The GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX Motherboard Review: All The Small Things
by Gavin Bonshor on December 7, 2020 10:00 AM ESTConclusion
As AMD has finally launched its Ryzen 5000 series processors, which we reviewed in early November 2020, it blew the competition away with its newly designed core based on the 7 nm manufacturing process. Not only has AMD taken the single-threaded performance crown from Intel comfortably, but there could still be uplifts in the future. Despite using the Ryzen 7 3700X in our AM4 testing purely for consistency, the Ryzen 5000 series is supported across various chipsets, including X570 and B550, and A520, with many recent roll-outs of new firmware for B450 and X470 models, albeit without support for PCIe 4.0.
Focusing on the GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX, and GIGABYTE has a pretty competitive offering for the mini-ITX crowd; in a trifecta of ways, including price, performance, and spec. The only PCIe 4.0 limitations to B550 on ITX are those that include two PCIe M.2 slots like this one, with one operating at PCIe 4.0 and the other reverting PCIe 3.0. The CPU drives the full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, and that both NVIDIA and AMD have been consistently pushing users away from multi-card setups, which of course, mini-ITX isn't compatible with. Other storage options include four SATA ports, all with support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays as per AMD specification, and GIGABYTE has done a good job at utilizing space around the board.
The GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX is very well equipped for a mini-ITX board and drops potential space on the rear panel for video outputs, in fact, three including two HDMI and one DisplayPort 1.4 at the expense of USB connectivity. There is still a total of six USB ports on the rear panel, including two USB 3.2 G2 ports (A+C), with four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A too. The rear panel's Q-Flash button also allows users to update to the latest firmware without having a CPU, memory, or GPU installed, which I tried for myself for the review, and it worked flawlessly. A method like this should exist for all boards, in my opinion, especially those that require an older CPU to flash to make it compatible for newer CPUs seen on models such as B450 with Ryzen 5000.
Putting it on our testing suite, the GIGABYTE performs well in most of our system based tests, with good power consumption in long idle, idle, and full-load, with fast booting times in our POST time testing. The DPC latency performance was sufficient but not groundbreaking, but on the whole, in our CPU and gaming tests, the B550I Aorus Pro AX was very competitive in all of our benchmarks.
Regarding overclocking performance, we saw similar performance to other GIGABYTE models, and unfortunately, we still couldn't push our Ryzen 7 3700X beyond 4.3 GHz stable. Touching more on the specifics, the GIGABYTE has excellent levels of VDroop control at default LLC settings, and we saw nothing out of the ordinary. Even the VRM thermal temperatures were well within the expected range, which shows that GIGABYTE's mini-ITX option doesn't just look good, but it can handle its own under testing conditions.
GIGABYTE B550 versus X570 Models, B550I Pro AX Is a No Brainer
Looking beyond the striking similarities in design between the B550I Aorus Pro AX and the X570 I Aorus Pro WIFI, which we reviewed in March 2020, both share a near-identical PCB layout. The benefits of the newer B550I model, though, come through the power delivery, with a solid 8-phase design using the higher-spec Intersil ISL99390 90 A power stages over the 70 A variants the X570 model uses. While one of two PCIe M.2 slots is locked down to PCIe 3.0 x4, GIGABYTE hasn't just improved the board for B550, but it's priced much more competitively, and if users aren't going to utilize the more expensive PCIe 4.0 drives, then B550I offers much better value all-around. Networking is also better on the B550I with a Realtek RTL8125 2.5 GbE port and Intel's AX200 Wi-Fi 6 interface with support for BT 5.0 devices.
To summarize it up, I feel GIGABYTE has improved over its premium X570 mini-ITX model, and the B550 model even outshines it in regards to both specifications and price. The B550I Aorus Pro AX is currently on Amazon for $180, which is much cheaper than the X570 I Aorus Pro WIFI at $213. If a second PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot is necessary, then X570 is the way to go, but with better networking support (2.5 Gb v Gigabit), a better power delivery's hard to look past the B550I Aorus Pro AX. It's the cheapest premium B550 mini-ITX model, and GIGABYTE hits it right out of the park with a solid feature set, competitive performance, and an all-around good showing.
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meacupla - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
yup, that's exactly what happens.The only remaining fix I could think of was replacing the soldered in BIOS chips
star-affinity - Tuesday, December 15, 2020 - link
Just wanted to say that my problems was resolved with a new power supply! So now the Gigabyte motherboard is working fine again, believe it or not. :)duploxxx - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
not to mention cold boot - bios resets - unable to save q-fan profiles etc...I was very impressed by the x370 although it lacked some easy visual design.
