MSI B550-A Pro

The last in an interesting B550 product stack from MSI is the brands professional-focused budget model, the B550-A Pro. In recent years, the A-Pro model has been one of MSI’s most basic designs and cheapest with the B450-A Pro costing just $90 at launch. The MSI B550-A Pro builds upon a basic all-black design with some notable inclusions including two M.2 slots, six SATA ports, a Realtek Gigabit Ethernet controller and a Realtek ALC892 HD audio codec.

The MSI B550-A Pro is an all-black ATX sized model which sits as the brands entry-level B550 model. Included in the feature set are two full-length PCIe slots which operate at PCIe 4.0 x16, and PCIe 3.0 x4, with two additional PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. The A-Pro has support for up to DDR4-4400 memory, with a total of four memory slots which allow users to install up to 128 GB. Looking at storage capability, there is a pair of M.2 slots with the top slot operating at PCIe 4.0 x4, and the second slot at PCIe 3.0 x4, with six SATA ports for conventional the installation of conventional SATA devices.

Focusing on the rear panel of the B550-A Pro, MSI includes two USB 3.2 G2 ports including a Type-A and Type-C, with two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A and four USB 2.0 ports. For users looking to pair this model up with a Ryzen APU, there is a pair of video outputs including a DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI output, with a small BIOS Flashback button. A budget-focused Realtek controller pairing including a Realtek RTL811H Gigabit Ethernet controller and Realtek ALC892 are preset, with the latter which spawns five 3.5 mm audio jacks and a S/PDIF optical output on the rear panel.

Out of MSI’s B550 product stack and where pricing seems to be going currently on budget motherboards, the B550-A Pro has an MSRP of $140. If compared directly against the B450-A Pro this replaces, there is a stark difference in price point and feature set, with the only real upgrades in specifications coming through PCIe 4.0 support via the CPU, an extra M.2 slot and through better memory capability. This model above most others paints the discrepancy between what an entry-level board cost 2-years ago compared to what actually one costs currently.

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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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