Rumor: AMD Switches to LGA Sockets for AM5 Platform

AMD’s upcoming AM5 platform, which should follow socket AM4, is rumored to receive an LGA socket. The pins of the next generation AMD CPUs would therefore no longer be on the CPU, but on the motherboard.

The information comes from Twitter user ExecutableFix, which is more likely to share accurate information about unannounced AMD products. According to the leaker, the AM5 platform will have an LGA socket with 1718 pins, compared to 1331 pins on the current AM4 CPUs. It is striking that the leaker states that the AM5 socket same size of 40x40mm, despite the increased amount of pins.

ExecutableFix further reports that the future AM5 consumer CPUs will receive support for dual-channel DDR5 memory. PCIe 5.0 support remains the next generation exclusive to AMD’s Zen 4 EPYC processors, meaning the first AM5 processors will keep support for PCIe 4.0. Intel’s upcoming Alder Lake consumer processors are rumored to get PCIe 5.0, in addition to DDR5 support.

Furthermore, the leaker states that the AM5 platform will be introduced with 600 series chipsets. Presumably, the platform will be released with AMD’s Zen 4 processors, which are produced on TSMC’s 5nm node. AMD’s EPYC Genoa processors with Zen 4 cores are expected next year. It’s not clear when AMD will release Zen 4 consumer processors. Zen 3+ processors are expected this year, but are expected to use an AM4 socket.

AMD’s alleged move to LGA comes as no surprise. The company has been using such sockets for its server processors for some time. The company has been doing this since Socket-F for Opteron processors, which came out in 2006. AMD’s Threadripper and EPYC processors already use LGA sockets.