AMD A520 Chipset For Socket AM4 Launched; Makes Future PC Builds Affordable

AMD has officially launched the A520 chipset for the motherboards with the AM4 socket. This latest chipset can support current CPUs based on Zen2 architecture and the upcoming AMD processors based on the Zen3 architecture, making it future proof and it supports the plug-and-play feature.

The AMD A520 sits between the A320 and the B550 chipset. It supports x16 PCIe 3.0 express lanes with support for a single USB 3.2 Gen2 and four SuperSpeed USBs when used with a third-gen Ryzen processor.

The chipset can only support a single GPU and it uses PCIe 3.0 lanes for both general-purpose and CPU chipset uplink. As this is a budget chipset, a motherboard with the AMD A520 chipset will not support overclocking.

Out of 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes, 16 are used for the GPU and the rest will be allocated for the chipset downlink. These four lanes can either be used for a single x4 NVMe SSD or an x2 NVMe SSD and an x2 HHD or can even drive two x2 + x2 NVMe SSDs.

The build-in SATA connection can offer a peak data transfer rate of 6Gbps and the USB ports can offer up to 10Gbps of data transfer speed. As mentioned before, a motherboard with the AMD A520 chipset will completely support 3rd gen AMD Ryzen processors based on Zen 2 and the future Ryzen processors based on the Zen 3 architecture without any BIOS update.

Here are some of the motherboards that are already available in the market with the AMD A520 chipset. Do note that, the chipset does not support Ryzen 5 3400G and the Ryzen 3 3200G processors.

• ASROCK A520M Pro4
• ASUS TUF GAMING A520M-PLUS
• BIOSTAR A520MH
• GIGABYTE A520 AORUS Elite
• MSI MAG A520M VECTOR WIFI