After several months of testing mostly expensive boards, we finally have one of the least expensive motherboards we’ve tested this year on our bench, the Gigabyte A620M Gaming X. Compared to other Ryzen 7000 boards we’ve looked at, it’s missing some of the features of the full platform, plus CPU overclocking (you can overclock the memory). But it has the basics covered – mostly.
Motherboards at this entry-level price are there to get you onto the platform with just enough features so you can use the latest processors. This Micro ATX board costs under $120 and supports the latest 7000 Series (AM5) processors, including the 170W flagship-class SKUs such as our Ryzen 9 7950X. It has four SATA ports, one M.2 socket, a budget audio codec, and 2.5 GbE (no wireless here). But at this price, specifically with this chipset, you won’t get PCIe 5.0-capable M.2 sockets or PCIe slots, just PCIe 4.0.
Gigabyte has four motherboards sporting the low-end A620 chipset, all of which are Micro ATX boards like our Gaming X. If you need Wi-Fi, there’s a Gaming X AX, and if you’re trying to spend the least amount possible, the A620M S2H and A620M H will cost less, although US availability for availability for all models wasn’t available yet when we wrote this. I don’t recommend going any lower than the Gaming X if you plan to run high-end processors, as the latter two don’t even provide heatsinks on the paltry power delivery.
