AMD B550 is finally out here in the wild and I gotta say straight up this is a
weird one of sorts and for a few reasons and we'll go over all those before we
get into this board right here but first of all the delay on B550 versus X570
is huge right it's almost a year later and then we look at the differences at a
chipset level they are sporting some differences which B550 we've got 12
PCIe lanes versus 16 on X570 but on the X570 you've got those chipset lanes
being all peace a 4.0 whereas opposed to the be 550 they're actually four PCI 300
lanes and eight PC 800 lanes though of course the CPU itself gives out 20 PCI
4.0 lanes for for an nvme Drive and then 16 for that top slot before your
graphics card and whatnot so B550 essentially does have PCI 4.0 it's just
not on the chipset so the benefit of this is it does allow the chipset
heatsink to have no fan and it runs a lot cooler when we're testing this B550
right here with a graphics card and an MDOT 2 loaded up over PC a3 it was
giving out really good temperatures so you've got nothing to worry about
from here on in on b550s and chipset heatsink temperatures and worrying about
having a fan on them just a simple heatsink on your b54 motherboard and
you're good to go pretty much just like the b450s out there now in terms of the
chipset pricing this is one thing I kind of don't understand at the moment I've
been asking around everywhere to try and get an idea of how much you're paying
for the actual license with B550 versus X570 versus B450 for example
and from what I can gather I can only really guesstimate these costs where I
think B550 would be somewhere around 40 to 45 dollars and B450 for example
would be somewhere around 20 to 25 dollars and then X570 would be around
50 to $60 so you are getting a discount on the chipset license versus X570 but
that being said continuing through the differences we no longer have as
USB 3.0 ports where we've got up to a max of 8 3.2 parts on X570 then a max
of 2 3.2 and for 3.1 in conjunction to 6 3.1 and two together and then we've got
a maximum of 6 USB 2 ports versus 4 on the X570 so they're given B 550 the max
allowance of 6 but this is the weird thing with the b-52d tied to you've
actually got 11 in total USB 3 ports where the front out you'll get an
additional 3.2 which makes it 3 in total and then you've also got an additional 4
USB 3.1 so that makes it 11 USB 3 ports in total if you hook up your front I oh
so that's the main differences with B550 and X570 but you also get on select
X570 boards support for SLI and also env link where as opposed to b5 do you
just get in this case crossfire support and no NV link or SLI support however
the good news all starts to come together for B550 where there are no
limits on what the manufacturers can do with the vrm and also with that the
overclocked ability where the B550 tied to you with a 3950 X both out of the
box 3.95 gigahertz you were just getting lukewarm on the heatsink in the
VR em so it was absolutely no stress at all even in the hottest climate in the
world you'd have no problems with this motherboard without even needing a fan
it's basically that good then we move on to the 4.3GHz custom OC that I
did here which which point around 200 watts directly to the CPU as opposed to
the three point nine five gigahertz that's pulling about 126 Watson and I
did cross-references with power from the wall just to make sure the figures are
right in hardware info and what we saw here was a maximum PCB readout
temperature of 74 degrees and then on the heatsink 65 degrees then the
software readout was 69 degrees so vrm with customer sees the max you can go on
a 3950X pretty much you are seeing this motherboard just handling it
absolutely fine this is in a 22 C ambient - by the way running Cinebench
are 20 watts just constantly looped so we're utilizing that avx2 instruction
set as well they're going through this vrm more specifically we've
got here a 14 plus two phase power designs - 16 phases in total 14 for the
CPU - for the SOC and that is rigged up with vishay si si six five four CD 50
amp direct drive MOSFETs and then they're using 60 amp inductors and then
for the doublers we've got here the Intersil is l six six one seven eight
and the PDR controller is the raw - two nine zero zero four and for the caps
that 12k ninja cons so this vrm is actually better than the x5 seventy
Taichi so it is cool to see as rock and this is the first time I've seen this
where the little brother board is beating out the big brother and not just
phases but also the quality of some of the components for instance the 60 amp
inductors as for the heatsink it's 253 grams so slightly heavier than the x5 70
taichi's heatsink and it's made of all solid alloy and it's got heat pads on
both the inductors and the MOSFETs of a cooling both those down so for m dot two
temperatures and slot edge they've got two nvme slots on this board the top one
being PCI 4.0 X 4 and then the bottom being PC a 3.0 X 4 and they're both
covered by heat sinks and the heatsink does a pretty good job so taking the
temperatures down quite substantially with both the heatsink temperatures the
service temperatures and the software readouts and then when we take the
heatsink off we can see that we're getting kind of into that uncomfortable
level where I wouldn't want to see my nvme SSD running at those temperatures
personally 24/7 especially from editing videos they'll go through the onboard
audio they're using the realtek 1220 LC it looks like they have kind of copy
pasted this from the x5 70 taichi though the numbers were slightly different so
going through the frequency response curve first we've got a base roll-off
with 10 Hertz and under around 2.3 decibels which is absolutely fine after
that we've got pretty much a flat line up until 10 K and above where we've got
a 0.1 DB drop-off so basically the frequency response curve is going to be
flat it's gonna be good for your ears and I even kind of prefer that slight
drop off in the treble I'm not a big fan of treble personally but then we move
over to the crosstalk and the numbers here are actually better than the x5 70
tied she coming with around - ninety-two decibels all the way up to a
volume level of 90 then going from volume of 91 to 100 does have the
crosstalk sort of bumping up on both left and right hand sides so if you were
to use this onboard audio I recommend keeping the volume at 90 and under then