The x570 gigabyte is not worth the money, would stay away from it as much as possible.
I also own an Asrock B450 board, a much better bios layout.
Dug - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
Strange. I have Gigabyte going back to p965 with no issue.No issue with my x570 aorus pro wifi like you describe either, like thousands of others.
kkilobyte - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
I - and others - have zero idea on what is triggering the issue. There is clearly something fishy going on with the power distribution on the Aorus X570, but so far, it was not possible to pinpoint the origin of it. ErP, USB load, PSU, DisplayPort, Sleep modes, RAM modules all have been suspected, but none of those elements led to anything conclusive. There is a +20 pages thread on hardforum.com about it. I tried to probe the issue with my scope, but it happens completely randomly; so far, it happened to me 3 times in about 8 months, and last time it happened, I was in a hurry and couldn't test.Doing a CMOS reset through the jumper doesn't solve the issue; it could thus mean that it is not a cmos-ram corruption, but a more fundamental electrical issue. My best bet is that somehow a power spike at shutdown is sometimes high enough to wrongly toggle a signal line that 'locks' one of the components kept alive by the battery.
Finding the solution would require identifying the components that are kept powered by the cmos battery; without precise motherboard schematics, however, that's going to be difficult; even if it gets identified, I don't see how it would be solved without some sort of hardware hacking.
My personal solution is to design an arduino-based circuit that plugs on the battery connector of the motherboard, and allows a 'reset' through a front panel button. It's less than ideal, but that's better than having to open the case and remove my gfx card just to get the battery out.
mkarwin - Tuesday, December 15, 2020 - link
Well if CMOS reset does not fix the issue there's either a failing BIOS chip or circuitry throughout the board's layers... Theoretically one could pinpoint the issue by replacing the BIOS chip...BTW. I honestly wonder why they haven't thought of putting BIOS(es) on microSD cards, some of those smaller ones would be dirt cheap nowadays and capacituous enough to handle modern UEFI BIOSes - easy to remove/replace/reflash, could maybe improve the consumer attitude towards the issue if it is related to BIOS chips...
hansip87 - Monday, December 7, 2020 - link
What i don't understand with AMD mini ITX board is how few are their USB ports available at the back. one of the reasons why i chose going intel route was that there is this cheap Asrock Z490 itx board with 8 USB ports at the back. Sure it;s not the only factor but why can't any of AMD ITX boards do the same?romrunning - Monday, December 7, 2020 - link
Well, you can always just get a plug-in USB hub if you need more. I think the mfgs don't add as many USB ports mostly as a cost-savings.mkarwin - Tuesday, December 15, 2020 - link
Seems quite odd considering they are still asking more ($) for less (size & features)... It's not like they're running out of space on I/O shield, there's no integrated massive cooling openings in most cases, so adding eg. 4 extra even 2.0 USB ports would be more beneficial than having 3 display outputs for the integrated Radeon solutions... I could see a future where more integrated display outputs is beneficial - if they allow adding those server/compute accelerators without display outputs so that they could pass through the display to those board integrated ports. Otherwise, I think maybe 1 HDMI is enough. Especially if you can use said HDMI to pass through audio from the integrated card as well...jeremyshaw - Monday, December 7, 2020 - link
Probably the massive AMD AM4 keep out area. It doesn't really matter for mATX and ATX, but for mITX, every mm^2 matters. But every B550 ITX board is flawed in some way.ASUS hates rear I/O altogether, ASRock ditches the S/PDIF and doesn't have all that many USB ports (still more than ASUS). Gigabyte's never head of USB-C headers, and MSI gets all of that right, but has a proprietary backplate.
X570 came out a year earlier and is worse in many ways. ASUS is pricing their top end board for people without sense, and all of the X570 mITX boards from all other vendors lack the USB-C header. All of them are also 1GbE only, which seems like a waste for such a fast platform. ASRock has TB3, but only one M.2 slot, and very few USB ports.
In the end, I've held off upgrading my old AB350 Fata1ity ITX, since nothing is really appealing w.r.t. upgrading (not to mention almost twice the price!). Ryzen 5000 might force my hand, but I'd still rather not "upgrade" to boards that are very flawed (IMO) vs their Intel counterparts.
On Intel, all is not perfect, but there are more "perfect" boards that don't have these same issues.