The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on June 16, 2020 11:00 AM ESTMSI MPG B550I Gaming Edge Wifi
As it currently stands, MSI has unveiled a single mini-ITX model to cater to small form factor users and enthusiasts, the MSI MPG B550I Gaming Edge Wifi. Following a similar design to the ATX sized B550 Gaming Edge Wifi, the smaller mini-ITX version is packed with features including an 8-layer PCB, a full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, two M.2 slots, with a Realtek 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller and Wi-Fi 6 interface pairing.
The MSI MPG B550I Gaming Edge Wifi is using an all-black theme throughout with subtle grey accents on the rear panel cover and heatsinks. The bulk of the feature set hangs around B550's PCIe 4.0 support including one full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, and a second PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot. Although B550 models have generally ditched the actively cooled chipset heatsinks, the B550I Gaming Edge Wifi includes a cooling fan in what looks to be an amalgamation between the chipset heatsink and the PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot. For conventional SATA drives, MSI includes four straight-angled SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. While mini-ITX models have been favored for enthusiast memory overclockers due to shorter memory traces to the CPU, the B550I Gaming Edge Wifi supports up to DDR4-4600 officially which is much lower than other MSI MPG B550 models. Users can install up to 64 GB across two available memory slots.
The rear panel includes a varied selection of IO including a single USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports. MSI includes a single HDMI 2.1 video output for users looking to opt for a Ryzen based APU, while a PS/2 keyboard and mouse combination port allows the use of legacy peripherals. For networking, there is a Realtek RTL8125B 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller, with an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 interface which also allows the use of BT 5.0 devices. Rounding off the rear panel is a small BIOS Flashback button, and five 3.5 mm audio jacks and a single S/PDIF optical output which is powered by a Realtek ALC1200 HD audio codec.
The MSI MPG B550I Gaming Edge Wifi is the only mini-ITX model at launch from the company, and it is seen as a direct replacement to the B450I Gaming Plus AC. While it offers a better controller set and includes official support for PCIe 4.0 via the full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot and PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, it comes at the much more premium price of $200. With two USB 3.2 G2 slots including a Type-A and Type-C pairing, and a Realtek RTL8125B 2.5 G Ethernet controller, with Wi-Fi 6 and two M.2 slots, it looks a competitive model in the mid-range mini-ITX market space.
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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 :-)