The Intel B560 Motherboard Overview: 30+ Budget Models Starting from $75
by Gavin Bonshor on March 29, 2021 7:00 AM ESTMSI B560M-A Pro& B560M Pro
The MSI B560M-A Pro and B560M Pro represent its more professional series of motherboards, designed for a basic and no-frills approach. Typically designed for more professional systems such as small office PCs, the Pro series curtails on the gaming-focused features and goes with a basic set of controllers. The design of bothboards is the same, with a black chipset and M.2 heatsink pairing, as well as a black and grey patterned PCB.
with only the following subtle differences in the specifications.The MSI B560M Pro includes a DisplayPort 1.4 output, while the B560M-A Pro omits this; this is the only difference between both models.
Both models include one full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, with two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. For storage, there'sone PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, with six SATA ports including two with straight-angled connectors, and feature support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. In the top-right hand corner are two memory slots that can accommodate up to 64 GB of DDR4-5200 memory. The power delivery doesn't include a heatsink, and there is a single 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power input.
The MSI B560M Pro includes a DisplayPort 1.4, the B560M-A Pro does not
The only difference between both models is the MSI B560M Pro includes a DisplayPort 1.4, as well as one HDMI and one D-sub video output. The B560M-A Pro includes both the D-sub and HDMI, but not the DisplayPort. Both models include four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A and two USB 2.0 ports, with a PS/2 combo port and three 3.5 mm audio jacks powered by a Realtek ALC897 HD audio codec. Finishing off the rear panels is a single Realtek RTl8125B 2.5 GbE controller.
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FriendlySeaCow - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
The MSI MPG B560I Gaming Edge Wi-Fi has been announced and its features fully released, so you can update that page. Incidentally, there's also a typo in the MSI table, where you have "ATX" instead of "ITX" under the Size Column for the B560I.Looks like a really nice board: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MPG-B560I-GAMING-E...
Jorgp2 - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
Why didn't they enable the full 8 sata ports for this chipset, X299 is dead anyway.Linustechtips12#6900xt - Thursday, April 8, 2021 - link
because who uses 8 freaking sata ports at a time, i think the MAX I've ever used is 4Mr Perfect - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
Nice round up. Any chance you'll do something similar for H570? They don't seem to cost much more, but have some additional chipset features.Scour - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
B560 also with 6x SATA, PCIe 4.0 and also on ATX-boards, sound good for me.sheltem - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
According to this Reddit post, the Asrock B560 ITX has pretty good VRM's:https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/lao3ym/z59...
BrokenCrayons - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
Finally some decently priced motherboards are getting attention they deserve! I'm really happy to see and read about hardware in a price segment I would actually buy and use.evilpaul666 - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
The 10/11 series would be so much more interesting if it had ECC support.jrbales@outlook.com - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
I'm in the process of building a new system for my sister. Bought the ASUS Prime B560M-A at a price competitive with the B460 boards. A very nice mATX board that was nice to work with. One observation and one question. I bought the optional Intel WIFI card & antenna kit to use with the WIFI bracket. On the plus side, it works great and I didn't have to run ethernet cable across the room I was building it in. The negative is that the WIFI bracket has to be attached to the motherboard, using really tiny screws from the rear of the board. That probably took the longest thing in the build as I'd have to try to balance the MB, keep the bracket in place over the holes and the card inserted in the slot, while keeping the tiny screws on the screwdriver long enough to screw in. Now for the question. It involves the first M.2 slot, above the GPU. It's PCIE 4.0. According to everything printed by ASUS, if you use a 10th generation CPU, the slot is disabled, leaving only the second M.2 beneath the GPU. I understand the part about needing an 11th gen CPU to get PCIE 4, but shouldn't the first slot support a PCIE 3.0 M.2 SSD? I'm used to these slots being backward compatible and on my AMD X570 board, you can use either PCIE 3 or 4 SSDs in both slots. Does anyone knows if the B56s0 slot 1 is backward compatible?mobilefrenzy - Tuesday, March 30, 2021 - link
M.2 Slot 1 on B560 and Z590 mobos don't work with 10th gen CPUs, as they don't have the additional PCIe lanes to enable them.