A European retailer has listed several Asus X670E-based motherboards for AMD's Zen 4-based desktop processors. The new AM5 platforms can be pre-ordered and will be delivered shortly, but their prices will hardly please mainstream enthusiasts.
When AMD and its partners demonstrated initial AMD X670 and X670E-based mainboards earlier this month, they explained that X670E is a brand-new platform for hardcore enthusiasts with loads of new features and a variety of knobs for tuning. Such platforms are usually expensive, but it looks like early adopters of AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7000-series 'Raphael' CPUs will have to pay rather unprecedented sums for motherboards, based on listings from IPC-Computer.de (discovered by @momomo_us).
The basic Asus Prime X670-P mainboard will cost €483 ($412 without VAT), whereas the 'entry level' Asus ROG Strix X670E-A Gaming Wi-Fi mainboard is set to cost €783 ($669 without VAT). Meanwhile, the highest-end Asus Crosshair X670E Extreme will carry a rather whopping €1475 price tag ($1260 without VAT).
AMD's X670E platform for enthusiast-grade desktop PCs will bring a number of advantages, including with support for processors with up to 16 Zen 4 cores as well as dual-channel DDR5 memory, a PCIe 5.0 interface, up to 14 USB ports (including several USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 ports as well as USB-C), and Wi-Fi 6E support on higher-end motherboards. Select AM5 mainboards will also offer M.2-25110 slots for future SSDs, 2.5GbE or even 10GbE connectivity, and USB 4 connectors.
The majority of AMD X670E-based motherboards will be aimed at enthusiasts who plan to overclock their processors, so they will offer extremely sophisticated voltage regulating modules that will be able to deliver hundreds of watts to CPUs to maximize overclocking potential. It's not surprising that such platforms will be rather expensive, but $1260 seems to be excessive even by enthusiast-grade standards. Of course, early listings at retailers tend to set particularly high prices on hardware that is not yet released. Over $1000 just for a motherboard is way too expensive for most of us, but there will inevitably be some buyers.
