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 B550M-A + Wi-Fi
One of the trends that motherboard makers are going to have to get in the mood for is putting which brand of Wi-Fi is being used on their Wi-Fi enabled boards. Some vendors still call their hardware AC or AX, which is an easy identification, but because we are in a situation where there’s a mix of Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 modules out there, we should be asking for clarity within the product name. For the ASUS Prime B550M-A Wi-Fi, the added cost of the Wi-Fi 6 module comes to +$15 over the base version, and aside from the Wi-Fi model only supporting HDMI 2.0 rather than 2.1 on the non-Wi-Fi model, the two are identical.
The board uses the similar white stripes as the Prime B550-Plus, although this is a smaller cost down model, so we get smaller heatsinks and a few different design features here. The CPU has an 8-pin power connector to the top left, and the socket has access to three 4-pin fan headers within easy reach. Above the two fan headers above the socket is an RGB header. On the right hand side of the motherboard there are four memory slots, with single side latches, along with a 24-pin ATX connector and a USB 3.0 header. Like the Prime B550-Plus, the SATA ports are located on the bottom of the board.
In the PCIe area, ASUS has the standard arrangement of a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot followed by a PCIe 4.0 x16 main full-length slot, however the full-length slot doesn’t have additional reinforcement here. There is no secondary full-length slot from the chipset, although there is a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot for a second storage device.
On the far left, the audio subsystem is a slightly upgraded ALC887 arrangement, and along the bottom of the board we have a COM header, more RGB LED headers, another 4-pin fan header, two USB headers, and the SATA ports.
For the rear panel we get a combination PS/2 port, four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, an analog D-Sub video output, a DVI-D video output, a HDMI video output, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, an AX200 Wi-Fi module (for the Wi-Fi version), a gigabit Ethernet port (Realtek RTL8111H), and the audio jacks.
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Kougar - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Most of these boards are a serious VRM upgrade over the B450 boards. If I was buying Ryzen right now I'd easily go B550 over X570.So, only the ASUS boards offer bios flashback? Seems like a cheaper, just as userful version of dual BIOS anyway.
Brane2 - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Finally ONE mini-ITX board with 3-monitor output.Gigaplex - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Colour me disappointed. I was hoping to do a mATX file server build using an APU. No support for existing APUs, no ETA on when consumers can buy the newer APUs, and most of these boards only have 4 SATA ports.I really don't want to have to buy a crappy NVIDIA 710 just to get it running.
mm0zct - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
If you're booting Linux, you might be able to get away with either a good old fashioned serial cable (a lot of boards still have a serial port header) or a USB-HDMI/VGA dongle, since these are supported by the mainline kernel. The main issue might jus tbe getting the BIOS to boot your install media, but a serial port might work still here.You could also just borrow a graphics card from any other system you own to do the initial install, and then let it run headlessly once it's up and running.
Gigaplex - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
I am booting Linux, and have tried completely headless in the past. It's not really worth the trouble (especially if I need to quickly diagnose issues), I'd rather just buy the crappy GPU.IBM760XL - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
I'm probably missing something, but what's the point of including HDMI/DP/DVI outputs if the boards don't support APUs? Aren't you going to need to use the output on your dGPU anyway?I appreciate the summaries on the last page, but wish it could be enhanced a bit. E.g. what's the cheapest board with 2.5G Ethernet? What are the cheapest boards in general? I probably wouldn't go with the cheapest one, but given the prices on a lot of these, it's likely I would choose one of the less expensive ones.
Gigaplex - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
They will support the Zen 2 APUs, which aren't out yet.IBM760XL - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
So checking my local store's inventory, they have 25 B550 boards in stock, of all varieties, but are completely sold out of both B450 and X570 (there are a few cheap A320 boards available as well, and nine TRX40 boards that start at $450).Something tells me Ryzen 3000 chips have been selling quicker than the motherboard manufacturers can keep up, and maybe that's part of the reason B550 prices are starting out high. If they're selling out, it makes sense for them to start with a higher MSRP, which they can always lower if demand falls.
Unfortunately for AMD, if B450 doesn't come back in stock, that's going to hurt Ryzen 3000 sales. Intel mobo inventory is also a bit limited, but about half of the Intel models they offer are available, including some in that $75-$125 range, versus about 15% of the AMD models being in stock currently.
romrunning - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
I think the delays are all shipping-related. It's affecting all computer parts, like power supplies, motherboards, and the like. I wish a bunch of the mfgs would just pool resources to buy dedicated air cargo flights; maybe pooling will mitigate some of the losses on the lower margin items.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
"Most of these boards are a serious VRM upgrade over the B450 boards. If I was buying Ryzen right now I'd easily go B550 over X570."Why does that matter? Overclocking died with Zen, especially Zen 2.
As long as it doesn't throttle, you're good.