Gigabyte B550I AORUS Pro AX

[Black Haru]

The B550I AORUS Pro AX from Gigabyte comes with a lot of hardware packed into a small package. Among the features are 2.5 Gb/s Ethernet, WiFi 6, dual M.2 slots, and top-tier 90 A power stages. Let's see just how good this new SFF option from Gigabyte really is!

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[damric]

Ok now that's a good mini-itx board and a good price. Thanks for the review.

 

[zeljans]

It would be nice if you can mention in the reviews if some of these boards allow booting headless (no GPU).
These boards can be useful for small CPU rendering farm and GPU will be extra cost and heat.

 

[RH92]

Decent board BUT pricing is what kills all these B550 itx boards , 40-100 bucks premium over last gen boards is just too much ( 70EUR difference between B450i and B550i Aorus here ) if not ridiculous !

Also i wish manufacturers offered a clear cmos button on B550 itx ( MSI does offer it on Z490 ) instead of the bios flashback button ( ideally both ) . Seriously in most SFF cases it's a HUGE PITA to get to the clear cmos jumper and often you have to disassemble the entire build .

Clear cmos button should be mandatory on ITX imo !

 

[dyonoctis]

Decent board BUT pricing is what kills all these B550 itx boards , 40-100 bucks premium over last gen boards is just too much ( 70EUR difference between B450i and B550i Aorus here ) if not ridiculous !

Also i wish manufacturers offered a clear cmos button on B550 itx ( MSI does offer it on Z490 ) instead of the bios flashback button ( ideally both ) . Seriously in most SFF cases it's a HUGE PITA to get to the clear cmos jumper and often you have to disassemble the entire build .

Clear cmos button should be mandatory on ITX imo !

Considering the context, those price aren't that bad. Some of those boards are already out of stock, or not available until 7/15 days in some french online shop.
And that board is definitely more premium in build quality and feature than it's B450 cousin.

 

[Caring1]

It would be nice if you can mention in the reviews if some of these boards allow booting headless (no GPU).
These boards can be useful for small CPU rendering farm and GPU will be extra cost and heat.

The back panel is usually a clue.

 

[danbert2000]

The sound output is pretty disappointing. No way to get surround sound out of the board, so you're going to have to rely on either the iGPU HDMI out or discrete GPU HDMI out. This is more of a problem on ITX because if you need an optical out, you can't really install a PCIe sound card. I suppose USB sound card is an option.

 

[Condelio]

looks like a nice board to have! opinions compared to other b550 itx boards? wich one to get?

 

[bim27142]

The sound output is pretty disappointing. No way to get surround sound out of the board, so you're going to have to rely on either the iGPU HDMI out or discrete GPU HDMI out. This is more of a problem on ITX because if you need an optical out, you can't really install a PCIe sound card. I suppose USB sound card is an option.

The MSI one does seem to have an optical out (which I also like/use).

On another note, I really hope reviewers will also mention the audio software functionality. If it's just the usual Realtek then OK, fine, we know what to expect. What I am very curious with is the ASUS ROG Strix B550-I Gaming on how good their audio software. I would expect it's not the usual Realtek.

Right now, I am still pretty happy with Creative X-Fi MB3... really does improve an ITX board's audio quality without installing any other audio hardware.

 

[dyonoctis]

The MSI one does seem to have an optical out (which I also like/use).

On another note, I really hope reviewers will also mention the audio software functionality. If it's just the usual Realtek then OK, fine, we know what to expect. What I am very curious with is the ASUS ROG Strix B550-I Gaming on how good their audio software. I would expect it's not the usual Realtek.

Right now, I am still pretty happy with Creative X-Fi MB3... really does improve an ITX board's audio quality without installing any other audio hardware.

asus supreme FX is basically a reskinned/tweaked realtek panel :

 

[RH92]

Considering the context, those price aren't that bad. Some of those boards are already out of stock, or not available until 7/15 days in some french online shop.
And that board is definitely more premium in build quality and feature than it's B450 cousin.

That's not how it works !

More premium build quality and features are expected from generation to generation , B450 I Aorus offered better features and build quality over AB350N yet both boards had same price , this applies to other brands aswell . The only thing you can argue about is PCIe 4.0 lane , ok i could had understood 10 bucks premium for that ( i doubt it cost them that much but still ) but 40 - 100 bucks premium ? Nah that's just board manufacturers being greedy .

So i don't know about the context but what i do know is B550 is hella late and on top of that hella expensive which is not what it was supposed to be !

 

[dyonoctis]

That's not how it works !

More premium build quality and features are expected from generation to generation , B450 I Aorus offered better features and build quality over AB350N yet both boards had same price , this applies to other brands aswell . The only thing you can argue about is PCIe 4.0 lane , ok i could had understood 10 bucks premium for that ( i doubt it cost them that much but still ) but 40 - 100 bucks premium ? Nah that's just board manufacturers being greedy .

So i don't know about the context but what i do know is B550 is hella late and on top of that hella expensive which is not what it was supposed to be !

The context is the virus who's making shipphing and manufacturing products across the world harder. To this day webcams are out of stock where I live.
The price going up isn't just from gigabyte, It's gotten more expensive everywhere, if you think that this gigabyte board is too much, wait to see what Asus is going to pull.

