The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on June 16, 2020 11:00 AM ESTASRock B550M-HDV
Nearer the bottom of the ASRock product stack we get to the B550M-HDV, which is aimed at the more commercial pre-build markets and aims to offer what these markets might need. As a result it does away with the fancy styling and aims to give the bare essentials. That means no power delivery heatsinks, only two DRAM slots, no extra M.2, and only a 4-pin CPU power connector is needed.
The idea for these boards is that they will be put into systems that might be found in commercial units, like libraries, medical facilities, youth centers, that sort of thing. So there are only two fan headers around the socket for example. The power delivery is basic, we get a 4 phase design, and the two DRAM slots are still single side latched.
Moving clockwise around the board we get the 24-pin ATX power connector, a USB 3.0 header, and four SATA ports. The bottom of the board is the audio front panel header, a Clear CMOS header, a TPM header, a COM header, two USB 2.0 headers, another 4-pin fan header, and the front panel header.
The PCIe area consists of a single PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, without extra reinforcement. Beneath this is the PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot from the processor, and underneath this is the chipset heatsink, which is the smallest chipset heatsink I’ve seen on B550 so far. On the left hand side of the board is the audio, where we have an updated ALC887 solution using PCB separation.
On the rear panel, we get two USB 2.0 ports, a combination PS/2 port, HDMI output, an analog D-sub video output, DVI-D, four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a single gigabit Ethernet from a Realtek RTL8111H controller, and the audio jacks.
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Operandi - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Looks like some nice mATX versions this round, nice!YB1064 - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
I was hoping to see a $75-$90 board.kenjiwing - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Fortunately, this component is a unique motherboard among B550 and well worth reading up on [add link].Needs to be edited.
anirudhs - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
There's a noise sensor which can adjust fan speed for maximum quietness with good thermals. Saw it on the KitGuruTech video. The noise sensor isn't there to spy on you though.PeterCollier - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
The quality of the editing here is shit tier. Seriously, just run the articles through Grammarly before publication. It's free and it spots plenty of errors.Heavenly71 - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Sadly none of the mITX boards have more than 6 external USB ports. My old ASUS mITX has 8! And in really small mITX cases you can't add a bracket with more USB, because the two brackets are already used by the gfx card. Guess I have to wait for an enthusiast mITX board )-:damianrobertjones - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Or, just maybe, get a usb dongle with 4 ports?Mr Perfect - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
That is disappointing. The number of USB devices people need to plug in can't be dropping, surely? I know I've got more now then even a year ago.rrinker - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Are they really going up? I have 2 USB devices plugged in to my system - a keyboard and a mouse. I occasionally plug a USB stick in one of the front ports to transfer files. My phone and tablet sync over wifi, they don't get plugged in. I have a charger behind my desk and a cable to charge them. My printer is on the network.The one place I DO need lots of USB ports is also the place where I have a small cube case machine, with no discreete GPU, because it doesn;t need one. On that one I added a USB PCI card to get enough ports. In addition to the keyboard and mouse, that machine is on my workbench where it connects to several electronic test instruments and I have multiple cabled for programming microcontrollers. I also have a USB microscope for board inspection. And then I have 3 more USB devices connected for my other hobby that shares the bench. Plus a front port kept free for USB sticks.
So the use case I have for more USB has the PCI slots open to add expansion cards, the use case where I have a discrete GPU eating up the slot space doesn't need an excess of USB ports.
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
I use 3 USB 3.0 ports just for my Oculus Rift