B550 release - Motherboard manufacturer are taking VRM seriously!

[Mamonos]

Today at 1300 UTC the embargo regarding B550 was lifted.

 

The motherboards are officially on sale (even if most of them does not appear te be on stock at major retailers right now) and we already have the first VRM cooling measurement.

 

 

Sources:

-der8auer's video featuring two ASUS boards.

-Hardware Unboxed video featuring two Gigabyte and two MSI boards.

-Linus' video for additional knowledge

Screens

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My take

 

Despite Asrock is missing from these videos (and that is significant after they fiasco from the first Z490 tests - but it seems their boards will be released on june 19th) it seems that manufacturer are taking VRM very seriously - perhaps because it is what gets constantly more "benchmarked" nowadays and what the community is looking into but also maybe because seeing recent power and cooling requirements

 

It is nice to have B550 boards performing very nice since most of the boards will still cheaper than X570 (at the price of dropping PCIe 4.0 from the chipset and therefore some I/O flexibility) which for most part was incredibily expensive (our most recommended board was the X570 TUF which offered good value and VRM comparable to boards that were much more expensive - now there are many possibilities to compete with that board.). 

 

At the same time B550 are getting quite expensive especially compared to what B450 was (perhaps because the chipset and the VRM are much better and expensive), a pity considering that they should be targeting "budget" builds.

 

For example the most expensive B450 board from the ASUS ROG Strix series was the B450-E priced at approximately $180 while now the least expensive board from the same series is the B550-F priced at approximately $190, with the "equivalent" B550-E now priced at approximately $280. Is a bit of a headache to understand where the market is going since X570 is still technically superior but on the other hand B550 was released so late is also getting a bit expensive and for example ASrock is launching the B550 Taichi.

 

 

 

[Drama Lama]

After the news about intel H series boards with often too weak vrms that’s good news 

[DesolationGod]

the pricing on 550 is quite ridiculous.. when you can get the 570 version for only slightly more or in the case of the taichi the same price... i mean the pricing defeats the entire purpose of using a x50 series board

[porina]

I need to match up the models shown with their price points. The question for me is, are there great boards at the lower end of the price scale?

[Void Master]

As if they are opening up room for A520. 

They could be repositioning their chipsets.

X570 for the high end, B550 for the mid range ,and A520 for the budget market.

Come on AMD the budget market NEEDS A520 motherboards.

[Deli]

Feels like B550 is more mid range orientated. For lower end, B450 will get the job done mostly.

[Mamonos]

35 minutes ago, Void Master said:

As if they are opening up room for A520. 

They could be repositioning their chipsets.

X570 for the high end, B550 for the mid range ,and A520 for the budget market.

Come on AMD the budget market NEEDS A520 motherboards.

Yeah would be ideal but I am not sure about that, for the moment it looks like "X570 is one year old and B550 is the new thing". B550 will hopefully drop in prixes after some time.

[Orangeator]

Considering that I bought the Asus Prime X570-P board for $149.99, I am not interested at all in this launch. All these boards are priced at that or way more... How is that even competitive? Nevertheless the X570-P board has an amazing VRM and great memory support. What do these boards offer that the X570-P does not? Considering some are over $50 more...

[5x5]

I don't know about anyone else but I want a B550 Pro4 personally

[Haro]

2 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

I don't know about anyone else but I want a B550 Pro4 personally

It does look good 

The price will leave a lot to be desired tho 

[hollyh88]

1 hour ago, Deli said:

Feels like B550 is more mid range orientated. For lower end, B450 will get the job done mostly.

i mean i wouldnt call some of those b550 boards mid range

but the prices do suck yes. however prices should have dropped by the time the ryzen 4000 series will be out.

[hollyh88]

7 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

I don't know about anyone else but I want a B550 Pro4 personally

i personally want the mpg b550 gaming carbon wifi, since i have the b450 gaming pro carbon ac now wouldnt make sense to get a lower "tier" mobo XD 
so hoping it will have dropped in price by the new ryzen 4000 launch. 

i do not want an x570. no reason to get it if you only game. got 2 ssd's + 1 hdd so i dont need all those extra lanes for more nvme ssd's just 1 gen 4 is enough  and you really only need 1 gen 4 gpu slot. soo x570 is useless for gamers. in my opinion of course

[BabaGanuche]

The prices are not that bad if you compare features not product names. If you watched Hardware Unboxed, Steve makes the point that the product branding does imply a price point. The lower end B550 boards are closer to higher end B450 in terms of features, VRM, and build quality.

