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).

ASRock B550M-HDV ASUS ROG Strix B550-E Gaming
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  • Lucky Stripes 99 - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link

    I've read elsewhere that Zen1 processors supposedly had a 128 Mb address limit for UEFI firmware. It sounds suspect, but looking back at early AM4 boards, I don't recall any with either 256 Mb chips or striped 128 Mb chips, so maybe it wasn't simply due to the significant jump in price for 256 Mb chips over 128 Mb ones.
  • Redstorm - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link

    Likewise, looking to replace my aging 7 year old HTPC with a mATX B550 and a Ryzen 4700G but radio silence from AMD on releasing compatiable APU's for the B550's, We now have the long overdue Budget motherboards but no APU's. Dissapointed.
  • alufan - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link

    I understand the frustration however if your buying a Budget Board then surely a budget CPU is the best fit, also new APUs are inbound according to all the rumours, meanwhile your older APU will fit just fine I believe, I expect the new APUs will have Navi cores as per the Xbox and PS5 but of course they probably cannot be released until the new Navi cards and consoles are out, think about it though what a sea chamge folks are now waiting eagerly for a new release from AMD because they know it will kick ass not close the gap to Intel, its a good time to be a customer!
  • Gigaplex - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link

    Older APUs aren't supported on B550
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link

    I think you forgot something... :-)

    Fortunately, this component is a unique motherboard among B550 and well worth reading up on [add link].
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link

    Interesting that the GIGABYTE B550 Vision D board's Type-C ports don't have the Thunderbolt logo next to them. I wonder if Intel won't all the logo to be use on AMD systems.
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link

    *allow
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link

    "Although on paper, there isn't much difference between B450 and B550 with slightly more SATA available due to the removable of eSATA support, both remain PCIe 3.0 bound."

    The B450 only had PCIe 2.0 lanes. Huge difference from the B550 IMO
  • Lucky Stripes 99 - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link

    Agreed. That's going to make a huge difference for boards with secondary or tertiary M.2 or U.2 ports that hangs off the chipset. That goes double if they only get 2 PCIe lanes instead of the full 4.
  • a5cent - Friday, June 19, 2020 - link

    Yup, exactly what I thought.

    Equally "BIG" is that B550 finally has more PCIe lanes, so adding more NVMe drives doesn't require downgrading other ports like it always did on B450.

    B450 was a firmware upgrade for the budget B350 chipset. B550 is the first time this tier of AMD chipset doesn't suck.

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