Biostar today launched the AM5-based A620MS motherboard, bringing a new low-end option to PC users with limited budgets. While Biostar has yet to reveal the suggested retail price of the A620MS motherboard, the motherboard’s specifications clearly indicate that it’s aimed at the lowest end of the market, even though it uses the regular A620 chipset rather than the cheaper A620A chipset.
A620MS has some typical features of the mATX A620 motherboard (which is used in most current models): two DDR5 DIMM slots (supporting up to two 48GB memory sticks), one M.2 PCIe 4.0 slot for SSD, Four SATA III ports and PCIe Gen4 x16 slot. The motherboard also has four debug LEDs for diagnosing CPU, RAM, GPU, and boot errors.
Meanwhile, the rear I/O features 1 Gigabit Ethernet port, 4 USB 3.2 ports, analog audio jack, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 1 HDMI 1.4 port, and DisplayPort 1.2. While there are some more full-featured A620 motherboards that offer more ports and run at higher specs, the rear I/O is more or less on par with the A620.
However, the BIOSTAR A620MS has some other features that mean it is quite low-end for an A620 motherboard. It has only 8 voltage regulator modules (VRM) in total, in 6+2 or 6+1+1 phase configuration. This isn’t quite as low-end as Biostar (ASRock offers 4+1+1 level motherboards), but it’s still very frugal in terms of VRM levels compared to most other A620 motherboards. These VRMs aren’t covered by a heatsink either, which is also typical for motherboards in this segment, as they’re usually paired with 65W (or so) chips of equivalent chips.
BIOSTAR doesn’t list any official CPU limitations in either its press release or its spec sheet; instead, the company simply lists the board as compatible with Ryzen 7000 and future Ryzen 8000 processors.
While there are a large number of B650(E) and X670(E) models on the AM5 motherboard market, there are only a handful of A620 motherboards in total. There are 14 different motherboards to choose from on Newegg, many of which differ only slightly in form factors and other aspects. The cheapest of them ranges from $75 to $100, and while BIOSTAR hasn’t revealed the price we can expect for its A620MS motherboard, given its specs, we expect it to fall in the same $75 to $100 zone.