Sunday, October 2nd 2022

First B650 Motherboard Pricing Detailed by B&H

US retailer B&H has kindly provided the first B650 motherboard pricing and it's something of a mixed bag. The company has listed no less than seven different models from MSI, ranging in price from US$199.99 to US$329.99. It doesn't appear as if any of these boards are based on the B650E chipset, but based on information TPU were given at Computex, we know that some higher-end B650 boards will cost around the same as some lower-end B650E boards.

As B&H has only listed key features of the boards, it's hard to tell what features some of the boards offer, but the base model is the mATX Pro B650M-A WiFi, which at the very least has one PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, one PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, one PCIe 3.0 x1 slot and two M.2 slots. The board obviously also has WiFi 6E and somewhat surprisingly has 2.5 Gbps Ethernet. On the other hand, it only has a front header for a USB-C port and none around the back. This type of board was supposed to start at or below the US$150 mark and we'll hopefully see a transition to there in due time.
A step up is the Pro B650-P WiFi which removes the PCIe 3.0 x1 slot, but adds a pair of unspecified full-length slots—most likely PCIe 3.0 based—as this is a full size ATX board. Here MSI has also added a rear mounted USB-C port that could be of the 20 Gbps variety. For an extra $20 over the mATX version, this seems like a more reasonable product offering overall in the now rather expensive budget segment.
At the $239.99 price point, MSI has two boards, the mATX MAG B650M Mortar WiFi and the Mini-ITX MPG B650I Edge WiFi. The boards have a pre-installed I/O shield, which helps identify the rear port configuration. As such, we know that both boards come with a 20 Gbps rear mounted USB-C port and 2.5 Gbps Ethernet. The Mortar has two full-length x16 PCIe slots, with the primary being a x16 slot. There's also a x1 PCIe slot, that is most likely PCIe 3.0, as well as two M.2 slots. The Edge only has a single PCIe 4.0 x16 slot due to form factor limitations, plus at least one M.2 slot and a small fan on the heatsink that appears to cover the chipset and the M.2 slot.
The next full-size board is the $259.99 MAG B650 Tomahawk WiFi, which is pretty much an ATX version of the Mortar, with an additional M.2 slot for a total of three. At $289.99 sits the MPG B650 Edge WiFi, which alongside the MPG B650I Edge gets white/silver heatsinks. The overall board layout is almost identical to the Tomahawk, but here we know for sure that the top-most M.2 slot supports a PCIe 5.0 drive.
Finally MSI's top of the range B650 board in the line-up listed by B&H is the MPG B650 Carbon WiFi, which is a souped up version of the previous two boards, which gains a third M.2 slot and a bit fancier heatsinks. It also gains "proper" buttons around the back for the BIOS flash and clear CMOS buttons, but there's very little extra you get for the $329.99 asking price. All of the boards are listed as coming soon, so we don't have an actual retail date for B650 motherboards as yet.
Sources: B&H, via @momomo_us
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72 Comments on First B650 Motherboard Pricing Detailed by B&H

#26
DemonicRyzen666
cvaldesWell, I'm guessing some content creators find single cards useful. It's not like the xx90 models are gaming cards; there aren't many games that can take advantage of 24GB VRAM.

AMD got rid of the physical Crossfire interlink years ago so clearly they didn't have a compelling reason to keep that option available.

I'm not familiar with either company's professional solutions for multi-card connectivity but for sure the era of this option has ended on GeForce and Radeon branded products.
yeah true about games, but were talking about rending Scenes here where 24Gbs is chump change and many of them can use 48gbs to 96gbs.
Ironicly I came upon all this while researching games that use mGPU or SLI & crossfire on DX12 or raytracing games.
Mutli-card rendering was suppose to be put to the developers, but if shady tatics like what I'm seeing going on that people are talking about on unreal4 & unreal5 engine. Well then it's not developers not getting, having time, or effor,t to code it's Hardware makeers (mostly nvidia Blocking them) & locking them into a world of single card use just like gamers have been put in.
"UE 5 - Multi GPU Support - NOT SLI - NOT NVLINK - General / Feedback for Unreal Engine team - Unreal Engine Forums"

Seriouly wondering How accurate Wiki's Raytracing game list is "List of games that support ray tracing - PCGamingWiki PCGW - bugs, fixes, crashes, mods, guides and improvements for every PC game "
out 135 game listed 15 of them support SLI &/ crossfire &/or mGPU that's acutally more than normal that's just above 10% of games instead of this so card "niche" product everyone claims of 1% -_- but that's currently in time it will probably drop now that Ada Lovelace is out & not a single one will use mGPU or SLI.

