The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on June 16, 2020 11:00 AM ESTBiostar Racing B550GTA
For the launch of AMD’s B550 chipset, Biostar has a pair ready to go with an ATX sized model and micro-ATX sized option. Both under its Racing moniker with flashy looks and controller sets catering more towards entry-level models, and it’s possible we could see Biostar release the B550GTN mini-ITX mode at a later date, although Biostar hasn’t unveiled any details of this at present.
Starting with the larger and more premium of the pairing, the Biostar Racing B550GTA an ATX model which looks very intriguing on paper. The most contrasting features of this model include a Realtek 2.5 G Ethernet controller while opting for an old school Realtek ALC1150 HD audio codec. Also present are two M.2 slots, a pair of USB 3.2 G2 ports on the rear panel, and support for DDR4-4400 memory.
Focusing on the design, the Biostar Racing B550GTA has a black and light grey patterned PCB which resembles sun rays, similar to that on the Japan national flag. It includes a black power delivery heatsink which doubles up as a rear panel cover, while the chipset heatsink includes a Racing logo and has white contrasting lines. The board includes two full-length PCIe slots with the top slot operating at PCIe 4.0 x16 slot and the second slot locked to PCIe 3.0 x4. There are also three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots with a legacy PCI slot and is the only B550 model at present to feature this. For storage, Biostar is advertising two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, but this is likely an error in the specifications and one slot will operate at PCIe 4.0 x4 and one at PCIe 3.0 x4. It also includes six SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. The B550GTA includes four memory slots with speeds of up to DDR4-4400, and up to a maximum capacity of 128 GB.
Over on the rear panel of the B550GTA is a pair of USB 3.2 G2 ports including a Type-A and Type-C, with four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A and two USB 2.0 ports. Biostar includes a pair of video outputs including an HDMI and DisplayPort output, a PS/2 keyboard and mouse combo port, as well as a Realtek RTL8125 2.5 GbE Ethernet port. Finishing off the rear panel is a Realtek ALC1150 HD audio controller which adds three 3.5 mm audio jacks.
The Biostar Racing B550GTA is a little bit of a mixed bag with some core features attributed to the B550 chipset including USB 3.2 G2 connectivity and official support for PCIe 4.0. The decision to combine a premium Realtek RTL8125 2.5 G Ethernet controller with an older ALC1150 HD audio codec. Biostar also isn’t clear in its official specifications about the validity of its M.2 slots, as it advertises two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, but this is really unlikely to be the case. At present, Biostar hasn’t unveiled any information in regards to pricing.
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kpb321 - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
I'm kinda disappointed they ended up missing the opportunity to go PCI-E 4 for the CPU to GPU link. With 2 10gbs USB ports, 2 5gbs USB ports, 10 flexible PCI-E lanes that can be NVME/ Sata ports or add on controllers on the chipset there's plenty of bandwidth there to be bottlenecked by a 4x PCI-E 3 link to the CPU. Going PCI-E 4 would make this somewhat less of a bottleneck and could support for example 2 NVME PCI-E 3.0 4X drives at full speed. The B350 more balanced in this way but sadly it was because the PCI-E off the chipset was only PCI-E 2. Hanging 16x lanes worth of things off a 4x link isn't great when they could have doubled that link bandwidth pretty easily.kpb321 - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Edit 'm kinda disappointed they ended up missing the opportunity to go PCI-E 4 for the CPU to chipset linkIrata - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
That‘s X570. If you need the additional storage bandwidth, this is what you should go for.Alternatively there is the Aorus board that offers the 8x CPU plus 2x 4x PCIe 4 lanes for nVMe drives plus the PCIe 3 lanes from the chipset. That could be an alternative and eight PCIe 4 lanes for the GPU should be fine with the next gen GPU, except perhaps for the top of the line models.
On the plus side, with Ryzen you have four dedicated PCIe lanes from the CPU for nVMe (16+4+4 vs. 16+4 on Intel).
kpb321 - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
The X570 goes whole hog on PCI-E 4 with PCI-4 hanging off the chipset too and it supports more PCI-E and SATA and USB devices hanging off the chipset so while the CPU to Chipset bandwidth is higher it's actually even more imbalanced between the combine possible bandwidth of devices possible off the chipset and the CPU to Chipset bandwidth.Going PCI-E 4 for just the CPU to Chipset on the B550 would have given the option to decrease that imbalance and one PCI-E 4x link shouldn't have driven the power up too high.
romrunning - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Then most people wouldn't buy X570 and get B550 instead as there wouldn't be much of a difference. That, and having less PCIe 4.0 stuff lowers the power requirements a bit.I personally held off on X570 because I knew I basically only needed the GPU and NVMe drive to be PCIe 4.0 for the most future-proof setup. I figure I'll buy new again when the new AM5 socket is released with Zen 4. Plus, some of the B550 boards have a Type-C front connector, which will go with the new ITX case I'm getting that has one on the front.
PixyMisa - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
Yes, but then you need to add a separate PCIe controller on the chipset to handle just those 4 lanes. The market probably isn't big enough to make it worthwhile.Irata - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
The CPU to GPU link is 16x PCIe 4.0 - that has nothing to do with the chipset.Or did you mean something else?
a5cent - Friday, June 19, 2020 - link
True, but would that not have brought back the requirement for an actively cooled chipset? That definitely contributes to cost, so it makes sense to cut that from the package.Personally, I'm happy that we've finally left PCIe 2.0 behind. Such chipsets still being sold in 2020 is horrific.
Lucky Stripes 99 - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
I was hoping to build several B550 APU mITX systems this week, but the lack of a compatible APU has stopped those plans. AMD's decision regarding to use a prior generation micro-architecture for its APUs in addition to their decision regarding AM4 firmware size limits are really colliding to create a missed opportunity here. If the iGPU in the Comet Lake processors was better, I'd be picking up H460 or Q470 boards right now instead.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
My understanding is that the firmware size limit wasn't created by AMD. The motherboard makers could always use firmware chips with a larger capacity. Intel doesn't have this problem since they only support one or two CPU generations per motherboard :-)