Hot take: B550 is DOA for enthusiasts. Your thoughts?

[WhitetailAni]

B550 is a great chipset, it just doesn't have the features that I need (SLI support, at least 8 SATA ports), which X570 does. The X570-E in particular checks all the boxes.
For a regular build, a decent B550 build is perfect.

 

[king of swag187]

SLI is dead anyways, 8 Sata ports can easily be fixed with a HBA or Sata PCIE card, which is basically what most X570 boards use anyways but onboard

 

[WhitetailAni]

SLI is dead anyways, 8 Sata ports can easily be fixed with a HBA or Sata PCIE card, which is basically what most X570 boards use anyways but onboard

The only problem is when you don't have spare PCIe slots (like me).

 

[freeagent]

I like my B550, it rips.. Another M.2 wouldnt be bad though..

 

[Owe]

B550-A pro

This board should be the go to reference point for any AM4 build

not sure I would agree with that, msi is falling from grace. Seems like if you were using full atx it would just be better to run X570, more options/peripherals, better power phases and mid to full atx doesnt really limit your internal space so cooling isn't an issue. I think B550 has its niche with the small form factors over anything else, with the commonality of the 90A chokes on the SFF boards.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

not sure I would agree with that, msi is falling from grace

In what sense? Gigabyte boards are often full of half broken features in BIOS, asrock is even worse and doesn't give you good VRMs. Asus is reasonably reliable but usually overpriced, and MSI basically always gives you a good balance at a decent price. It's a 2 horse race between MSI and Asus imho.

The VRMs don't matter at all once you get to the level of the B550-A Pro or the 8 phase DrMOS setups, this is for zen2 and zen3, not comet and rocket lake or cascade lake... You'll be hard pressed to find any sustainable way to push more than 150 amps or so into the CPUs.

 

[Gmr_Chick]

In what sense? Gigabyte boards are often full of half broken features in BIOS, asrock is even worse and doesn't give you good VRMs. Asus is reasonably reliable but usually overpriced, and MSI basically always gives you a good balance at a decent price. It's a 2 horse race between MSI and Asus imho.

The VRMs don't matter at all once you get to the level of the B550-A Pro or the 8 phase DrMOS setups, this is for zen2 and zen3, not comet and rocket lake or cascade lake... You'll be hard pressed to find any sustainable way to push more than 150 amps or so into the CPUs.

I'd argue and say that there's no winner in the category - Asus isn't better than MSI; ASRock is no worse than Gigabyte, etc -- though I will say ASRock's current and past Z490 boards are and were atrocious save for their higher-end offerings (PG Velocita, Taichi, etc.) and that's inexcusable, but that's for another discussion. Fact is, ALL of the board makers have some good boards, some bad boards, and some straight up ugly (as in the "I wouldn't trust that thing to run anything higher than a dual core" sense) boards. None of them are any better than each other.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

With giga/asrock it's mostly half arsed bios "features" and stuff like that, update to newer bios and something is fixed and something else breaks. I'm not talking at all about overall featureset/price comparison.

If it was a mere featureset/price comparison again the B550-A pro takes the cake unless you for whatever ungodly reason find it necessary to run multiple PCIe 4.0 drives (sorry if it's offensive to you but it's really pointless, the difference between nvme 3.0 and SATA is already marginal in practice).

Asus and particularly MSI I have found to have very consistent validation on the BIOS/reliability side, more than half of their motherboard lineups are really pointless fluff, either overpriced copies of boards lower down in the lineup or straight up dropping good features from cheaper boards. However, those boards are relatively easy to avoid just by doing your research when buying and when you pick from their boards you have to worry much less about random (non-beta) BIOS releases bricking your Taichi or breaking sleep functions... Yes you can USB flashback and whatever but why does one of those BIOSes even get onto the public releases to start with.

 

[PaulieG]

I had to return 2 x570 motherboards. One with a bad fan, and the other wouldn't run any set of memory I own at XMP. Those boards were replaced with a Asus Strix B550-f and a MSI B550 Carbon. Rock solid boards that clock every bit as good as the X570 boards they replaced and no problems with either board. Then again, I'm currently not worried about PCI-E 4.0 and I don't feel the lack of it makes it "DOA". Just my experience and opinion.

 

[Deleted member 178884]

Don't see how B550 is dead..... It's substantially better on the board side of things here at least - £180 for a B550 Unify X which is cheaper than basically any "decent" X570 board along with a miles better VRM and miles better RAM overclocking amongst other things, I don't see any reason why B550 is bad in any manner other than increased pricing from the useless PCIe 4.0

 

[Owe]

With giga/asrock it's mostly half arsed bios "features" and stuff like that, update to newer bios and something is fixed and something else breaks. I'm not talking at all about overall featureset/price comparison.

