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 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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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.