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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
101 Comments
View All Comments
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.