here is asrock's latest addition to the b550 family the phantom
gaming itx/ax where that stands for
ax wi-fi wifi 6 it's also got bluetooth 5.1 on board
and this does differ a little bit to the x570 phantom gaming itx we'll go through
those differences today but let's go uh first of all through the
price range where we've got this coming in at 199
usd and then for the x570 we're looking at 240 usd so it's a 40
us dollar difference between the b550 version and the x570 version
in australia we're looking at 399 currently
at the prices recommended retail prices versus 449. so
i would like to see the australian pricing be corrected a little bit i mean
when we convert that 200 usd into aussie dollars
that's 280 aussie dollars roughly i mean of course we've got taxes
there's not a big of a market but really there's a lot of
sort of difference in those two prices there between australia and the us so
basically in the us this board is pretty well
priced and we're going to get on to why it's pretty well priced right now
with the vrm details where they're putting in eight phase six plus two
phases and that's true phases there's no
doublers there's no moss drivers in here and we've got 90
amp chokes as well as 90 amp intercell
mosfets so these are the isl99390s and then for the socs they're
using the isl 99227s they're 60s but of course those
six phases dedicated towards the cpu does a phenomenal job uh for an itx
board right we've got a 3950x and we've loaded this thing up both at stock
and at 4.3 gigahertz for finishing off the vrm details we've got tantalum caps
here on board this is what makes this vrm very special too so the
vrm even though you're not getting as many phases as you used to
with other motherboards that are bigger and around this price point
you are getting a better quality vrm which does make
up the difference and it does make up the difference quite well we're out of
the box it's going to boost the 3950x to 4.025 gigahertz on all 16 calls 32
threads this enables us to get over 9 000 points in cinebench
single core we're getting 516 so the single core could go a little bit higher
than what i'm used to seeing but then again the all core speeds are
beautiful on this board going higher than that
of any of the b550s i did in the other comparison
and it also runs 4 400 megahertz memory absolutely fine on the xmp stuff this is
the aorus memory modules that we've used for all our testing just
to test if there's any problems with compatibility
and booting up with this memory now overclocking 4.3 gigahertz all cores
this managed to do this and it did it whilst getting around 89
degrees maximum on the ir readout as well as getting to 91 degrees
on the software readout and then 86 on the heatsink now the heatsink
weighs in at about 80 grams so it is a little bit anemic
compared to other heatsinks but again it is itx
and the vrm is quite efficient especially out of the box we'll get onto
the temperatures quickly there where we're scoring roughly 80 degrees
in software and in hardware 79 degrees and then 73 degrees for the heatsink so
the vrm is not getting a whole lot hotter for uh
pushing out the 4.3 gigahertz all core overclock where it is using
an extra 50 watts from the wall so it's using about 260 watts
from the wall out of the box and then when we overclock it's using about 315
watts so it does lose a little bit of efficiency
when you start to overclock it i guess the vrm is getting a little bit hot
that's making it inefficient in itself but still b550 boards around this price
range even versus the bigger brothers it is
doing a really good job on efficiency and the 90 degrees that's sort of like
my maximum that i would like to keep a vrm
at for all day every day operation and this
does uh pass that test and so it is a pretty
solid border and so the good thing is the vrm efficiency is there and if you
want to put a fan over the vrm you'll get cooler
temperatures and possibly even better power efficiency since it will be
then running cooler but what it's worth vrm very solid implementation you are
losing two phases versus the x570 version
of this board but you are gaining 90 amp chokes and mosfets versus 60 amps on the
x570 solution another difference is the mounting bracket
this is am4 mounting the x570 version actually has the intel
lga 1150 mounting bracket now moving through the m.2 configuration we've got
two m.2 slots on this board one on the front one on the rear
the front one carries a heat sink this is a hyper slot so it'll only support
mvme pcie the one on the back is ultra sort of but
support both sata and pcie nvme solutions however it will
only support it that gen 3 x4 speeds is the front one will do x4
gen 4. and i tested out the speeds that are
working absolutely fine the temperatures were getting up to around 72 degrees
with this pci4 device however without the heat sink on it was
just simply overheating and it would shut the whole system
off so that's something to be aware of this heatsink if you want to use
a very fast drive you will need cooling and this cooling does do a decent job
it's certainly not the best cooling i've seen come through the studio here
but it does get the job done so moving through the onboard audio numbers of
course if you're buying a mini itx solution you
probably want good audio because you don't have any extra pcie
slots to add an extra device and also since you're
going small maybe a usb interface is out of the question
and so here's where the realtek 12 20 adc and dax solution
does deliver some decent numbers not the best i've seen minus 5.2 decibels
0 to 10 hertz of roll off there and then after that relatively flat with a 0.1
decibel roll-off after 10 to 20k kilohertz and then the crosstalk is
actually very low up until a volume level of 90 then after
that we start to get spikes on the left channel
so basically if you're using this on-board audio keep it at a volume level
of 90 or below then for the mic input this is actually
very good if you're looking at it in one way and
that is the volume level overall i found was a lot lower
than i'm used to hearing so even though it goes up to 100 plus 30 db
it's doing so with no noise but even then that input level is very uh i guess
low compared to other mic input solutions so there is no noise
but you will have to have a sensitive mic
to get the most out of this input port they're going through the rest of the
