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 MPG B550 Gaming Edge Wifi
Moving a step down MSI's B550 models, we come to the MSI MPG B550 Gaming Edge Wifi which opts for a design consistent with its MPG series. Focusing its attention at gamers, the B550 Gaming Edge Wifi includes a near-identical feature set to the more expensive B550 Gaming Carbon Wifi with two M.2 slots, a Realtek ALC1200 HD audio codec, an Intel Wi-Fi 6 interface and a Realtek 2.5 Gbe Ethernet controller.
The MSI MPG B550 Gaming Edge Wifi is an ATX motherboard with a simplistic primarily black aesthetic with silver accents on the heatsinks, with integrated RGB LEDs within the chipset heatsink. Dominating the lower portion of the board is the expansion slots which consists of a single full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, a full-length PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, and two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. For storage, the B550 Gaming Edge Wifi includes two M.2 slots with the top slot operating at PCIe 4.0 x4, and the second slot limited to PCIe 3.0 x4, while six SATA ports are present which support RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. MSI includes official QVL support for DDR4-5100 memory and allows users to install up to 128 GB of system memory across four memory slots.
Looking at the rear panel, the B550 Gaming Edge Wifi includes one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, one USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports. For networking, it is using a Realtek RTL8125B 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller and Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 pairing, while the onboard audio which consists of five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output are controlled by a Realtek ALC1200 HD audio codec. Users looking to use legacy peripherals will find a single PS/2 combo keyboard and mouse port, while Ryzen APU's are supported and a pair of video outputs are present including an HDMI and DisplayPort 1.4. Finishing off the rear panel is a small BIOS Flashback button.
The MSI MPG B550 Gaming Edge Wifi has an MSRP of $190 and represents its mid-range AM4 series aimed at gamers. MSI has included some premium components including a Realtek RTL8125B 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller, with an assisting Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 interface and offers users with support for BT 5.0 devices. From the storage, only the top PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot includes a heatsink, and looking at the who B550 product stack across multiple vendors, it seems to lose out a little in terms of overall features compared to some. An example of this comes via the use of a slightly lower grade Realtek ALC1200 HD audio codec.
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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.