Analyzing B450 for AMD Ryzen: A Quick Look at 25+ Motherboards

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• theanalyzer - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link

  Signed up to point that out. Needs to be fixed. It’s the only ITX board supporting 2x which sets it’s apart form the competition

• Death666Angel - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link

  Glad to see more options in the mATX range with two M.2 slots, not just from AsRock this time around. My next rig will either be based on the AsRock B450M Pro4 or one of the MSI B450M Mortar boards. Will wait for actual VRM setup and overclocking results / general tests to see which one will be it. I had motherboards from both manufacturers and was pleased with both. MSI has the advantage of offering PCIe M.2 options for both slots as well as SATA. One question regarding that: if I install a 3.0 PCIe x2 M.2 SSD into a 2.0 PCIe x4 slot, what will be the speed ramifications? Can it only use 2.0 PCIe x2 or can it use the full x4, thus being similar in speed to a native 3.0 PCIe x2 setup? :) Still waiting on mATX x470 mainboards.

• Outlander_04 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link

  .3.0 x 2 is the same speed as 2.0 x 4

• DanNeely - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link

  Except that a 3.0 x2 drive is almost certainly x2 because it only has 2 PCIe lanes (cutting down on them is one of the ways the cheaper drives pinch pennies), which means it will be connected at 2.0 x2; at that point you might as well just use a SATA drive and save a bit more money.

• Death666Angel - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link

  Thanks for providing an answer to my actual question. :)

• AdrianB1 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link

  You will get a 2 lane PCIe 2.0 connection, that means 1 GB/s. This is 1/4 of a PCIe 3.0 4-lane usual NVME drive, but real life you may get closer to 80% of the performance.

• Death666Angel - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link

  Thanks!

• Outlander_04 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link

  Finally some budget boards with solid VRMs.

• skpetic - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link

  There are some seriously shady stuff going on with VRMS om X470 og B450. Check out Buildzoid on youtube. Asus B450 STRIX ITX board is single phase for SoC. Several of the Gigabyte B450 and X470 boards in reality have half the advertised amount of phases or are using doublers:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IjWCOXSuKU

• meacupla - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link

  hahaha... no
  
  Asus with the absolute trash tier VRM heatsinks
  AsRock with fake phases
  Gigabyte with fake phases and trash VRM heatsinks
  MSI with no Vcore offset