The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others

ASRock B550M-ITX/ac

It looks like ASRock will have a second mini-ITX motherboard, this time on the cheaper end of the scale. The B550M-ITX/ac, at first glance however, seems to have some rough layout choices. First of all, the CPU 8-pin connector, is on the rear panel. Whoever thought that was a good idea needs removing from the design team.

The CPU power delivery seems to be an 8-phase design, with a small heatsink to assist. The socket area has two 4-pin fan headers above it to assist, and there is a third on the bottom right of the board, although this is a bit far away for any air coolers. The two DRAM slots in between are single sided latch designs.

On the right hand side of the board is the 24-pin ATX power connector, and four SATA ports in a configuration which makes taking two of the locking cables out impossible if memory is installed – again, an odd design choice. Below this are a USB 3.0 header, a USB 2.0 header, the front panel header, and that third 4-pin fan header.

The chipset and PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot have one combined heatsink, just above the PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. The PCIe slot doesn’t have additional support embedded in it. To the left is the audio codec, in this case it’s the low-end ALC887 design.

The rear panel has a DisplayPort, a HDMI port, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, a combination PS/2 port, gigabit Ethernet from a Realtek RTL8111H controller, a Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, a Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, audio jacks, and Wi-Fi antenna for the built in Wi-Fi 5 module (likely Intel’s 1x1 AC3168 solution).