The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on June 16, 2020 11:00 AM ESTASUS TUF Gaming B550M-Plus + Wi-Fi
For the TUF small form factor board, technically ASUS is going to offer two different models here, one with AX200 Wi-Fi 6 and one without. The price for the B550M-Plus with the Wi-Fi is an extra $20, which is in-line with what we’ve seen from other Wi-Fi 6 variants. At $160 for the base model, it still feels as if this should be on the high-end for a budget chipset, but this is actually around the middle.
The ASUS TUF Gaming B550M-Plus (and Wi-Fi variant) follow similar design cues to the ATX B550-Plus model. It’s a similar styling with grey diagonal lines from top left to bottom right, with some TUF yellow thrown in, and the chipset heatsink covers both sides of the power delivery, but without a heatpipe.
The CPU is powered by a single 8-pin to the top left, and the socket area has access to three 4-pin fan headers within easy reach. The memory slots are all single-sided latch designs, and down the right of the board we get only a 24-pin ATX power connector and a USB 3.0 header. For this board, ASUS has moved all the SATA ports to the bottom of the board! At least in this configuration, it makes removing any of them very easy to do.
The PCIe configuration for the board shows that the top slot is focused on the PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, without a heatsink so users can have their own. Below this is the main PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, with additional reinforcement. We have then a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot from the chipset, and a full-length PCIe 3.0 x4 slot from the chipset. The chipset heatsink, like on the B550-Plus is relatively small but should be sufficient.
Along the bottom of the motherboard we get a COM header, RGB LED headers, another 4-pin fan header, two USB 2.0 headers, the front panel header, and the four SATA ports. The audio system uses the same S1200A audio codec as the ROG Strix family, but without the additional amps.
On the rear panel we get a combination PS/2 connector, two USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a BIOS Flashback button, Wi-Fi ports (for the Wi-Fi model), a DisplayPort, a HDMI port, 2.5 gigabit Ethernet (Realtek RTL8125B), a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, and the audio jacks.
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Savikid - Tuesday, August 25, 2020 - link
But the new oculus stuff only uses 1 usb port, so that right there is a drop. I use 2 for keyboard and mouse, one for a wireless controller, and one for my HMD.Gigaplex - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
"On that one I added a USB PCI card to get enough ports."That's not really helpful to the user who said they can't add in a card on their mITX system.
eye4bear - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
Must be nice to have no external hard-drives, I have 3 all needing their own USB 3 port, along with a Logitech dongle that runs both my mouse and keyboard, finally a Bluethooth dongle as my computer has none built-in. Yes I would need 6 USB ports (one open for USB sticks) just to keep even.consolessuck - Friday, November 6, 2020 - link
No, I have 3 usb ports on my laptop and i only use 1 for my mouse. As it turns out, the most amount of usb ports i use at once is two when i am making a wired data transfer with my mouse plugged in. Actually, I almost never transfer data to my phone with a wire, instead just sharing them via bluetooth. and considering i never make large data transfers to my phone, this works out just fine. as for a desktop, however, i'd like a minimum of 3 as i'll always have not only a mouse, but a keyboard plugged in all the time.taz-nz - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
The Asrock B550M Steel Legend has 8 port on the back:4x USB-A 3.1 ports
1x USB-A 3.2 port
1x USB-C 3.2 port
2x USB-A 2.0 ports
And you still have two USB 2.0 internal header, plus two USB 3.1 internal headers.
So that allows you to have another
4x USB-A 3.1
4x USB-A 2.0 ports.
so that's 16 Ports
Now if you like me and need Internal USB 3.2 USB-C header, you can use the PCIe 3.0 x2 m.2 slot to add one of these:
https://www.delock.de/produkte/S_63998/merkmale.ht...
or if you want two more USB 3.1 internal header you could add one of these:
https://www.delock.de/produkte/G_62843/merkmale.ht...
So if you can live without a second m.2 slot you have four more USB-A 3.0 ports.
That gives you 20 USB ports without giving up a PCIe slot.
taz-nz - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
oops, just noticed you said mITX not mATXdesii - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Do any of these motherboards support ECC RAM (either buffered or unbuffered)?drSeehas - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
Socket AM4 CPUs support only unbuffered RAM.PixyMisa - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
I did a quick look on ASRock's site, since they're pretty good on ECC support, and every B550 board I checked lists ECC as supported.Samus - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
I think AMD screwed up here with pricing their platforms appropriately. I understand the push for PCIe 4 but they can't have average motherboard prices hovering between $200-$300. There has to be $100 motherboards to be taken seriously especially by OEM's if they want 4000 parts to become mainstream.But maybe they don't...maybe they plan to milk the 3000 parts for a few years. After all, there isn't much reason not too. They have no competition from Intel in the budget segment right now.