Ryzen 5000 (Vermeer) Support Creeps Up on Select MSI 300-series AMD Motherboards

Looks like AM4’s backward compatibility has been extended once again. A select number of 300 series motherboards from MSI was apparently given the official confirmation to support Ryzen 5000 CPUs. At the very least, this seems to be in conjunction with a widescale implementation of a BIOS update that should provide native support for Windows 11.

AM4 Lives Forever More

If WCCFTech’s sources are to be believed, Zen 3 is now available on MSI’s aged 300 series motherboards. This is in part due to a relatively recent product-line-wide BIOS update that is intended to provide native Windows 11 support (on both AMD and Intel lines actually) for most motherboards that were released over the last four or so years.

According to the information shown via Ryzen SMU Checker, product codes for some Ryzen 5000 CPUs were clearly listed upon checking. The source even provided a CPU-Z screenshot of a Ryzen 5 5600X, which was supposedly running on an MSI MAG B350 Tomahawk.

In addition, WCCFTech also provided a comprehensive list of MSI 300 series motherboards that had the Windows 11 BIOS update packaged with the CPU support. Here’s the list, including the specific BIOS update that you should be using:

By the way, if the title isn’t obvious enough, we need to re-clarify that this BIOS update is only for Vermeer Ryzen 5000 CPUs. So, basically Ryzen 5 5600X, Ryzen 7 5800/5800X, and Ryzen 9 5900/5900X/5950X. Cezanne Ryzen 5000 CPUs like, for example, Ryzen 3 5300G or Ryzen 5 5600G are still NOT going to be compatible.

After A320 Zen 3 and Beyond

Since AM4’s launch, the crowning chipset socket has proven to be one of AMD’s most important competitive advantages over Intel’s traditional Tick&Tock CPU support style. That being said, due to the limited amount of data that can be stored in the BIOS, CPU support crept up ever so slowly upward, eventually phasing out the oldest supported generations in favor of the latest ones.

Even so, this system of continued support allowed the revolutionary Matisse architecture Zen 2 (Ryzen 3000) and Vermeer architecture Zen 3 (Ryzen 5000) to be compatible with what essentially should have only been natively usable by Zen+ CPUs (400 series). And for the past five years, catching up with the latest and greatest… had only ever required a timely BIOS update for AMD’s current platform.

Earlier this year, a similar development also occurred for Asus and Gigabyte, rolling out BIOS updates that would technically allow Rzyen 5000 CPUs to work on entry-level A320 motherboards. So from a tinfoil hat perspective, MSI’s extended support rollout might be yet another one of AMD’s fire fanning moves to dampen the release of lower-end (non-K) Intel Alder Lake CPUs in the first quarter of 2022.