Analyzing B450 for AMD Ryzen: A Quick Look at 25+ Motherboards
by Gavin Bonshor on July 31, 2018 8:00 AM ESTMSI B450-A Pro
MSI’s Pro series of motherboards are designed with professionals in mind, without sacrificing in performance, quality and offers a blend of modest and classic aesthetics. MSI has announced three Pro series boards for the AMD B450 chipset launch, the ATX sized B450-A Pro and a pair of microATX options, the B450M Pro-M2 and B450M Pro-VDH.
Starting with the MSI B450-A Pro motherboard, the design is pretty simplistic with plenty of PCIe connectivity available. MSI markets this particular model as being optimized and suitable for cryptocurrency mining and has a full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, a full-length PCIe 2.0 x4 slot and a total of four PCIe 2.0 x1 slots. Up to DDR4-3466 memory is supported with a supported maximum of up to 64 GB can be installed across the four RAM slots. Both the use of non-ECC and ECC memory is permitted, although installed ECC memory will operate in non-ECC mode.
The B450-A Pro has a total of six SATA 6 Gbps which support RAID 0, 1 and 10 arrays. A single M.2 slot is present with support for drives up to M.2 22110 (22 x 110 mm) and has support for both PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA capable devices; using this slot disables two SATA ports.
Stylistically, the B450-A Pro has a black PCB with dark grey metallic heatsinks across the power delivery and chipset. The board looks to be running a 6-phase power delivery running in a 4+2 configuration. A single 8-pin ATX 12 V CPU input and 24-pin ATX motherboard input are there to provide power to the board.
On the rear panel the B450-A Pro has two USB 3.1 10 Gbps Type-A ports, two USB 3.1 5 Gbps Type-A ports and two USB 2.0 ports. Also featured is a BIOS Flashback+ button, with a PS/2 keyboard and mouse port. Natively supporting the Ryzen APUs, the board makes use of a single HDMI 1.4 port, a DisplayPort and a legacy VGA port. The RJ45 LAN port is powered by a Realtek 8111H Gigabit controller and the six 3.5mm audio jacks take orders from the Realtek ALC892 audio codec.
With MSI focusing on a mixture of subtle aesthetics, good quality componentry and with cryptocurrency mining support, there isn’t a lot of bells and whistles when compared to the Gaming Series models, but what is on offer is more than enough for professional users. The MSI B450-A Pro is expected retail for $89.99 which makes this one of the most cost-effective full-sized ATX models without Gaming branding and fancy gaming themed software factored in.
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Ian Cutress - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
10GbE has nothing to do with StoreMI. I was using it as an example of something that the system supports if you buy it. Like StoreMI.jtd871 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
It might have been more clear what point you were making if you had replied "The systems also support ...".The way it's presented in the table, though, it appears as if you are saying the older chipsets themselves do not support StoreMI, which is not true.
Death666Angel - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Seemed perfectly understandable to me. And if you know one thing about StoreMi, you know what the chart refers to. It's just software after all.jtd871 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Less-savvy readers might get an incorrect impression and come away with the sense that they need to "buy up" to use StoreMI at all.dante01 - Tuesday, August 7, 2018 - link
Hey guys, whats the best option between the asrock b450 itx and the msi b450i ? The msi seems to be missing one fan header and usb 3.1 gen 2 compared to the asrock but the msi may have better VRMs...It also supports 3000mhz ram. I don't know what to choose, some have said that asrock b450 itx is not good (VRMs wise), i intend to OC my ryzen 2600 so VRMs are importantThanks !
asmian - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
compliment (be nice to) != complement (be a good partner to)"Not much hasn't changed" - strange double negative
If there's no in-house editor, then more careful proofreading before posting, please.
Ian Cutress - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
15000 words with a couple of hours to edit. Always going to be the odd one or two typos.jordanclock - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
then be more careful**FTFY.
msroadkill612 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Its still there. Pity. Others may think it is correct.jtd871 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Your summary table based on features does not currently list the ASUS mITX board under those with 2 M.2 slots.