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 MAG B550M Mortar & B550M Mortar Wifi
The MSI B550M Mortar Wifi and B550M Mortar are MSI’s only micro-ATX models currently available at launch and represents the Arsenal series which is MSI’s entry-level gaming range. Both models are identical in terms of features and aesthetics, aside from the Wifi version which comes with a Wi-Fi 6 interface. Some of the pairings other features include two M.2 slots, a Realtek ALC1200 HD audio codec, and a Realtek 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller.
Focusing on the design, the MSI MAG B550M Mortar has a very elegant contrasting design, with striking silver heatsinks on a black and grey patterned PCB. The Mortar includes two full-length PCIe slots with a top slot which operates at PCIe 4.0 x16, a second slot is locked to PCIe 3.0 x4, as well as two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. The storage capabilities include six SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays, with a pair of M.2 slots. The top M.2 slot operates at PCIe 4.0 x4, while the bottom slot operates at just PCIe 3.0 x4. Users can install up to 128 GB of DDR4 across four memory slots, with speeds of up to DDR4-4400 officially supported.
On the rear panel is a pair of USB 3.2 G2 ports including a Type-A and Type-C, with two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A and two USB 2.0 ports. A Realtek RTL8125B 2.5 G Ethernet port takes care of the audio, while the B550M Mortar Wifi model includes an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 interface with support for BT 5.0 devices. The boards five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output are controlled by a Realtek ALC1200 HD audio codec, and the pairing also includes an HDMI video output, a BIOS Flashback button, and a PS/2 keyboard and mouse combo port.
The MSI MAG B550M Mortar Wifi has an MSRP of $170, while the non-Wi-Fi version costs $10 cheaper at $160. On paper, the Mortar is similar to the B550 Tomahawk without the additional Realtek Gigabit Ethernet port, and visually it looks like a stylish offering. The B550 Tomahawk does officially feature better memory support, and although MSI aims at a higher with its MAG series in comparison to its B450 models, the Mortar Wifi for $170 looks like a solid alternative.
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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 :-)