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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sh009vf5ik1a - Saturday, January 18, 2020 - link
Heads up on the Gigabyte B450 DS3H...This article pretty clearly states ECC memory is supported on this board, and so does Gigabyte's product page, however it fails to mention that 'supported' means just boot support. The actual Error Checking and Correction features are missing and unable to be leveraged.
I purchased this board purely based on this article for the sole reason of having a cheap ECC setup. Combined it with a Ryzen 2600 and Unbuffered Kingston ECC memory, and found that its impossible to get ECC working.
The system boots and works, but you do not get ECC functionality.
chrcoluk - Monday, August 30, 2021 - link
I read on reddit someone wrongfully stated the 2nd 16x slot is only pci gen 2. I wondered how they got this info, I then came across this review, which also states the 2nd 16x slow is gen 2.According to the manual both slots are gen 3 and both are hooked to the cpu.
I have confirmed this as I now use an asmedia 1604 sata card, on post it reports what pci-e mode its in, if I use any of the x1 slots it reports gen 2 x1, if I use either of the x16 slots it reports gen 3 x1 (its limited to one lane). I actually have even moved the gpu to the second x16 slot as its easier to plug in cables to the sata card when its in a higher slot and even gpuz reports the gpu is on pcie gen 3.
Whats the lesson? read the manual, test and dont take what a media rep tells you for gospel ;)