If it was a mere featureset/price comparison again the B550-A pro takes the cake unless you for whatever ungodly reason find it necessary to run multiple PCIe 4.0 drives (sorry if it's offensive to you but it's really pointless, the difference between nvme 3.0 and SATA is already marginal in practice).

Asus and particularly MSI I have found to have very consistent validation on the BIOS/reliability side, more than half of their motherboard lineups are really pointless fluff, either overpriced copies of boards lower down in the lineup or straight up dropping good features from cheaper boards. However, those boards are relatively easy to avoid just by doing your research when buying and when you pick from their boards you have to worry much less about random (non-beta) BIOS releases bricking your Taichi or breaking sleep functions... Yes you can USB flashback and whatever but why does one of those BIOSes even get onto the public releases to start with.

I disagree. I used MSI for many years and over the past few I have switched to Gigabyte and Asrock because of the fact their bios is more robust. I have over 23 years as an IT professional and half of that is hardware specific. MSI had the lead for a good while, but like I said, MSI is falling from grace and they don't really seem to care all that much anymore.

 

[Hemmingstamp]

I disagree. I used MSI for many years and over the past few I have switched to Gigabyte and Asrock because of the fact their bios is more robust. I have over 23 years as an IT professional and half of that is hardware specific. MSI had the lead for a good while, but like I said, MSI is falling from grace and they don't really seem to care all that much anymore.

No issues here with my MSI B450 / B550 boards.

 

[Owe]

No issues here with my MSI B450 / B550 boaI actually built

I actually built 2 Zen2 systems back to back one using MSI X570 and one using Gigabyte X570. Not only did the Gigabyte system run smoother, it handled the power requirements better and offered some fine tuning tweaks for the CPU that MSI did not, resulting in slightly higher overclocking ability and a more stable, cooler system. Subsquently I recently built an Asrock B550i and it has very similar functionality to the Gigabyte boards I have worked with, the ONLY issue I have with B550 is the vcore issues that are well known but can be addressed by manually clocking the system.

Respectfully I have to agree to disagree, my experience tells me that while MSI is a quality product they are no longer an industry reference point.

 

[Hemmingstamp]

I actually built 2 Zen2 systems back to back one using MSI X570 and one using Gigabyte X570. Not only did the Gigabyte system run smoother, it handled the power requirements better and offered some fine tuning tweaks for the CPU that MSI did not, resulting in slightly higher overclocking ability and a more stable, cooler system. Subsquently I recently built an Asrock B550i and it has very similar functionality to the Gigabyte boards I have worked with, the ONLY issue I have with B550 is the vcore issues that are well known but can be addressed by manually clocking the system.

Respectfully I have to agree to disagree, my experience tells me that while MSI is a quality product they are no longer an industry reference point.

Whatever works for you my friend. I can only go on what I've used now and in the past.

 

[Owe]

Whatever works for you my friend. I can only go on what I've used now and in the past.

I would agree with that, and 3 years ago I would have been singing the same tune as you. I have been fortunate enough to have been able to build several high end systems over the past couple years. I will say that if you are building mid-range, like Ryzen 5 or even Ryzen 7, it really just boils down to your UI preference. But if you are building on the high end, unless you plan to get the highest priced/capable board MSI offers, there are other, much better options out there.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

Don't see how B550 is dead..... It's substantially better on the board side of things here at least - £180 for a B550 Unify X which is cheaper than basically any "decent" X570 board along with a miles better VRM and miles better RAM overclocking amongst other things, I don't see any reason why B550 is bad in any manner other than increased pricing from the useless PCIe 4.0

180 quid for a unify X is a f-ing steal lol

And yeah 4.0 is hugely overrated, particularly when it comes to storage...

 

[Hemmingstamp]

I would agree with that, and 3 years ago I would have been singing the same tune as you. I have been fortunate enough to have been able to build several high end systems over the past couple years. I will say that if you are building mid-range, like Ryzen 5 or even Ryzen 7, it really just boils down to your UI preference. But if you are building on the high end, unless you plan to get the highest priced/capable board MSI offers, there are other, much better options out there.

I've owned many boards from X this to P that over the years and it's been a tough call recommending any in all fairness.
The only motherboard I would praise was my old EVGA X79 Dark.

Can't say any more than that because I don't build what I used to for 3D stuff and other demanding progs any longer.
I've settled for an ITX system and do light gaming and some video editing. Nothing more.
Like I said it's whatever works for you.