The transition from DDR4 to DDR5 RAM was slower than from DDR3. When DDR5 was first released, it ran into a huge shortage and this, combined with another deluge related to the effects of the global pandemic, really slowed down the adoption of this new faster memory. For this reason, when upgrading, the question of switching to DDR4 or DDR5 is still not an easy choice for many PC builders. It’s nice to see at least one motherboard manufacturer taking a “why not” approach.
Onda
Onda is a company that has been our focus in the past for making slightly unconventional motherboards. Often the focus is on having as many Sata ports as possible. But this time they have opted for dual RAM support.
According to Videocards, the recently announced board from a Chinese manufacturer is a Micro-ATX board with two DIMM slots. Only one slot is supposed to be active at a time. But this allows the board to work with both DDR4 RAM and DDR5 technology. It also has PCIe 5.0, two M.2 storage slots. And three SATA 3.0 ports, which is surprisingly modest for an Onda.
Dubbed the H610M+, this board is based on the H610 chipset and is likely to be a good cheap option for those who want to play with both types of RAM and an Alder Lake chip with integrated graphics.
The price is still unknown, and it’s unlikely that we’ll see this board or anything like it outside of China for some time. That being said. It would be nice to see more motherboards with this replaceable functionality. It would be interesting to see if this is achievable on more serious gaming boards. And it would be interesting to play around with the ability to swap or even hot-swap RAM.