The MSI B350 Tomahawk Motherboard Review: Gaming On a Budget
by Gavin Bonshor on March 12, 2018 10:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- MSI
- ATX
- Zen
- AM4
- B350
- Ryzen
- Tomahawk
- Raven Ridge
Conclusions
The MSI B350 Tomahawk is targeted at gamers looking for a cheaper option to supplement their new AMD Ryzen processor, but without making too many sacrifices in key and important areas such as connectivity. The B350 chipset bridges the gap between the ultra-basic A320 and premium X370 chipsets, and the MSI B350 Tomahawk is a good example of why B350 is more than another budget chipset. The B350 Tomahawk sits as the top board of its bottom range, with a slight nod to more aesthetic applications over other options.
While not widely considered a motherboard with tons of overclocking potential, mainly due to the 'averageness' of the B350 chipset, the B350 Tomahawk easily managed to push our Ryzen 7 1700 ($290) processor as far as any other AM4 motherboard we have tested thus far. The 4+2 power delivery certainly held up its end of the performance bargain. For those worried about VRM temperatures, even with 1.375 V running through our CPU , the heatsinks caused no issues with our test bed.
Feature wise, there are a few options bundled above the B350 chipset that might make the Tomahawk appeal. The PCB separation for the audio coincides with the best ALC892 performing AM4 board we have tested so far, and the PCIe slot protection for discrete graphics is a plus for systems that get moved and heavy GPUs in place. Legacy afficinados might like the PCI slots as well. That being said, in some areas, there isn't anything additional: only four SATA ports, only USB 3.0 support (one Type-C port), and the base Realtek audio/networking combination. Also included is a single M.2 port which allows for use of the latest and fastest consumer focused NVMe (M.2 22110) SSDs; this can be found just underneath the top PCIe 3.0 x16 slot. It is odd that MSI hasn't included any of the USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports that the chipset supports, however.
The decision here could come based on the price difference between the B350 Tomahawk and MSI’s own entry level X370 Gaming Plus motherboard ($110). The differences on the surface look minuscule, and aside from minor aesthetical disparity and NVIDIA SLI support, as well as two extra SATA ports, they could be considered fraternal twins.
For a user on a budget that wants at least some frills with a Ryzen 3, 5 or 7 processor, the B350 Tomahawk ticks most of the boxes and with a base styling, ample connections, and some ports. For around $95 at Amazon.com, the Tomahawk hits near the mark based on the features and with consistent performance to back it up, and this could be a good $100 option on the entirety of the AM4 chipset.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
46 Comments
View All Comments
vkristof - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link
yeah: this has been driving me nuts.Many B350 motherboards do not list the full complement of TWO (2) USB 3.1 Gen ports that AMD states the chipset/FCH/whatever provides. Are there additional components that have to be added to the B350 to get the Gen2 speed to work?
unlockproject - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
sometimes windowless chttp://sharepoint.bath.k12.va.us/tech/forum/Lists/...
Tsavo - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
I have the Krait version of this. It takes forever (15s) to POST. Latest BIOS doesn't fix it, either.Other than that massive clanger, it's an ok board, but I'd certainly not recommend any AMD based MSI board based upon the long POST time.
artifex - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
My MSI 970a-g43 (AM3+) hits the Windows login screen in about 5 seconds.I wonder what's happened between then and now, design-wise? Especially since mine's not a "gaming" board and I got it for about $30-40.
kepstin - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
The change to DDR 4 ram hurt motherboard post times a fair bit. And the am4 boards, particularly with early bioses, might put you into a slow ram setup retry loop.That said, with the latest (1.C) bios on my tomahawk, and with Windows whql mode enabled (turns off legacy boot), I have nothing to complain about with post speed.
Tsavo - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
I think you may be on to something here. I've been poking around, and found out that the BIOS of my GTX 660 doesn't support UEFI fast boot. I emailed EVGA for an updated version that supports it.Dollars to donuts, the UEFI bios is looking for signed devices and takes a long time to do it if it comes across ones that aren't.
artifex - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
Yikes. Guess I should be looking for an update to that situation when the 450/470-based boards come out, before deciding to upgrade.TrackSmart - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
Why the long post times for all of these modern motherboards? I thought my Ryzen motherboard was just poorly optimized (about 20 seconds to post; Also 20 seconds to wake from sleep). But it looks like this is one area where desktop motherboards have *not* improved performance-wise in the past 8 years.My 2010-era AMD system posts faster than my new Ryzen build. And it wakes from sleep in about 4-5 seconds instead of ~20 seconds. That is after all efforts to streamline the post times. My ~1 second improvement in post time mirrors the difference between "stripped" and "default" in this article, so I'm guessing that there's not a lot of improvement to be had, short of optimizations from the motherboard manufacturer themselves (ASUS in my case).
silverblue - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
My Gigabyte GA-AB350 Gaming 3 has three Fast BIOS speed settings - Disabled, Enabled and Ultra Fast. The latter doesn't even show the BIOS before you get the Windows 10 logo, not a massive issue if you're happy with the APP Center within Windows instead of being able to go the BIOS directly.silverblue - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
Yep, 9 seconds from on to Windows 10 logo, and another 5 to login screen. About 5 seconds from sleep (though some of that is the display turning back on). I should also explain that I have a Samsung 850 Evo 250GB as my boot drive, and that I'm running a Ryzen 5 1600 with 16GB DDR4 3000 CL16.