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 Prime B550-Plus
The Prime line of motherboards now sits as ASUS’ budget line, as an entry point into the market. The focus of Prime is on a simple polished aesthetic, which is why we’re going to see a good amount of polished metal designs, and in the case of the ASUS Prime B550-Plus, the white lines on the motherboard this time go from top right to bottom left.
It’s good to see we still have multiple power delivery heatsinks here, even if they’re not connected by a heatpipe, but the design across the PCB carries over across the heatsink in order to keep the continuity. The CPU is powered by a single 8-pin to the top left, and the socket has access to four 4-pin headers within easy reach.
The memory slots are again single sided latch designs, despite the main PCIe slot being further way than usual. On the right hand side of the board is a 24-pin ATX power connector, a USB 3.0 header, and six SATA ports.
For the PCIe layout, at the top is the PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, without a heatsink cover. Next is the PCIe 4.0 x16 full-length slot, with additional reinforcement. The board also has a full-length PCIe 3.0 x4 slot from the chipset, and below the chipset heatsink is a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot, also without a heatsink.
ASUS’ Prime boards use ALC887 audio codecs rather than the S1200A custom ones, but here we get some PCB separation in built in LEDs as well. Along the bottom of the board there is a Thunderbolt header, a COM header, RGB LED headers, a Clear CMOS header, a thermocouple header, two additional 4-pin fan headers, and two USB 2.0 headers.
On the rear panel there is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, a gigabit Ethernet port (Realtek RTL8111H), four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a DisplayPort, a HDMI video output, two USB 2.0 ports, and the audio jacks.
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Ghan - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Right now, it seems more like B for Backordered. They may be priced a bit high, but the demand still seems to be there.yannigr2 - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
This is a great article but it needs a follow up with a table for every motherboard explaining how they use the PCIe lanes in conjunction with M2 and SATA slots. It seems that motherboard makers are totally f up(sorry for the expression) the more reasonably priced models in that area.romrunning - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Does anyone know if the boards that have the Intel i225-V are shipping with the fixed hardware (v2)?R3MF - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
+1mooninite - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Wow, another broken Intel NIC? I wish motherboards would stop using Intel NICs.mooninite - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
After Googling it looks like v2 is not fixed either... a v3 is coming out. Time to buy Realtek.romrunning - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
Which is hilarious - I remember when Realtek was the worst when it came to NICs, and Intel/3Com was the standard. :)WaltC - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
Yes, indeed...;) My x570 Master has an Intel gigabit & a realtek 2.5gb. It's amusing because my interface is an EWAN that tops out at 1Gb, but I thought I'd try the realtek just to see and then I forgot about it...;)...Seems every bit as stable as the Intel--still on it, lol...;) Six of one, half-dozen of another.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Thanks Ian and Gavin! One question, related to a likely use case for B550 mini ITX or mATX Boards: is it true that AMD will, at least initially, limit Ryzen 4000 APUs to OEMs? If that is so, I am definitely not interested in a B550 board in those form factors, and I don't think I am alone here. An answer is appreciated - thanks!mrvco - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
I'm just here for the Next mini-ITX boards. I'm liking the Aorus Pro AX quite a bit.