we've run to the mic import they're using suppression so basically this is
gonna be good for chatting to your friends playing games they're gonna be
hearing you clearly no matter what you do at the same time it's going to give
you a voice a little bit of a thinner tinny sound as opposed to a professional
recording so if you want to use this for professional recordings I would get
another solution anyhow moving through the BIOS it's as
rocks typical it can do it bios very simple yet has all the features you
would want to a degree and I will critique them here with the be 550
Teijin that is they've taken away the polychrome RGB sync within the BIOS
which I really like and I really enjoy and they've added it so you have to
install it in Windows which I'd like to see them add in an update to configure
it from the blouse but they've also taken away the internet DHCP upgrade so
you just connect to the Internet and then you can download the BIOS ROM so
there are two features I'd like to see them bring back though in terms of the
other features fantastic tuning you can control all the different seven PWM fan
headers manually and then you can overclock with ease for horizon 39 50x
getting this overclock at one point four volts for four point three gigahertz
took me literally in half a minute and the 40 400 megahertz XMP profiles on
this Oris memory that I'm using worked absolutely fine first go-around no
hiccups whatsoever they do say you can go up to 4,000 733 megahertz and that
definitely seems like it would be a possibility if you had memory that good
they'll go through the input and output we've got integrated IO shield Wi-Fi six
Bluetooth five BIOS flash back button and a clear CMOS button display port
HDMI out eight USB ports manual 5.1 surround out optical out and also an
Intel two point five gigabits per second Ethernet which does differ from the x5
70 taichi's one gigabit per second Ethernet so with all that out of the way
that now leads us to the most important part with a motherboard and that is the
price so you would think be 550 would be the value line up like B 450 but this
time around we're gonna have a massive range within B 550 and this
board right here is pretty much top-of-the-line it even goes topper than
the x5 70 Taichi so be 550 itself is kind of like cut-down X 570 but it can
be better and it might be better for a lot of people especially if you just
want to get a single nvme Drive a 2 terabyte PC a fall for example and a
upcoming r-tx 3000 graphics card or something like that
so it can give you better value within the realm of what it offers that the
price point is pretty high I mean we're looking at 280 USD for this board in a
straight 569 ozzie dollars versus the x5 70 Taichi which was three hundred US
dollars and then in Australia 589 ozzie though in Australia the x5 70 I did see
it on sale for 529 Aussie so these price points I would go with the x5 70 Taichi
in Australia of course when something's on sale and there's not that big of a
difference between the two I'd get the item on sale though as it stands if
they're both at MSRP and you want to get one of these two bullets I would
personally go with the B 550 Taichi but the main reason for me would be actually
two things that's the onboard audio slightly better
and then the vrm with that slightly enhanced 16 phase that does have
slightly better components on it than the x5 70 Taichi and that did show with
these results I mean handling that 39 50 X with that OC the way it did with the
temperatures no fans on the heatsink at all with honestly really low
temperatures is something that asrock have done well also the last thing to go
over that I forgot to mention was RGB you've got four headers in total to
those being addressable and then two of those being 12 volt and one each at the
top and bottom though I would like to see as rocking a BIOS update bring the
polychrome RGB control back to the boss as well as the internet update as well
those two features I actually really like them in the BIOS so if they can get
them in a BIOS update I'll let you guys know if they're coming in the BIOS
update I'll let you guys know in the description and with all that other way
I hope you guys enjoyed today's review of the be 550 Taichi for me personally
it feels like this one in particular is an X 550 that
the way I would think of this board and that aside if you guys enjoyed this
review be sure to hit that like button also let us know in the comments section
below what you think of B 550 so far I actually had this motherboard for over a
week it's just there was an NDA on actually lifting to performance figures
so I do like to just give you guys reviews and numbers on motherboards
rather than unboxings and showcases so that's sort of the way I do things with
motherboards because when I go to buy a motherboard I would I love it when there
is all that information available and then I can make a decision so hopefully
that answers that and speaking of answers we've got here
the question of the day which comes from transcendence media and they asked which
cooler would you suggest best for risin 530 600 my idle temp is 45 to 65 and
gaming temp is 70 to 85 well the stock cooler is what should be a bit better
than that I mean those temperatures do seem high so if I start as you may want
to look at what case you using especially if there's absolutely no air
flow on that case just take off the side panel to help it breathe a little bit
easier but in terms of a value for money cooler since you are using the Verizon 5
3600 I would go with my main hookup and that is the Snowman this thing is
delivering amazing value for money and if you get the to fan version that thing
was even handling a 10 900k out of the box which is pushing around 175 watts so
incredible cooler for the money and we'll definitely see your rising 530 600
gets some sweet overclock stew in the process and lower the temperatures so
hopefully that answers that question and with all that aside if you guys have
stated this far and you're enjoying that content then be sure to stay subscribed
or hit that sub button if you haven't already ring that bell to get the
content as soon as it drops because the next video we've got a be 550 comparison
where we're testing out all these be 550 motherboards that were sent in its gonna
be a big round robin so hopefully you guys enjoy that one and i'll catch you
in the next one peace out for now bye
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