features here bios absolutely fine got all the options if you want to
overclock save 10 profiles you can control the three different pwm
fan headers individually if you want to you've got 12 volt and 5 volt rgb one of
those being addressable that's the 5 volt of course
but you can't control this within the bias something i've critiqued azeroth 4
since on the intel side of things they tend to offer this option with the
rgb control within the bios itself and there's also no bass flashing via
the internet which i'd like to see them bring both these things on the amd side
but besides that the bios is really well built very simple to use
it's also got all the advanced features if you want to go
that far in then going over the rear of this board this is where it starts to
differ a bit to the x570 version 2. we've got usb 3.2
instead of thunderbolt support on the x570 so if you do need that thunderbolt
support on amd's side then the x570 solution is going to be
for you for sure though we are losing the uh also optical
out for the audio here as well as the manual 5.1
versus the line in mic in and audio out only
then we're also getting an extra usb type a port for five in total plus the
type c so six in total versus five on the x570 and the x570 does have a ps2
port which this is missing so in the box you
also get your sider cables included antenna
which is the same on both the x570 and b550 versions then the last difference
is the nik 2.5 gigabit solution versus one gigabit
on the x570 and so that leaves us now to conclusion
time with this motherboard right here is it
worth the money and i'm going to definitely say yes i
like where this board's coming in in fact i'm going to be using this
in a build where i'm going to be changing over to amd for my main rig
with mini itx theory i think mini itx has
i guess you know technically it's got the shortest traces which technically
would mean the best latency this is coming from a real
weird route that i'm going to go down in the future but
of course it's going to be almost impossible to prove the differences but
that being said if the science sort of states that the
difference is there so if it's there to be had why not have
it with all these gigahertz and
instructions per cycle going on and so itx is becoming more
popular for me personally and i feel like when you're going in the
realm of itx you want a really good board to match that experience and this
board really hits the mark especially with its vrm and that's what
you want to get the most out of supporting the 16 core 32 threaded
beast the 3950x with no problems out of the box giving really good performance
numbers out of the box and then when you overload the 4.3
gigahertz handling that absolutely fine i am left with nothing but impressed
with the 199 dollar price point now the usb speeds they checked out
absolutely fine the m.2 speeds are fine the temperatures
are fine you've also got everything else on board 2.5 g
and the onboard audio works okay so now it leads to the question of would
you want to buy this or the x570 variant and that depends on what you want to do
of course you've got that money to be saved here the 40 bucks the vrm
itself both these itx solutions have really good
implementations though where the big differences come
down to in my opinion is if you need that optical out on the x570 as well as
the thunderbolt 3 where you're going to get both those on
the x570 variant as opposed to this right
here you're going to lose those but you are going to gain an extra m.2 slot
which could be very handy in terms of those extra chipset lanes of b550 versus
x570 this is the one area on mini itx where
it's almost useless and so because you don't have all those extra pcie brackets
on your motherboard you're not really missing out on much
with going b550 versus x570 on the mini itx solutions
so really when it comes down to it if you need those features
on x570 versus the b550 version go with that
if you don't and you want to save some money and gain an extra m.2 slot
then this is going to be a phenomenal solution so
asrock have really been doing a good job especially on the amd side of the fence
with mini itx i haven't really taken a look at their z490 itx solutions yet
even though i had to use one for a competition recently and it does the job
absolutely fine but i haven't gotten around to reviewing
it properly yet but i have been using it as my main workhorse for now
and it's been doing absolutely fine job this is the
cheaper variant not even the phantom gaming version so basically summing
everything up for you guys if you're in the us of a very solid buy
for 199 us if you're in australia i would sort of
take a look around and see if you can get it on sale
because i think the pricing differential is quite big as we pointed out in the
intro there so i'll ask asrock what's up with that
they're definitely for 199 us very solid board even if you want to put
a 3950x in it and with all that out of the way if you guys enjoyed today's
review of the b550 phantom gaming itx from azeroth
then be sure to hit that like button for us also let us know in the comment
section below what's your opinions and thoughts on
b550 rtx vs x570 versus z490 are you an itx fan love reading
your thoughts and opinions as always just like this question of the day here
which comes from rumple and they ask was the previous tech yes mobile in
eight six stinger looks mint by the way so the
previous uh yes mobile was a one two four bath spider and then
before that it was a whole nash draw and i'm going to do a card vlog for you guys
i know i haven't forgot about that that will be coming
uh the 86 you guys have seen on the channel sometimes that's one of my best
friends uh shannon he's a really cool dude and he
just likes coming along with the parts hunt sometimes
and we use his 86 because believe it or not it's actually got a lot more
had a lot more room than the uh one two four bass spider i could literally fit
one computer in the boot if i was lucky on the one two four
surprisingly on the eight six you could actually fit quite a bit of used
hardware in that thing hence the reason why it popped up a lot
more than the abarth did previously in the parts hands but the
stinger that has a lot more room than both those cars
combined so that's why it's the new yes mobile
anyway hope that answers that question and i'll catch you guys in another tech
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