- Six years.
- [Background Voice] (giggles) No way.
- Six years ago,
- No way. - Was the last time
I did an unboxing video of a motherboard.
But quite frankly, it's also been six years
since I've had anything that I'm this excited about.
Asus sponsored this unboxing of a handful
of their B550 motherboards, and guys,
B550 is basically going to be the way to go
for well, until AMD bestows upon us something
with even more value than this,
which honestly seems kind of far-fetched at this point.
Let's start with the TUF Gaming B550M-Plus (WiFi),
which is where I think a lot of B550 buyers
are gonna end up because it is quite the sweet spot
in terms of value.
Accessories-wise, you got your WiFi antenna,
you got your SATA cable,
IO shield, M.2 screws, nothing exciting there.
Let's focus on the motherboard itself,
starting with the AM4 socket.
AMD has done a great job of upholding their commitment
to support this socket on a long-term basis,
almost to the detriment of their B550 chipset products,
because one of the main differentiators between B450,
which was their last generation mainstream socket,
and B550, was supposed to be support
for the upcoming fourth generation rising processors,
based on their Zen 3 architecture,
but then they backtracked,
and assuming that your motherboard manufacturer decides
to add BIOS support for those chips,
you will actually be able to use them,
which kind of raises the question why bother with B550
in the first place?
And why does Linus think that this is so important?
The reason is that B550 takes almost everything
that I would have cared about
in an X570 board and ports it down to a lower price point
and no requirement for active cooling for the chipset.
So what we're looking at here is PCI Express Gen 4 links.
So that's double the bandwidth
of PCI Express Gen 3 between the CPU
and the primary PCI Express 16x graphics slot,
as well as one M.2 slot.
So you're gonna be able to take advantage
of double the bandwidth of PCI Express Gen 3
for both your graphics card and your main storage drive
that you've got your OS on for years to come.
The other key is that within the constraints
of the power delivery design
that your motherboard manufacturer implements,
there is no limitations on B550 in terms of overclocking,
either of the CPU or of the memory,
and this is something that I shouldn't have to bring up
as a feature, except that Intel
recently locked down memory overclocking
on some of their skews,
so that you can't get the full potential performance
out of those chips, a very unfortunate situation.
To illustrate the next big feature,
I actually need a different board.
This is the B550-E from Asus's ROG Strix lineup,
sorry, B550-E Gaming 'cause it's for gamers.
And this puppy right here has got official support
not just for AMD Crossfire, but also Nvidia SLI,
which is something that we haven't seen before
on AMD's mainstream rising chipsets,
because Nvidia requires for SLI certification
that the 16x slot can be split
into an 8x, 8x rather than having a 16x and a 4x,
or an 8x and a 4x as AMD allows for Crossfire support.
But Linus, you might say.
Surely there's got to be some downside, and there is.
X570, which is AMD's higher-tier chipset
from this generation has a PCI Express Gen 4 by 4 link
between the CPU and the chipset.
So what that means is that Gen 4 devices can be hooked up
through the chipset and communicate with CPU that way.
That's how X570 boards can have
so many M.2 slots on them, for example.
And it also means just generally more bandwidth
and more flexibility for motherboard manufacturers
when it comes to adding additional features to their boards.
So that's why you're gonna see even a high-end B550 board
like this one, equipped with only two M.2 slots,
one of which is running at Gen 3 speeds.
And things like, look at that.
We've got a ton of USB 2.0 ports
on the back of the IO plate here.
Like what's the deal with that?
Well, the deal with that is that a Gen 3 by 4 link
is just not that fast, so if you wanna add features like
in the case of the ROG Strix boards,
Intel two and a half Gigabit networking,
or in the case of the TUF boards,
Realtek two and a half gig networking.
Well, something's gotta give,
because the users can notice
if you go and pile on a whole bunch of onboard features
that if they actually go and use all at the same time,
you end up with a big nasty bottleneck between the chipset
and the CPU socket.
None of this is the end of the world.
But it does mean that motherboard manufacturers
have to make choices.
So on this B550 board for example,
Asus was able to cram more USB five gigabit per second ports
onto the back panel.
But look at this,
they had to give up having one of those fancy new fangled
USB 3.1 Gen 2 front panel connectors.
So if you have a case that has front panel Type-C,
you're gonna have to go with something
more like the B550-E Gaming, little things like that.
And now that this one
has got two USB three internal headers,
oh boy, well, that's why your back panel
is full of USB 2.0 ports, even this Type-C over here,
by the way is apparently an audio-optimized USB 2.
So I guess there's just like,
it's like a cleaner circuit for it or something like that.
That's something I have not actually seen before.
To be clear, I'm not too worried about any of that though.
Most of what you guys need,
the gamers and content creators out there
is high speed connections between your CPU and your memory,
your graphics card, and your storage.
And B550 takes care of all of that,
and if you really needed some more USB ports,
it's not like you can't throw a USB add-in card
into one of the PCI Express slots
that's available on your board.
So really, for me, this comes down to which B550 motherboard
to go for, what's the right balance of internal headers
versus rear connectors in order for you to be able
to plug in everything that you need to?
Do you care about something like more robust VRMs
like you might find on a Strix board
versus a Prime or a TUF board?
Do you care about all the extra RGB headers?
This one has four RGB headers, two of them are 12 volt.
Two of them are five volt addressable.
How important is that to you?
That's totally on you.
But for me, B550 is a totally exciting chipset
for what is an exciting generation of chips now
and an even more exciting one,
with Zen 3 cores just around the corner.
So thanks again to Asus for sponsoring this video.
You can find links to their whole B550 lineup,
which is quite extensive.
They've got freaking ton of boards,
you know I didn't even get to one of these.
This is the B550-F Gaming.
So this is slightly lower-end,
you've got no SLI support compared to the E.
And I think it drops like
that Type-C compatible internal connector
or something like that.
That seems to be most of the difference,
I think it might have one for your RGB connector
or something like that.
So you can check that out at the link below.
Thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe.