AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors are now supported on AMD 300 series motherboards

After making it quite clear that the AMD Ryzen 5000 series weren’t supposed to be supported on AMD 300 series motherboards, it seems that AMD has decided to backtrack on that decision. This might come as quite a surprise, but given the competitiveness on show at Intel and also new lineup of rather affordable AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors, I guess this was inevitable.

AMD to allow OEMs to update AMD 300 series motherboards to support AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors

The old roadmap for AMD AM4.

In April, AMD X370, B350 and A320 motherboards will get “beta BIOS” updates to support the AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors. This is a great news, for users of the first-gen AMD AM4 motherboards, as they can now make the jump up to the latest Zen 3 processors without shelling out for a new motherboard. AMD will be releasing the AGESA 1.2.0.7 firmware that will enable the support for the latest generation of AMD Ryzen processors. What I wonder is why didn’t AMD do it earlier though, since they clearly could.

With that said, I would still say that using an AMD 300 series board with the latest processors might not be too great of an idea. You will also lose out on features like PCIe 4.0, optimized memory traces and more, which makes this support more of an olive branch for those who are still holding out on upgrades simply because they don’t want to buy a new motherboard.

With Zen 4 just around the corner, I don’t really see anyone too excited to buy a new AM4 motherboard, so I guess this decision was also partly also to help get some of the latest Zen 3 processors into the hands of really budget-conscious users looking to get a last hurrah of sorts for the AMD AM4 platform.

Pokdepinion: With how affordable a lot of the AMD B550 boards are out there, I honestly don’t see myself shelling out for a new CPU only to use it on an outdated AMD 300 series board. But kudos to AMD for still offering the option though.