The Asrock that you are seeing at 169€ doesn't get 2.5Gb lan, it's using a realtek 887 instead of a 1220, Wifi AC instead of AX and bluetooth 4.2 instead of 5.0 and only get one M.2 slot. So, yhea there is something going on that's jacking up the price of B550.

For 40 € more than that asrock, gigabyte is giving you 2.5g lan, a Qflash function, 2 M.2 ports, Wifi AX with bluetooth 5.0, realtek alc1220, and a metal backplate.

 

[RH92]

The context is the virus who's making shipphing and manufacturing products across the world harder. To this day webcams are out of stock where I live.
The price going up isn't just from gigabyte, It's gotten more expensive everywhere, if you think that this gigabyte board is too much, wait to see what Asus is going to pull.

The Asrock that you are seeing at 169€ doesn't get 2.5Gb lan, it's using a realtek 887 instead of a 1220, Wifi AC instead of AX and bluetooth 4.2 instead of 5.0 and only get one M.2 slot. So, yhea there is something going on that's jacking up the price of B550.

For 40 € more than that asrock, gigabyte is giving you 2.5g lan, a Qflash function, 2 M.2 ports, Wifi AX with bluetooth 5.0, realtek alc1220, and a metal backplate.

First of all saying / implying that the virus is responsible for that is blatantly false , this is what manufacturers want you to believe and visibly ( sadly ) peoples are falling for it . Indeed this is not an issue where lack of stock is gouging the price , most if not all B550 ITX boards are selling for MSRP price ( in your image prices are in EUR so as per usual a tad more expensive than MSRP ) so virus has nothing to do with those prices !

Secondly if you want to compare differences between B450 and B550 you don't compare boards from different manufacturers and different segments , especially not when you are using the most expensive B450 as an example . Here is a more a proper way of comparing things :

As i said previously nothing can justify such a price difference .... other than greedy manufacturer behavior that is .

 

[dyonoctis]

First of all saying / implying that the virus is responsible for that is blatantly false , this is what manufacturers want you to believe and visibly ( sadly ) peoples are falling for it . Indeed this is not an issue where lack of stock is gouging the price , most if not all B550 ITX boards are selling for MSRP price ( in your image prices are in EUR so as per usual a tad more expensive than MSRP ) so virus has nothing to do with those prices !

View attachment 159488

Secondly if you want to compare differences between B450 and B550 you don't compare boards from different manufacturers and different segments , especially not when you are using the most expensive B450 as an example . Here is a more a proper way of comparing things :

View attachment 159491

View attachment 159492

As i said previously nothing can justify such a price difference .... other than greedy manufacturer behavior that is .

The strix b450i that you are using in your system got a premium of 40 € over my strix b350i from the same merchant. And the only thing that your board got over mine is one HDMI port, and and a last effort support for zen 3. That's way less than the differences between B550 and b450 itx boards. (And that was in january 2018, back when they weren't even competing with b450 that would launch in march)

I wasn't really making a direct comparison with the asus board. I mentionned the ASUS because their B550 are going to be insanely expensive probably around 300 €. Rog strix and Aorus are both premium brand, but asus had a slight lead in the itx segment because of their second m.2 slot on all their itx board, and the I/o used to be more rich. Gigabyte stepped up their game with b550, they got 2 m.2 slots as well, a backplate that the new strix won't have, and their I/O is more rich than the strix b550. That aorus board only "lose" because the strix b550 got 8 phases and a usb-c front panel connector.

The asrock board at 169€ is at what you would have considered a decent price, but it's arguably worse than the old b450 from asrock (besides the pcie 4.0) while being roughly 30€ more expensive, and it doesn't bear the name fatality or phantom gaming, so it's not even the same segment, the true replacement is going to be above 200€ as well. Asrock never had such a low end Bxx itx board before, They added a new segment just for this gen.

My point was to show that there is a general increase in price, that gigabyte isn't alone, and even when a board is sold at a "fair" price, there is a lot of compromise being made.

You could argue that those boards are not priced compared to the old b450, but rather their X570 options. Because the latter was so expensive, the former had to follow the trend. And compared to x570, well it's hard to find a reason to get a x570 board anymore, unless you actually need all those pcie lanes.

 

[Win_Wiz]

I purchased this board mainly because I like ITX (more room for watercooling in my E-ATX case) and prefer boards with only 2 dimm slots.
But I'm having a hard time matching the memory OC from my old and cheap Asrock ab350 fatality ITX board.
DRAM voltage regulation seems weird. When I set 1.45V in the bios, I get 1.5V -Voltage seem to increase under load.
Attached screenshot from HWinfo64 while running HCI memory test. Is this normal or is something wrong with my board? The BIOS have LLC for CPU and SOC but I can't find LLC for DRAM voltage...

 

[mgutt]

9W in Idle incl GPU?!

 

[BluesFanUK]

Quick question - what's the situation with the m.2/SATA ports - Can you have spinning rust drives connected and one m.2 (either top/bottom)?

I'm sure I read somewhere on the ATX version of this board that the m.2 slot at the bottom also has to be NVME, which makes zero sense.