Analyzing B450 for AMD Ryzen: A Quick Look at 25+ Motherboards
by Gavin Bonshor on July 31, 2018 8:00 AM ESTMSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC
The MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC sits as MSI’s premier and flagship B450 chipset motherboard and has a strong focus on gaming but moves away from the conventional MSI Gaming red and black theme. The B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC also uses a variety of premium controllers and chips including the Realtek ALC1220 audio codec, an Intel 9260 dual-band 802.11ac 2T2R Wi-Fi adapter and an Intel I211-AT Gigabit LAN networking chip.
As mentioned, the B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC moves away from the traditional gaming theme usually seen from MSI, and instead the carbon namesake features an all-black PCB with the bottom left quadrant having a grey lined pattern rising towards the heatsinks and passed the PCIe slots. Both the power delivery and chipset heatsink have a definitive carbon themed styling which blends in with the rest of the board to create a stylish look. The board also has two dedicated RGB zones with the first emanating from the right and side behind the 24-pin ATX power connector, with the second coming from the chipset heatsink. To expand on this, MSI has included a total of three RGB headers with two having support for 5050 RGB LED strips with a maximum power of 12 V, and the last supporting addressable RGB strips up to a power of 5 V.
The board conforms to the standard ATX form factor and has a full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, a full-length PCIe 2.0 x4 slot and three PCIe 2.0 1x slots. The B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC has a total of four memory slots supporting up to DDR4-3466 with a total of 64 GB system memory supported. A total of six SATA right angled ports and two M.2 slots with one offering PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA support, and the other allowing for just PCIe 2.0 x4 supported drives.
On the rear panel, the B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC has one USB 3.1 10 Gbps Type-C, one USB 3.1 10 Gbps Type-A, two USB 3.1 5 Gbps Type-A and two USB 2.0 ports. Delivering audio through the six 3.5mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output is the Realtek ALC1220 audio codec, with the single LAN port taking direction from an Intel I211-AT Gigabit chip and the Wi-Fi featuring Wave 2 2T2R capability due to the Intel 9260 Wi-Fi module. Finishing off the rear panel is a clear CMOS switch and a P/S2 keyboard and mouse combo port.
While none of the pricing on MSI B450 models has been announced prior to launch, the B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC is expected to retail for around $149.99.
62 Comments
View All Comments
JohanPirlouit - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
Thanks Sakkura ;-) .... And I also agree with you..patire - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
The ASRock microATX B450M Pro4 has a total of four SATA ports not the six as wrongly posted on the final page table for choosing the right B450 Motherboard.Xajel - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Yet not a single high-end X470 mATX motherboard !!Xajel - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Yet not a single high-end X470 mATX motherboard !!jensend - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
WHY ON EARTH DO THEY KEEP MAKING AMD BOARDS WITHOUT DISPLAYPORT?FreeSync is a game changer for the Ryzen APUs, and very few of the inexpensive adaptive sync displays support FreeSync over HDMI.
KAlmquist - Sunday, August 5, 2018 - link
Gavin Bonshor's otherwise excellant page on choosing the right B450 motherboard doesn't include a list of boards that support DisplayPort. Unless I've missed some, there are eight:ASRock B450 Gaming K4
ASRock B450 Gaming ITX/ac
ASRock B450 Pro4
ASUS ROG Strix B450-F Gaming
MSI B450I Gaming Plus AC
MSI B450M Mortar
MSI B450M Mortar Titanium
MSI B450-A Pro
I once had a motherboard with a Realtek network controller and got so sick of it randomly connecting at 10 mb/sec that I vowed I would never buy another Realtech network controller. That leaves only one B450 option:
ASUS ROG Strix B450-F Gaming
AdrianB1 - Sunday, August 5, 2018 - link
There is also the MSI B450 Carbon AC that in theory is better as it has better VRM and wireless LAN. It is also a bit cheaper in the stores in my area.DMCbr - Sunday, August 5, 2018 - link
I think MSI totally won this time, with the PRO Carbon AC board: best sound, best lan, wifi, 5+2 VRM phases, good heat-sinks...foxbat - Tuesday, August 7, 2018 - link
Great, really great ... but still can't buy outside of USA 13" laptop with Mobile Ryzen APU except extremely expensive not so well designed Lenovo 720S. What is the reason?Djoie123 - Tuesday, August 14, 2018 - link
I think that B450 gaming plus have 4+3 vrm phase design, on their site they said it's 7 phase power design