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 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ax
The budget chipsets are often a good place to find the smaller mini-ITX based motherboards, because in those small form factors, users are unlikely to be pushing the frequency limits of their processors, and something using less power and is more compact often benefits the design. This this case the B550 PG-ITX/ac seems to be a more mid-range platform, with a rear IO cover as well as a combination M.2 and chipset heatsink at this size.
There are three 4-pin fan headers on this motherboard total, often a minimum for these sorts of systems, and they are equally placed around the board. There are RGB LEDs on the edge of the board at the bottom, as well as a pair of RGB LED headers at the top for anyone who wants to add some flash. As with most designs of this size, there are only two DDR4 memory slots.
On the right hand side we get a 24-pin ATX power connector, four SATA ports in a standard configuration (this is good, normally they are sticking out of the motherboard on mITX), a USB 3.0 header, a USB 2.0 header, a front panel header, and a Type-C header.
The PCIe 4.0 x16 slot is reinforced, and the PCIe 4.0 x4 slot is just above this, sharing the heatsink with the chipset. There is another PCIe 3.0 x2 M.2 slot on the rear of the motherboard. Just to the left of the chipset is the ALC1220 audio, although there isn’t much more room to offer an improved audio scenario.
On the rear panel we have the Intel I225-V 2.5 gigabit Ethernet port, a Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, a Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, DisplayPort, HDMI, four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, the audio jacks, and antenna for the Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 module.
Truth be told, with these features, users will be hard pressed to tell the difference between most X570 mini-ITX motherboards and this motherboard.
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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.