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 B550 Gaming X
Moving away from the Aorus branded models, we go down the product to the GIGABYTE B550 Gaming X which follows a simplistic all-black aesthetic, with some grey patterning on the PCB to add contrast. The main features include a 10+3 phase power delivery, two M.2 slots, a Realtek Gigabit Ethernet controller and a Realtek ALC887 HD audio codec.
The GIGABYTE B550 Gaming X is an ATX sized model with two full-length PCIe slots with the top slot operating at PCIe 4.0 x16, and the bottom slot at PCIe 3.0 x4. For storage, there is a single PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, with a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, and four SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. Up to 128 GB of system memory can be installed across four available memory slots, with memory with speeds of up DDR4-4733 officially supported. Delivering power to the CPU is a single 8-pin 12 V ATX power input, while GIGABYTE advertises the board to feature a 10+3 phase design.
On the rear panel is a single USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, with there USB 3.2 G1 Type-A and two USB 2.0 ports. There is a PS/2 combo keyboard and mouse port for users with legacy peripherals, while a Realtek ALC887 HD audio codec powers the boards three 3.5 mm audio jacks. A Realtek 8111 Gigabit Ethernet controller controls a single RJ45 port, while a handy Q-Flash Plus button is located on the rear to allow users to update the board's firmware easily.
The GIGABYTE B550 Gaming X is targeted towards entry-level gamers looking to harness the power of AMD's 7nm Ryzen processors while offering all the basics expected from a PCIe 4.0 enabled motherboard. This model has an MSRP of $139, which does seem expensive given the use of budget controllers, nor does it include any M.2 heatsinks which would have made it slightly more favorable.
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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.