AMD’s B550 chipset is supposed to be the mainstream, budget-friendly option for Ryzen 3000 adopters, but apparently, manufacturers only got part of that memo.
According to a spreadsheet posted by a GIGABYTE community manager, some of these motherboards will cost as high as $279 (e.g., the B550 AORUS MASTER), which is a notable increase from previous-gen lineups. To be fair, GIGABYTE is also prepping B550 SKUs priced as low as $94 (e.g., the B44M DS3H), but it’s a little weird seeing $250+ motherboards as part of a “budget” series.
MSI added to the pricing situation in a recent video, revealing that its B550 boards would start at $119. While that’s a decent price, some enthusiasts have pointed out that B450 SKUs were available for as low as $60 or $70 when they launched back in the summer of 2018.
The question now is whether B550 motherboards are even worth considering, as X570 models can be found at similar prices. Aside from having unsightly or potentially noisy chipset fans (opinions that are certainly disputable), AMD’s high-end platform is obviously superior, having PCIe 4.0 general purposes lanes and CPU chipset uplink.