Conclusion
Today we evaluated one of MSI’s B550 line-ups. The MSI B550I GAMING EDGE WIFI. This is one of MSI’s mITX design motherboards for gamers and enthusiasts alike. For it being one of their mITX motherboards, it packs a lot of punch with many features found on full ATX type boards. It retails for $199.99 on Amazon at the time of this review.
This is a feature-rich board, thanks to AMD’s B550 chipset and with the newest BIOS release supports the new Ryzen 5000 series processors. Being a sub-$200 motherboard, it is a price-friendly enthusiast gaming motherboard with a fantastic feature-rich BIOS along with support for Zen 2 and Zen 3 processors. Packed with the new PCI-Express 4.0, USB 3.2 Gen2 speeds, and 2.5GBE LAN, it will make a great gaming platform.
Motherboard Goals Continued
As we unboxed and started testing this motherboard, we were pleased with the looks and style MSI put into making an enthusiast gaming motherboard. Being sleek in style and an mATX it will look great in any tempered glass enclosure or small form factor case of many sorts. It also sports some very large heatsinks on and around the VRMs allowing the user to game worry-free for many hours without the worry of overheating the VRMs and throttling the CPU down.
This motherboard provides you with the AMD B550 chipset features and runs the AMD Zen 2 and Zen 3 processors and also comes complete with PCI-Express 4.0. With the new PCIe 4.0 it also supports the lightning-fast PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs and PCIe 4.0 GPUs. If you have a need to transfer large data across drives, then the PCI-Express 4.0 will be right up your alley. With the PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD games should load a lot faster and allow for a much better gaming experience for under $200.
This board would be a good decision for a business application. With the new PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD drive capability, a business could implement a 2 TB drive and this board for a speedy small business server or workstation. Supporting the Zen 2 and Zen 3 processors, the selection is large for any small business budget. One can even implement one of AMD’s many APU allowing the business to use the processor for their video output.
Overclocking
We were able to achieve a solid 4.450 GHz overclock that ran stable and never dropped during our CPU-intensive benchmark. Meaning that the large heatsinks GIGABYTE implemented on and around the VRMs are doing a good job of keeping them puppies cool. We would have liked to see a higher stable overclock, but at 4.450 GH/z over the stock 3.6GHz, it isn’t too shabby gain for enthusiasts and gamer alike.
Given the limited real estate available to the motherboard, MSI did not include a good amount of fan headers on this motherboard so the end-user will have to be mindful of what fans he or she uses as well as the number of fans used.
I/O Performance
If you are an enthusiast or gamer that uses a lot of external peripherals then this board would be a good fit. It includes one standard USB 3.2 port as well as one new Type-C USB 3.2 port. This board also includes one USB port that is specifically designed to flash the BIOS with the push of a button. This could be very handy for enthusiasts that like to test boards and could possibly run into BIOS issues. This BIOS flash USB port doesn’t require having a chip, RAM, or video card to flash.
The board also has 1 HDMI port if the user is wanting to keep a budget system and using one of AMD’s many APU processors.
Components
Discussing the fan headers again, we found that MSI didn’t include very many fan headers and we would have liked to see more for the gamer and enthusiasts that run a lot of fans. This motherboard does include the RGB headers for people that would like to add some bling to their systems.
This mITX board includes 4 SATA connectors and we would have liked to see more, however, being a small form factor motherboard it would have been very tight to add more. With the NVMe inclusion for two drives adds to the plus side with only 4 SATA connectors.
Final Points
With the MSI B550I GAMING EDGE WIFI being at or under the $200 enthusiast and gaming board and being a feature-rich AMD B550 chipset motherboard, many will find it a good choice for a fairly reasonable budget system. It supports the Zen 2 and Zen 3 processors, supports the new PCI-Express 4.0 that allows for PCIe 4 NVMe SSD’s. It also supports up to 128 Gigs of RAM which will be plenty for even the hard-core gamers.
With a price tag of $199.99 it isn’t the cheapest motherboard on the market but it’s far from the most expensive as well. We feel for the price range, it includes a great number of features far and above what AMD offers on the B550 chipset allowing the user to customize their system in many different ways. We found it to have a small few shortcomings, but all in all, it’s a pretty decent motherboard that most enthusiasts and gamers will enjoy for years to come.
Discussion
