In the middle of the board, we spot three PCIe slots: two full-length and one single x1 size slot. The primary GPU slot uses Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable PCIe armor for additional shearing protection and retention strength for heavy video cards. The top slot is fed from the CPU and runs at PCIe 4.0 x16 speeds. The second full-length slot is fed from the chipset and runs at PCIe 3.0 x4 speeds. Meanwhile, the x1 slot, also sourced from the chipset, runs at PCIe 3.0 x1 speeds. The only concern I have with this configuration is the x1 slot’s location. If you use anything more than a single-slot video card, it will cover the x1 slot, making it unusable. That said, it’s a MicroATX board, so there isn’t a lot of room and many similarly-sized boards run into the same issue. Supports DDR4 2667/ 2800 /2933 /3000 /3066 /3200 /3466 /3600/ 3733 /3866 /4000 /4133 /4266 /4400+ MHz by A-XMP OC MODE AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Vermeer) support DDR4 4533+(OC) / 4466(OC) / 4400(OC) / 4333(OC) / 4266(OC) / 4200(OC) / 4133(OC) / 4000(OC) / 3866(OC) / 3800(OC) / 3733(OC) / 3600(OC) / 3466(OC) / 3200 / 2933 / 2667 / 2400 / 2133 ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered memory * Moving down to the bottom third, the audio section on the left is in plain sight, not using any shrouds or faraday cages for the Realtek ALC1200 codec. We also see four gold Nippon audio capacitors. We don’t find any fancy op amps or the like here. However, the audio solution should still be fine for most users. AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Matisse) support DDR4 4533+(OC) / 4466(OC) / 4400(OC) / 4333(OC) / 4266(OC) / 4200(OC) / 4133(OC) / 4000(OC) / 3866(OC) / 3800(OC) / 3733(OC) / 3600(OC) / 3466(OC) / 3200 / 2933 / 2667 / 2400 / 2133 ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered memory *

AMD Ryzen series APUs (Picasso) support DDR4 3333+(OC) / 3200(OC) / 2933 / 2667 / 2400 / 2133 non-ECC, un-buffered memory * If you bought a Ryzen 5 3600 a year ago, there's a real possibility that you might want to buy a Zen 3 part with more cores, but we guess that's a story for later in the year.This was a very lazy review. All of the cons really are not cons for 99% of the people building a mATX build. What we may be witnessing here is increased demand for Ryzen products and board makers want to get in on the action. Ryzen has made it through that period of uncertainty since the first generation, as a result B450 sales were significantly higher than that of B350, which we're told by all accounts did very well. Supports AMD Ryzen™ 5000 & 3000 Series desktop processors (not compatible with AMD Ryzen™ 5 3400G & Ryzen™ 3 3200G) and AMD Ryzen™ 4000 G-Series desktop processors For recording temperatures we're using a digital thermometer with K-Type thermocouples and we'll be reporting the peak rear PCB temperature. We're also not reporting Delta T over Ambient, instead we maintain a room temperature of 21 degrees as this is by far the most accurate way to conduct this testing. Monitoring the ambient temperature is a thermocouple positioned next to the test system.

And yes, I do agree with the 2.5G ethernet. These days many people are looking for more than your typical 1Gb networking. Still, the board looks pretty solid otherwise. kaalus said:Why would you want more than 4 SATA ports? 4 is too many already, 2 would be perfectly fine. SATA is legacy anyway, and most people should have their harddrives in a server, not in their desktop. No WiFI? That's a plus. And who needs so many USB ports?

Build on a Solid Foundation

AMD Ryzen series APUs (Cezanne) support DDR4 4733+(OC) / 4666(OC) / 4600(OC) / 4533(OC) / 4466(OC) / 4400(OC) / 4333(OC) / 4266(OC) / 4200(OC) / 4133(OC) / 4000(OC) / 3866(OC) / 3800(OC) / 3733(OC) / 3600(OC) / 3466(OC) / 3200 / 2933 / 2667 / 2400 / 2133 ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered memory *

The best result we've recorded to date of any AM4 motherboard was the Aorus Xtreme at 55C while the worst result technically comes from the MSI MPG X570 Gaming Edge WiFi which had to throttle the CPU during this test for its own survival. The X570-A Pro ran hotter, but avoided throttling in this test. Rather than installing the boards in an ATX case like we often do, we're using an open air-test bed with no direct air-flow. However, through further testing we've found that the results in a poorly ventilated case are actually worse, so we guess this isn't an absolute worst case scenario, no pun intended. Placing load on the CPU is Blender running the Gooseberry workload and the temperatures are reported after an hour.AMD B550 AORUS Motherboard with 10+2 Phases Digital Twin Power Design, Enlarged Surface Heatsinks, PCIe 4.0 x16 Slot, Dual PCIe 4.0/3.0 x4 M.2 with One Thermal Guard, 2.5GbE LAN, RGB FUSION 2.0, Q-Flash Plus At long last AMD more budget-oriented B550 motherboards will finally go on sale. There's been plenty of talk about the B550 chipset and all the supporting boards for weeks, and we're now able to share our results with you. On hand for testing today we have the MSI B550M Mortar, MSI B550 Tomahawk, Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro and Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master.