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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bi0logic - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
It looks like the price link to the "TUF B450-Plus Gaming" is going to an amazon search for "ASRock B450M Pro4"eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Thanks Gavin, I know this is a lot of information to go through and present. I would love to see a follow-up on these questions:1. Especially for these compact boards, any problems with stock processor heat sinks blocking DIMM slots, i.e. do DIMMs with heat spreaders still fit with a Wraith or Spire cooler, respectively?
2. I have my eye on the Aorus Pro WiFi or something similar, but am wary of the placement of the WiFi antenna connectors right next to two of the USB 3 connectors. I frequently use 3-4 USB 3 devices at the same time frequently, and am wary of the USB 3 - WiFi interference with that placement. Any chance Gigabyte could state if/that they got that taken care of?
Thanks!
Also, still looking forward to your Ryzen 2200/2400 GPU overclock chapter on that duo. Any chance we'll see it soon?
sonofgodfrey - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Second to last table is labeled X470 Motherboards.PingSpike - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
It looks like the ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING inherits some of the layout features of the (much more expensive) x470 Crosshair 7 in that it steals some of the CPU lanes to get a second full PCI-e 3.0 M.2 slot. Then 8x goes to PCI-e 16 1, the remaining 4x to PCI-e 16 2 and finally a chipset PCI-e 2.0On the surface, this seems like it has totally ignored the bifrucation limitations that supposedly are inherent to the B450 chipset.
In other words, I thought you couldn't get that on this chipset.
Dragonstongue - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
well at least the pricing is "more inline" with the pricing they should be, newer boards, better componentes that actually save the maker a bit of coin per board made, so they keep the same "launch price" is acceptable in my books coming from gen 1 (I so hate the naming AMD used for Ryzen 1xxx and 2xxx needless confusion for nothing)x3xx to x4xx same concept, reduced price to produce so they save some money, but the vast majority of vendors used these "savings" to cram more disco light show RGB on the boards to jack the price up some instead.
seems at least with the B4xx boards the vendors took a "better" approach beyond a few more "premium" boards which rightfully have an increased price (justifiable, maybe, but I myself have zero need of RGB and would only buy a more expensive board that offered them at the increased price if they were WORTH it as far as just overall better then lower cost boards, sadly, there seems to be little difference in more "premium" beyond a butt load of extra RGB little better in VRM etc which are much more useful and required IMO)
they could almost have a market for the premium boards RGB free, so pay a bit less for people like me who do not want all the RGB crud but still get the increased premium sound/VRM/BIOS etc ^.^
WasHopingForAnHonestReview - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
Nice review. Good work.Im amazed that almost every comment is a nitpick. Rough life, Ian.
Flappergast - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
Nice overview on the last page. I’m looking for mITX WiFi - nice to see some good boardsSakkura - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
As documented by Buildzoid, the Asrock B450 Pro4 does not have the claimed 6+3-phase VRM. It is a pure 3+3-phase. Same probably applies for the B450M Pro4.https://youtu.be/yWAwOH-egFs?t=2104
JohanPirlouit - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
Hi everyone,Am I the only one to see that on the AMD picture:
- CPU: 2x SATA 3Gbps
- Chipset: 6x SATA 3Gbps
What do AMD talks about: SATA "3" (known as "6Gbps") or SATA 3Gbps (aka SATA II)?
Sakkura - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
They mean SATA3 = SATA 6Gbps. Annoying that we keep running into these easily confused naming schemes (see also: USB 3.1 Gen1 and Gen2). At least SATA is getting old enough that we should soon be able to just drop the version number (unlike USB 2.0 there's really no reason to make modern hardware with SATA2).