As AI hardware makers gobble up memory and prices surge, the ripples from the intense demand are spreading fast. One of the more surprising consequences of pressured memory stock appears to be that AMD is planning to keep the B650 chipset around, even though the B850 is ready to replace the aging chipset this year in new motherboards. Although this is a rumor at this point (by way of Videocardz), it’s easy to see how the memory sector’s conniptions could create a bottleneck for the rest of the hardware industry.
Memory makers have been seeing massive demand for SSDs for months. We recently pointed out that demand was increasing for DRAM, as well, leading to concerns that AMD would have to raise prices on some GPUs.
According to Videocardz, a note on Board Channels suggests that motherboard manufacturers plan to continue using the B650 chipset, which would probably be coming to the end of the road (from a production standpoint) right about now. It’s worth noting that, assuming the note is accurate, factories could end up manufacturing additional B650 chipsets, meaning that the hardware will be around for quite a while.
Credit: Asus
The move to extend the older chipset won’t prevent the B850 from ending up in plenty of systems, of course, though it remains to be seen just how much it might chip away at B850 adoption. As Videocardz points out, B850 boards will appear in more expensive units, with the B650 keeping prices down for entry-level systems.
Both the AMD B650 and B850 support socket AM5 processors like the Ryzen 9000, but the B850 brings with it PCIe 5.0 for the NVME memory slot—at least, for the main slot. That may not seem like a big deal if you already have a B650 board with PCIe 5.0, but keep in mind that boards with the B650 chipset aren’t required to have it, whereas all B850 boards do. And, of course, the B850 has several other new features, along with better Wi-Fi support.
If AI is experiencing a bubble, the eventual pop could return memory stock (and prices, one would hope) to more normal levels. We say “more” because we’re already seeing changes in the industry that could be difficult to undo. In particular, Micron recently announced that it is ending its long-lived Crucial Memory line so that it can devote more resources to producing—you guessed it—low-power DDR memory and HBW memory for AI customers. But so far, AI continues to defy the critics and put pressure on hardware manufacturers to up production.