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News AMD B550 Motherboards To Launch on 16th June

The ITX Motherboards lineup:

Gigabyte


ASRock


MSI
MPG B550I GAMING EDGE WIFI

Product page:

Asus
ROG Strix B550-I


Product page:
 
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AlexTSG

Master of Cramming
Jun 17, 2018
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I think this will end up being a popular chipset for Mini-ITX.

From what I’ve read, the PCIe 4.0 support is limited to the first PCIe Slot for the graphics card, and the M.2 slot (possibly just one).

However, those limitations are far more of an issue on larger motherboards with multiple PCIe slots. I think if motherboard manufacturers release some models with good VRMs and passive cooling for the chipset, they’ll find there way into many systems on these forums.
 

ermac318

King of Cable Management
Mar 10, 2019
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The B550A chipset (which is a rebadged B450) that was on certain OEM-only boards has the restriction of PCIe 4.0 only on the CPU-connected PCIe and M.2 slot. This was originally going to be the case with some X470/B450 motherboards but AMD disabled this in the AGESA. B550A was basically B450 with that turned back on. I believe we should expect the B550 (non-A) to have something else to add beyond just the PCIe 4.0 support in the CPU-attached lanes, as that already exists.

I certainly hope this will have some great ITX boards. MSI sat out the X570 ITX race, and the other 3 (or 4 if you count the C8I) boards were very expensive or had some serious compromises. To be fair, X570 has very little use on an ITX board, but without a B-series chipset to compliment it there was no other choice. We will be coming up on almost a year with X570 and no budget chipset alternative (aside from older B450 boards which, to be fair, are still quite fine).

I'm also hoping (semi-related) that we'll see some strong ITX LGA1200 Intel boards. When I built my PC last year I made the Intel vs. AMD choice mostly based on motherboard quality and price. Here's hoping for stronger competition.
 

AlexTSG

Master of Cramming
Jun 17, 2018
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If there are B550 boards out with a price of around $200, strong enough VRM to support a Ryzen 9 3950X, passive cooling, and a 20 pin Key A header for front panel USB C, then I'm sold. The lack of 20 pin Key A headers on the X570 boards was surprising, with only the ASUS ROG Crosshair Impact VIII supporting it as far as I'm aware.

I'd also imagine that with Ryzen 4000 Series desktop CPUs due out later this year, support for those should be baked in with only a BIOS/UEFI update necessary.
 
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Legion

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Nov 22, 2017
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If you take a look through those pics, you can see all the big players (including MSI after they skipped an X570 ITX board) have a B550 ITX Motherboard in their line up !!
 

rfarmer

Spatial Philosopher
Jul 7, 2017
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If you take a look through those pics, you can see all the big players (including MSI after they skipped an X570 ITX board) have a B550 ITX Motherboard in their line up !!
That isn't a huge surprise, they skipped X470 also.
 

Mackan

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Jun 2, 2016
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Had my hopes for no fans on the B550 motherboards, but while it may seem a chipset fan is not necessary, it seems they add fans to the VRM or M.2 SSD cooling solution instead.


Mentions the MSI B550I Gaming Edge, and talks about a double ball bearing fan.

And yeah, while the Z490 gets a mini-itx Unify board, we get a "gaming edge". Prepare for colors and RGB?
 

ermac318

King of Cable Management
Mar 10, 2019
655
510
Had my hopes for no fans on the B550 motherboards, but while it may seem a chipset fan is not necessary, it seems they add fans to the VRM or M.2 SSD cooling solution instead.


Mentions the MSI B550I Gaming Edge, and talks about a double ball bearing fan.

And yeah, while the Z490 gets a mini-itx Unify board, we get a "gaming edge". Prepare for colors and RGB?
You can always unplug the fans?
I think it's big news that they say the ITX board will have the USB-C Front Panel connector (Type-E connector). This is huge news, as its the first proper AM4 ITX board with that connector. So for everyone building in all the cases that now have Type-C connectors, you don't have to try to squeeze the Crosshair VIII Impact in your build.
Also wondering if they'll sell the Mortar in the US this time (seems it was only in EU/APAC before).
 

DwarfLord

Average Stuffer
Oct 13, 2018
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If you take a look through those pics, you can see all the big players (including MSI after they skipped an X570 ITX board) have a B550 ITX Motherboard in their line up !!

ASRock even has two of them : the B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX and the B550M-ITX.
If only the B550M-ITX could be a more simple and "professional" one with double LAN (I know I'm dreaming ^^).
 

ermac318

King of Cable Management
Mar 10, 2019
655
510
ASRock published the specs in the meanwhile:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/B550 Phantom Gaming-ITXax/index.asp
https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/B550M-ITXac/index.asp

Unfortunately no dual LAN ports, but surprisingly the ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ax offers a 2.5GBit/s NIC.
Okay so this is really interesting: There's some Renoir info in the Spec sheet for the B550 PG/ITX that I don't know if we've seen before:

AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Matisse)
- 1 x PCI Express x16 Slot (PCIE1: Gen4x16 mode)*
AMD Ryzen series APUs (Renoir)
- 1 x PCI Express x16 Slot (PCIE1: Gen3x16 mode)*

This is very different from the previous APUs: Previous APUs had an 8x PCIe3 limitation because of their integrated GPU. This means that when using a Renoir CPU, you get a full 16x 3.0 slot. So that means no downside to using an APU with a dGPU that is only PCIe3 (like any current NVIDIA card). Neat!

But it also looks like Renoir will only support 3.0 lanes on the M.2 slot as well. Oh well! Still cool info.

EDIT: Also - Renoir will support HDMI 2.1 is seems.
 
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Dunedan

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Sep 14, 2019
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Legion

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Nov 22, 2017
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OP updated with product pages, hopefully some of these boards will go on sale tomorrow ( 16/6)

I wouldn't rush to buy the Asus Strix. Gen One and Two of the Intel I225-V 2.5g NIC has a pretty nasty hardware bug they cannot fix with software updates !!!
It won't be fixed until they release Gen 3 of the NIC (later in the year)
That's why the rest have chosen to release with the Realtek solution.
 
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Mackan

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Jun 2, 2016
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OP updated with product pages, hopefully some of these boards will go on sale tomorrow ( 16/6)

I wouldn't rush to buy the Asus Strix. Gen One and Two of the Intel I225-V 2.5g NIC has a pretty nasty hardware bug they cannot fix with software updates !!!
It won't be fixed until they release Gen 3 of the NIC (later in the year)
That's why the rest have chosen to release with the Realtek solution.

AsRock uses the Intel one as well. I think it's only MSI and Gigabyte that uses the RealTek one.