The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on June 16, 2020 11:00 AM ESTGIGABYTE B550M Aorus Pro
The GIGABYTE B550M Aorus Pro is a micro-ATX motherboard and is the condensed version of the ATX B550 Aorus Pro model. Following a similar design to its larger counterpart, the B550M Aorus Pro is decked out with black heatsinks on a black PCB, with a silver Aorus falcon logo on the chipset heatsink. It is advertised as featuring a 10+3 phase power delivery, two M.2 slots, and a Realtek ALC1200 HD audio codec.
Despite including a similar aesthetic and sharing the same core naming scheme, the GIGABYTE B550M Aorus Pro is micro-ATX and as such, includes fewer expansion slots. It includes two full-length PCIe slots including a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, and one PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, with a single PCIe 3.0 x1 slot sandwiched in-between. For storage, there are two M.2 slots with the top slot allowing support for PCIe 4.0 x4 drives and comes provided with an M.2 heatsink, while the second slot is controlled by the chipset and can support up to PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs. Also present are four SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. The board includes four memory slots with support for up to DDR4-4733, with up to a maximum capacity of 128 GB.
Underneath the chunky looking power delivery heatsink is a 5+3 phase power delivery which is driven by an Intersil ISL229004 PWM controller with five high-side phases and ten low-side phases, with three high and low-side phases for the SoC.
Included on the rear panel is one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, one USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and four USB 2.0 ports. A Realtek ALC1200 HD audio codec powers the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output, while a Realtek RTL8118 GbE Ethernet controller handles the single RJ45 port. GIGABYTE has included a pair of video outputs for users planning to use Ryzen APUs including a DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI output, while a Q-Flash button finishes off what is a bountiful rear panel for the price.
The GIGABYTE B550M Aorus Pro has an MSRP of $130 which represents good value for money considering the price hike in B550 models over the previous generation B450 models. A Realtek ALC1200 HD audio codec is still favorable and GIGABYTE opts for a Gigabit Ethernet controller which ultimately brings the cost down. The B550M Aorus Pro is one of five micro-ATX models from GIGABYTE’s product stack, which is the most from any vendor for B550 at present.
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althaz - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
Hmm, these seem mostly...pointless? More expensive than B450 by a lot, barely cheaper than the superior X570 boards (which have more PCIe lanes, more USB ports, etc)...these really need to be $50 cheaper across the (mother)board to make sense, IMO.sing_electric - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
It is interesting comparing similar X570 and B550 models within the same brand (or subbrand like Asus ROG or Gigabyte Aorus). It really seems like pricing is VERY close between them.Of course, if the VRMs are comparable, then for 90%+ of users, a X570 and a B550 are basically equivalent. In some cases it's almost like you're giving the user a choice between a newer B550 board with WiFi 6 and an older X570 board with AX but more USB ports or something, for within a few bucks of the same price (if you can find them at MSRP and in stock, which really has been an issue of late.)
jrbales@outlook.com - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
I was looking at the boards on morning of Jun 16th. Very few B550 boards in stock (not too unusual so soon to release) and prices were high, in the range there just a few months ago I could have bought an X570 board. However, X570s were mostly out of stock everywhere I looked, and those in stick were generally pushing $300 USD or more. I suspect either manufacturing has not completely ramped up after COVID-19 in Asia, or that there is still a shipping back-load via ocean freight bearing ships between Asia and North America. Maybe if we ever see a return to a semblance.nce of normal, prices might lower and parts return to stock,
romrunning - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
Shipping is main culprit here - big problem, including extra time spent in customs at ports (like LA in the US).sing_electric - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
Right - In February I picked up an X570 board for ~$30 under MSRP, so equivalent B550 board (same OEM, same 'line') would actually be a few bucks more... but adds a Thunderbolt header, WiFi 6 and 2.5 gig Ethernet (in exchange for PCIe lanes/slots and USB ports, and a 2nd m.2 connector). In the end, I think the X570 was a perfectly good choice on sale.willis936 - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
I love that summary table. I wish it had an entry for “8 or more USB-A ports”. I actively use 15 on my desktop. The fewer PCIe cards and hubs needed, the better imo.GNUminex_l_cowsay - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
Thanks for giving detailed and, hopefully, correct information about the PCIe configurations on these boards. Unfortunately many of the motherboard manufacturers don't give that information, make the information hard to find, give wrong information, or some combination of the above with regards to PCIe configuration.Out of curiosity, what happens when you put a pcie 3.0 x4 ssd in an x2 slot when the ssd's maximum read and write rates don't fully saturate x4? Is it just limited to the ~2GB/s bandwidth of the slot or does the ssd do something worse?
Lucky Stripes 99 - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
Yeah, it will transfer just a bit under 2 GB/s due to overhead. I had this same issue with my H97 board and my Samsung 970, so I opted to purchase a cheap M.2 PCIe 3.0x4 card. HD Tune showed an improvement, but not by much to notice much real world difference.Allan_Hundeboll - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
What about the Gigabyte 550M s2h?It's 12$ cheaper than the ds3h, so I would like to know what gigabyte did to lower the cost.
xenol - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
A complaint I had in previous AMD boards was how prevalent VGA ports were. I'm glad to see they're not so prevalent this time around.