New motherboard supports DDR5 and DDR4 — but there’s a flaw

Onda, a Chinese PC hardware manufacturer, has announced the release of the H610M+ motherboard. The board, built for Intel Alder Lake-S and the LGA1700 socket, offers support for both DDR5 and DDR4 memory.

Flexibility in terms of RAM type is great, but the motherboard comes with one downside — it most likely won’t grant access to dual-channel RAM.

Onda’s new H610M+ micro-ATX motherboard comes with one DDR4 slot for DDR4-3200 memory and one DDR5 slot for DDR5-4800 memory modules. In total, the board supports up to 32GB RAM, but it’s more than likely that users will be limited to either DDR4 or DDR5 and won’t be given the option to mix the two.

The H610 chipset the motherboard houses only supports one dual in-line memory module (DIMM) channel, and that’s exactly why the motherboard only has a single DDR4 slot and a DDR5 slot with no option to expand beyond a single RAM stick.

This is definitely a downside, and a price paid for the flexibility of being able to switch between DDR5 and DDR4. Dual-channel memory is usually the way to go, and using a single DIMM is likely to result in a performance drop — up to 15% with DDR5, according to Tom’s Hardware.

The motherboard has an 8-phase power delivery subsystem and won’t be able to run the best processors that Intel has to offer. Although users won’t be able to utilize the H610M+ for the Intel Core i9-12900K, Onda will work just fine with Alder Lake models up to and including the Core i7.

ONDA H610M+ (VER1.0)https://t.co/hzwxlQjaMK
12th Gen CPU LGA1700 H610
1x DDR4 / 1x DDR5 DIMM Slots pic.twitter.com/3DrYqTpLeq

— 188号 (@momomo_us) March 6, 2022

In terms of ports and connectivity, the motherboard has a PS/2 port, four USB ports (two 3.0 and two 2.0), Ethernet port, HDMI port, VGA port, and three 3.5mm audio jacks. It also comes with two M.2 slots and three SATA 3.0 interfaces. It was first discovered by momomo_us on Twitter after being posted by Onda on its official website.

Intel Alder Lake was the first platform to introduce DDR5 memory, along with PCIe 5.0 and a new motherboard socket. Board manufacturers rose to meet the new requirements by releasing both DDR5 and DDR4 motherboards, letting users choose whether they’ll utilize the new technology or not. However, motherboards that offer access to both DDR5 and DDR4 are still a rarity, so Onda is hitting a largely untapped market with its new release.

The pricing of the motherboard is yet to be released, and we’re not sure if, or when, it will make its way to the U.S. market. However, it seems like a decent option for cheaper builds that aren’t pushing the performance to the limit.

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