A representative from Schenker, who was promoting the brand's XMG Apex 15 (opens in new tab) laptop on Reddit (opens in new tab), has inadvertedly revealed that AMD's upcoming Ryzen 4000-series (opens in new tab) (codename Vermeer) desktop CPUs (opens in new tab) will be backwards-compatible with existing 400-series motherboards.
Schenker built the XMG Apex 15 around the AM4 CPU socket (opens in new tab) and B450 chipset (opens in new tab), which allows the gaming PC to leverage a desktop AMD Ryzen 9 3950X (opens in new tab) CPU. Upgradeability is important in the best gaming laptops (opens in new tab), and that's where the Schenker spokesman spilled the beans.
"The AM4 socket and B450 chipset are confirmed to be able to support future AMD Ryzen 4000 Desktop CPUs," the rep wrote.
The B450 chipset is aimed at budget motherboards. Since it targets the lower-end, however, it might not be the most ideal chipset for 105W Ryzen chips. Still, the 65W models should play nice with the chipset.
IN a Q&A, Schenker's rep said that "it’s already been confirmed that AM4 socket and B450 chipset will be compatible with some (if not all) future Ryzen 4000 SKUs."
"As you might know from desktop mainboards, the B450 chipset was not meant to be run with the 105W tier SKUs, but the 65W SKUs all run perfectly fine," the rep said. "We expect this to repeat with Ryzen 4000."
Although Schenker only refers to the B450 chipset, we would expect the same level of compatibility with the X470 chipset as well. Of course, motherboard manufacturers will have to release new firmware (opens in new tab) to accommodate the future Zen 3 chips. Like always, new features will likely not be available on the older chipsets, like when Zen 2 brought in the PCIe 4.0 (opens in new tab) standard that isn't supported on the 400-series chipset.
It was long speculated that the Ryzen 4000-series chips would continue to slide into the AM4 socket. Although the Zen 3 parts will likely debut with the 600-series chipset (opens in new tab), they were expected to work on the current 500-series motherboards. However, it's always good to get confirmation from a reliable source and a laptop vendor at that. AMD 400-series motherboard owners will be glad to know that AMD hasn't forgotten about them.
A recent DigiTimes report claimed that AMD planned to lift the curtains off the Ryzen 4000-series desktop processors at Computex 2020. Since the event has been pushed from May to September, it estimated the Ryzen 4000-series' release date (opens in new tab) as occurring in August or September.
