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 ROG Strix B550-F Gaming + Wi-Fi
The B550-F Gaming is a cheaper variant of the B550-E Gaming – significantly cheaper in fact, almost $90 if we consider the non-Wi-Fi version of the B550-F ($190). For that cost difference, the PCIe configuration is a simple PCIe 4.0 x16 rather than a bifurcated design, we lose a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port on the rear panel, and it uses 12 phases for the CPU rather than 14. There’s still the same 2.5 gigabit Ethernet, still the same SupremeFX audio with dual amps. It just goes to show how much adding bifurcation to the B550-E ($280) ends up on the final cost of the board.
The difference between the B550-F ($190) and B550-F Wi-Fi ($210) is $20, with the only difference being the use of the ASUS AX200 CNVi module and bundled antenna.
As mentioned, this board has a 12+2 phase design, with the power delivery heatsinks coming in two parts without a connecting heatpipe. The heatsink on the left is part of the rear panel cover, which has additional LEDs inside. The CPU is powered through an 8-pin and 4-pin, and the socket has four 4-pin fan headers within easy reach.
The board uses single sided latch memory slots, and to the right of these we get the 24-pin ATX power connector and the USB 3.0 header. Below this is a set of 6 SATA ports.
On the PCIe front, we start with a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot which comes with its own heatsink, followed by the PCIe 4.0 x16 slot from the CPU that has additional reinforcement. The chipset heatsink is to the right, which sort of connects to the bottom M.2 slot, which is a PCIe 3.0 x4 design from the chipset. The final full-length PCIe slot is a PCIe 3.0 x4 from the chipset.
The audio on the board is ASUS’ custom S1200A audio codec, with SupremeFX trimmings and dual amps. Along the bottom of the board we have a Thunderbolt header, two RGB LED headers, a Clear CMOS header, a thermocouple header, two 4-pin fan headers, and two USB 2.0 headers.
On the rear IO there is a clear CMOS button, two USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, a Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, a 2.5 gigabit Ethernet port (Intel I225-V), a DisplayPort, an HDMI video output, Wi-Fi antenna (on the Wi-Fi version), and audio jacks.
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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 B550DigitalFreak - 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
*allowDigitalFreak - 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.