 processor and APU that has been launched to date. AMD also says that the AM4 platform will see additions up till 2020 and those products will be supported on the B450 chipset (with BIOS updates).
