The Intel B560 Motherboard Overview: 30+ Budget Models Starting from $75
by Gavin Bonshor on March 29, 2021 7:00 AM ESTASRock B560 Pro4/ac & B560 Pro4
A lot of Intel B560 models are micro-ATX sized, which is a stark contrast compared with Z590, where there are barely any. ASRock does have a couple of ATX sized B560 models including the B560 Pro4/ac and B560 Pro4, with the only difference between both models is the ac version includes an Intel Wi-Fi 5 CNVi. Focusing on the design, the B560M Pro4 pairing includes a grey and black patterned PCB, with silver heatsinks and a small section of integrated RGB LED's located in the bottom right-hand corner.
The ASRock B560M Pro4 ATX motherboard
Located towards the center of the board are two full-length PCIe slots and two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. The top full-length slot operates at PCIe 4.0 x16, while the second slot is electronically locked to PCIe 3.0 x4. ASRock includes four memory slots with support for up to DDR4-4800, with a maximum combined capacity of 128 GB. For storage, both the B560M Pro4/ac and B560M Pro4 include threeM.2 slots, with the top slot operating at PCIe 4.0 x4, one with support for PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA, and the third including support for PCIe 3.0 x2/SATA. The third M.2 slot shares bandwidth with one of the board's six SATA ports, which includes support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays.
ASRock B560M Pro4 rear panel (only difference is Wi-Fi 5 on B560M Pro4/ac)
On the rear panel is four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A and two USB 2.0 ports, with three 3.5 mm audio jacks powered by a Realtek ALC897 HD audio codec. Both models include an Intel I219-V Gigabit Ethernet controller, while the B560M Pro4/ac includes an unspecified Intel Wi-Fi 5 CNVi. Finishing off the rear panel is a pair of video outputs including one HDMI and one DisplayPort, as well as a PS/2 combo port for legacy peripherals.
At the time of writing, ASRock hasn't provided pricing information for the B560M Pro4/ac, although we do know the non-Wi-Fi variant, the B560M Pro4 has an MSRP of $110.
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FriendlySeaCow - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
The MSI MPG B560I Gaming Edge Wi-Fi has been announced and its features fully released, so you can update that page. Incidentally, there's also a typo in the MSI table, where you have "ATX" instead of "ITX" under the Size Column for the B560I.Looks like a really nice board: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MPG-B560I-GAMING-E...
Jorgp2 - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
Why didn't they enable the full 8 sata ports for this chipset, X299 is dead anyway.Linustechtips12#6900xt - Thursday, April 8, 2021 - link
because who uses 8 freaking sata ports at a time, i think the MAX I've ever used is 4Mr Perfect - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
Nice round up. Any chance you'll do something similar for H570? They don't seem to cost much more, but have some additional chipset features.Scour - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
B560 also with 6x SATA, PCIe 4.0 and also on ATX-boards, sound good for me.sheltem - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
According to this Reddit post, the Asrock B560 ITX has pretty good VRM's:https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/lao3ym/z59...
BrokenCrayons - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
Finally some decently priced motherboards are getting attention they deserve! I'm really happy to see and read about hardware in a price segment I would actually buy and use.evilpaul666 - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
The 10/11 series would be so much more interesting if it had ECC support.jrbales@outlook.com - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
I'm in the process of building a new system for my sister. Bought the ASUS Prime B560M-A at a price competitive with the B460 boards. A very nice mATX board that was nice to work with. One observation and one question. I bought the optional Intel WIFI card & antenna kit to use with the WIFI bracket. On the plus side, it works great and I didn't have to run ethernet cable across the room I was building it in. The negative is that the WIFI bracket has to be attached to the motherboard, using really tiny screws from the rear of the board. That probably took the longest thing in the build as I'd have to try to balance the MB, keep the bracket in place over the holes and the card inserted in the slot, while keeping the tiny screws on the screwdriver long enough to screw in. Now for the question. It involves the first M.2 slot, above the GPU. It's PCIE 4.0. According to everything printed by ASUS, if you use a 10th generation CPU, the slot is disabled, leaving only the second M.2 beneath the GPU. I understand the part about needing an 11th gen CPU to get PCIE 4, but shouldn't the first slot support a PCIE 3.0 M.2 SSD? I'm used to these slots being backward compatible and on my AMD X570 board, you can use either PCIE 3 or 4 SSDs in both slots. Does anyone knows if the B56s0 slot 1 is backward compatible?mobilefrenzy - Tuesday, March 30, 2021 - link
M.2 Slot 1 on B560 and Z590 mobos don't work with 10th gen CPUs, as they don't have the additional PCIe lanes to enable them.