The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on June 16, 2020 11:00 AM ESTASUS TUF Gaming B550-Plus
In days of old, ASUS’ TUF ‘The Ultimate Force’ motherboards were a byword for rigidity, offering five years warranty over the standard three, and the more premium models were built with full scale motherboard armor and dust covers to survive harsh environments. In recent generations, the TUF brand has been whittled down to a logo and some yellow stripes, and sits below the Strix brand, which itself used to be the budget brand.
For the TUF Gaming B550-Plus, we get an above average motherboard on the specifications. The power delivery heatsink is spread across two sides of the socket, but there isn’t really a rear IO cover of sorts. There is a single 8-pin power socket at the top, and these is where the aesthetic starts – a series of grey lines going from one corner of the motherboard PCB to the other, with some hellow thrown in for TUF.
The socket area has access to four 4-pin fan headers, two above and two below the socket. There are four DRAM slots in alternating colors, each with single side latches despite the first PCIe slot being quite a distance away. On the right hand side of the board there is an RGB header, a 24-pin ATX connector, a USB 3.0 header, and six SATA ports.
For the PCIe area, we start with the PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, which doesn’t have a heatsink (presumably so users can have their own). Underneath is the PCIe 4.0 x16 slot from the CPU. The other full length slot is a PCIe 3.0 x4 from the chipset, which is just above the PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot from the chipset as well. The chipset heatsink isn’t anything substantial, but certainly enough for the job.
At the bottom of the board we have the audio subsystem (S1200A without additional amps), a Thunderbolt header, a COM port, RGB headers, a Clear CMOS header, a thermocouple header, two 4-pin fan headers, and two USB 2.0 headers.
On the rear panel we have a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, a USB Flashback button, a 2.5 gigabit Ethernet port (Realtek RTL8125B), four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a DisplayPort, a HDMI port, two USB 2.0 ports, and the audio jacks.
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Lucky Stripes 99 - Sunday, June 21, 2020 - link
Same here. Both DVI and DP can be converted to VGA using an inexpensive passive dongle. I'd much rather see either of those ports over VGA.Gigaplex - Saturday, August 1, 2020 - link
DVI-I can be converted easily. DVI-D (which most of the modern boards have) need a more complex adapter.iranterres - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
Why so expensive...cybersirf - Friday, June 19, 2020 - link
more expensive, less features. what happened to x2 slots?miss5tability - Saturday, June 20, 2020 - link
whata abiut VRM the biggest issue on b450 MOBOs, i dont see any single word about that ? wtfMem - Saturday, June 20, 2020 - link
I believe you will find Asus use S1220A so not S1200A , it's custom version of ALC1220, when you go by Asus website for their B550 boards.awonglk - Saturday, June 20, 2020 - link
There seems to be no mentions of Thunderbolt 3 header that apparently comes with this motherboard according to Asia’s own website:https://edgeup.asus.com/2020/b550-motherboard-guid...
Does anyone know how or what this connects to on a mITX motherboard?
blakflag - Monday, June 22, 2020 - link
Does "USB 3.2 G2 Type-C" imply Thunderbolt 3 support?dennphill - Friday, June 26, 2020 - link
And here it is a couple of weeks after the 'release' and there are no boards (well, no mATX versions) to buy...unless you want to deal with the scalpers on NewEgg asking $25 to 35 over the regular price - oh, and BTW, they will ship/deliver in mid-July - AND I see no reviews or comparisons other than manufacturers' sites advertising for the B550 boards. The few articles I see are all based on the pre-release data and not from actual delivered, installed and tested MBs. Poor AMD hardware release, as far as I am concerned.dennphill - Friday, June 26, 2020 - link
Oh, and the listing is incomplete with a couple of manufacturer-advertised versions od mATX boards not listed in this article.