The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on June 16, 2020 11:00 AM ESTGIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX
The GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX is the brands premium mini-ITX model, and has a strong feature set for an mITX B550 board. Interestingly, the B550I Aorus Pro AX supports up to DDR4-5330 which is impressive, while the larger ATX sized versions support up to DDR4-5200. Some of the boards notable features include two M.2 slots, one PCIe 4.0 x4 on the front. and one PCIe 3.0 x4 on the rear, with a Realtek 2.5 G Ethernet controller and an Intel Wi-Fi 6 interface.
Following a simple black and grey aesthetic, the GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX has a single full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. On the front of the board is a single PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot which is cooled by an amalgamated chipset and M.2 heatsink, while a second M.2 slot is located on the rear which supports PCIe 3.0 x4 drives. There are also four SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. For memory, there are two memory slots with support for up to DDR4-5300, with a maximum capacity of up to 64 GB. The B550I Aorus Pro AX also boasts a direct 8-phase power delivery, with a large heatsink which moulds into the design of the rear panel cover. The power delivery consists of six Intersil ISL99390 90 A power stages for the CPU, and two ISL99390 90 A power stages for the SoC, which is controlled by an Intersil ISL229004 PWM controller.
Looking at what's on the rear panel, there is a pair of video outputs including an HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4, while the three 3.5 mm audio jacks are controlled by a Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec. In regards to USB, there's a single USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, one USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, and four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports. A Realtek RTL8125BG 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller provides wired networking, while an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 interface provides wireless as well as support for BT 5.0 devices. Finishing off the rear panel is a Q-Flash Plus button which allows users to update the firmware at the click of a button.
It feels as though the form factor has limited the board's rear panel USB, but it's still a good array and there are two video outputs for users looking to leverage AMD's Ryzen APUs. If that's not enough USB for users, there is a single USB 3.2 G1 Type-A header which adds two additional ports. while a single USB 2.0 header also adds two ports. It's the quintessential mini-ITX motherboard, with a solid feature set, a capable-looking power delivery, and GIGABYTE has a good record of late delivering a good price to features ratio.
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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.