[GoodBytes]

Looks good but shame that all (I think, it sure look like, please correct me if I am wrong), don't have USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, while Intel boards for their 10th gen CPUs, do have it, some even as a front connector.

[TheDankKoosh]

The pricing has shifted up a bit, basically replacing x470, but I believe the quality has improved in each price bracket as well, for instance the b550m pro4 is the same msrp as the b450 tomahawk but has a bit better vrm configuration from what I've gathered along with similar connectivity, better memory support, and better pcie configuration. B550-A PRO has a very similar vrm to x470 gaming pro carbon for cheaper while including all of the aforementioned quality upgrades and 2.5g LAN. Overall I'm pretty happy with this release since it has plenty of choices to cater towards different needs and price brackets.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

13 hours ago, porina said:

. The question for me is, are there great boards at the lower end of the price scale?

Or even "will there ever be a lower end of the price scale for 500 series motherboards?"

 

[5x5]

7 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Or even "will there ever be a lower end of the price scale for 500 series motherboards?"

 

*A520 noises*

[SpaceGhostC2C]

9 hours ago, BabaGanuche said:

The prices are not that bad if you compare features not product names.

They are, though. If the same money always got us the same features we would all be using 486s and Pentiums these days. 

Just like "10 cores in the consumer platform!" doesn't amount to anything if it costs the same as the former HEDT 10-core CPU, B550 motherboards at X399 prices isn't exactly progress (some of which already happened with X570 prices). 

[Haro]

1 minute ago, 5x5 said:

*A520 noises*

That will be a mess u already know it 

[Nicnac]

Sweet! Finally there are mATX boards with two full size x16 slots for AMD!

[SpaceGhostC2C]

1 minute ago, 5x5 said:

*A520 noises*

Motherboard inflation is real...

The problem is, B550 already is late to the party. When works such A520 be released? Maybe as late as the Zen 2 APUs, I suppose... 

[Haro]

Just now, SpaceGhostC2C said:

The problem is, B550 already is late to the party

Yes but not really 

They were kind of suppose to compete with lga 1200 in general ( even tho intel's platform is far from being competitive ) 

[TheDankKoosh]

2 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

They are, though. If the same money always got us the same features we would all be using 486s and Pentiums these days. 

Just like "10 cores in the consumer platform!" doesn't amount to anything if it costs the same as the former HEDT 10-core CPU, B550 motherboards at X399 prices isn't exactly progress (some of which already happened with X570 prices). 

So what you're saying is that the B550 Aorus Master is a step in the wrong direction even with nearly the exact same feature set as the X570 version for over $100 less? There are great boards are reasonable prices, but you choose to look at the top end of the spectrum even though those boards bring terrific value compared to X570 counterparts.

[paddy-stone]

I might not bother with a new mobo now 'til they have ddr5/ddr6 and USB 4 (some say ddr5 might be skipped as ddr6 is getting close, but who knows). Imagine having 2/4 or more USB 4.0 ports that could in effect carry serious bandwidth from a USB 4 hub with all your peripherals plugged in, leaving the remaining USB 4 ports for data transfer/USB C alt modes.

Now if only they could get something like 10gig ethernet (or more) using USB 4 connections and cables... don't know if that's even possible, but would be cool. Then at least you could have 10 gig+ between your devices, as let's face it, most people don't need high bandwidth going to the router anyway.

[McBUrn]

I'm not that surprised with the pricing given the improvements made on the boards/VRMs compared to B450. Looks like a good move for the "enthusiasts" market where you can get extremely capable board able to handle any CPUs, even overclocked, as well as PCIe Gen4 without paying for some fancy extras very few will actually need (10G ethernet, a zillion USBs/NVMe/expension slots). Those who do need that will go to X570 to get the full package.