The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on June 16, 2020 11:00 AM ESTASRock B550 PG Velocitá
The new Velocitá branding from ASRock, as started on Z490, is an attempt to define a high-end motherboard based on speed, but also style, hence the name ‘Velocitá’. In previous incarnations, ASRock motherboards would often show pictures of high performance sports cars that eerily looked very close to the popular Lamborghini of the day, but those boards were focused on overclocking. This time Velocitá is more about the gaming, hence it falls under the Phantom Gaming family.
The PG Velocitá is a relatively clean board to look at, with the main style focused on a 45-degree downward slope from left to right, and a number of jagged edges on decals around the motherboard. As we can see, there is also some element of RGB here, on the chipset heatsink and on top of the rear panel. There is also a pair of onboard RGB headers at different ends of the board.
The power delivery heatsinks in the Velocitá are connected via a heatpipe, hiding a 12+2 phase design indicative of which market ASRock wants to push this product. Powering the CPU is an 8-pin and a 4-pin, while the socket area has access to five 4-pin fan headers within easy reach.
Down the right side of the motherboard is a Type-C front header, a USB 3.0 front header, six SATA ports from the chipset, and a two digit debug. Along the bottom are more fan headers, two USB 2.0 headers, power/reset buttons, and a front panel connector.
For the PCIe layout, the top full-length slot is a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot from the CPU, while the second full-length slot is a PCIe 3.0 x4 from the chipset. Surprisingly both of these have additional reinforcement. There is also a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot above the top PCIe slot for the main M.2 drive, and ASRock puts another PCIe 3.0 x2 M.2 slot on the bottom of the motherboard, and this heatsink is connected to the chipset heatsink.
The audio on the right of the motherboard is an enhanced Realtek ALC1220 design, featuring an NE5532 amp.
The rear panel gives the user a HDMI port, a combination PS/2 port, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, a Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, a Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, a Realtek RTL8125BG 2.5 gigabit Ethernet port, space for an add-in Wi-Fi antenna output, 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.