Ryzen 5000 CPU support is coming to 400 series chipsets sooner than expected

What just happened? Good news for AMD Ryzen 5000 series CPU owners looking to run their shiny new processors in older 400 series motherboards as multiple board suppliers have seemingly decided not to wait until 2021 to roll out updated BIOSes supporting the new chips.

AnandTech points out that several ASRock B450 motherboards now have updated BIOSes available to download that add Zen 3 support. Indeed, a quick check reveals that many B450 boards do have new BIOSes that were made available on November 19 but the descriptions are vague, only saying that they optimize system compatibility.

Asus’ official ROG Twitter channel on November 18 teased that 400 series BIOS updates (AGESA 1.1.8.0) for AMD Ryzen 5000 series CPUs will be available “in a couple of weeks.” Biostar echoed similar sentiments on November 22, noting that Ryzen 5000 series support was “coming soon.”

In related news, Tom’s Hardware is also reporting that ASRock has enabled Smart Access Memory (SAM) on B450 motherboards. SAM up to this point has only worked with 500 series boards running a Radeon 6000 series GPU like the RX 6800 and a Ryzen 5000 CPU.

Of course, for many, the toughest task will be finding a Ryzen 5000 series CPU in stock. All of the new chips sold out within minutes of launch and are still out of stock at major retailers.