At this point a PC gaming is coming to limited like a console & lacking choices for me anymore.
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#27
Easo
Can this madness end? Please? Pretty please?
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#28
GeorgeMan
Well, every single company in the PC DIY market seems to have gone crazy. I'm out of this crap, I can work with my laptop and play games on consoles.
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#29
trsttte
VaderIt seems lately the sweet point for hardware is to buy last gen when new gen launches. Remember 5600X for 300? X570 only motherboards at outrageous prices? These parts are still excellent, have most of what you need in terms of I/O, and are almost half the price they where at launch.
For Ryzen 7000, I think for my use case (gaming) these parts don't offer enough performance for the asking price, so I won't buy it. You can do the same, no need to get angry. Companies follow the money, if parts don't move, they'll be forced to lower prices.
Well from the zen4 reviews at least, the 5800x3D still seems to be about the best cpu around, RaptorLake should have the same problem from the early data from Intel so yeah, previous gen for the win
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#30
RedBear
I wonder if AMD is rising prices on purpose because they're no longer the cheap alternative, at any rate Intel should have an opening next year, maybe the last one, in the previous generation motherboards that offered overall better value were the saving grace of the Ryzen 5000 at launch, Intel's new motherboards were expensive in comparison and they made AMD's new CPUs higher prices more tolerable, now AMD has given up even on that advantage.
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#31
TheinsanegamerN
RedBearI wonder if AMD is rising prices on purpose because they're no longer the cheap alternative, at any rate Intel should have an opening next year, maybe the last one, in the previous generation motherboards that offered overall better value were the saving grace of the Ryzen 5000 at launch, Intel's new motherboards were expensive in comparison and they made AMD's new CPUs higher prices more tolerable, now AMD has given up even on that advantage.
They long ago stated they didnt want to be the "budget CPU company" anymore. Is anyone surprised?

Anyone who built computers in the early 2000s should know the absolute second AMD got any sort of advantage they strapped their MSRPs to the nearest space bound rocket, and the longer they stood on top the worse it got. FX-62 for $1000 anyone?
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#32
mplayerMuPDF
They had better have extraordinary quality and last a million years with these prices. MSI is not a brand I associate with exceptional quality but maybe they will surprise this generation, I guess...
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#33
mechtech
So I guess any of the AM4 socket rumors on one of the 6xx series boards are officially squashed?
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#34
TheinsanegamerN
mplayerMuPDFThey had better have extraordinary quality and last a million years with these prices. MSI is not a brand I associate with exceptional quality but maybe they will surprise this generation, I guess...
Their 500 series boards were quite good. Had good luck with my x570 unify and the B550 mortar finally brought us a good micro ATX board with no real compromises.
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#35
mechtech
I would easily pay $400 for a mobo............if it is of good quality, came with a 5yr. warranty and has 10 years of bios support.
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#36
Eskimonster
200$ is what i pay for a pair of shoes, i realy cant see a problem paying that, for adopting a new generation of cpu´s,
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#37
Why_Me
mechtechSo I guess any of the AM4 socket rumors on one of the 6xx series boards are officially squashed?
I never heard that rumor. AM5 was always known to be DDR5 only tmk.
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#38
ixi
Second best chip is going for previous best chip price, nice. Naa, not really. Need to see intel prices... I wonder how many in 2022. will move to zen4...
Eskimonster200$ is what i pay for a pair of shoes, i realy cant see a problem paying that, for adopting a new generation of cpu´s,
Can you show us your boots? :D
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#39
mplayerMuPDF
Eskimonster200$ is what i pay for a pair of shoes, i realy cant see a problem paying that, for adopting a new generation of cpu´s,
If you get your money's worth, then sure. If it is all margin and no quality/durability and features, then no thanks.
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#40
wheresmycar


I'm not surprised by the mid-tier $200-$250 asking price (my previously speculated estimation in another thread) although I was hoping we'd get some entry level $150'ish options dropped in the same release window. Maybe later?

If you permit, the way i see it - preliminary AM5 boards were always going to be a little more pricier with a some-what $50/+ mark-up. I kinda sensed this from AM4's gen-2-gen fwd support success - all the way up to 5000-series/X3D. Essentially, a very likely influencer to get people excited with a fresh AM5 board with 3-year"+" support plan. Whether its adds value or not, i can only speak for myself... obviously i'd rather pay less but i don't mind investing $50 more for future upgrades on the same platform. So i'm seeing these sneaky leaks with a 50 subtraction policy in exchange for fwd-investment providing the boards are not short of quality and feature-sets which best represent hi-performance gaming (no, not the flagship GPU rubbish and 6/8 cores will do me just fine).

I have to admit, i expected the Mini-ITX variants to cost more... hope the chipset fan ain't louder than my PSU (that would be a no-go)
jeremyshawB550
8 PCIe 3.0 lanes (often used by WiFi, Ethernet, a second M.2 key M slot, etc)
2 PCIe 3.0 lanes that can also become 2 SATA ports
4 SATA ports
Bunch of USB.

B650:
8 PCIe 4.0 lanes
4 PCIe 3.0 lanes that can also become 4 SATA ports (IMO, board vendors will go with 4 SATA). Can also do 2 SATA with 2 PCIe 3.0 lanes.
Bunch of USB

My guess is a slight regression for most boards, if 4 SATA ports are still presented. Furthermore, in AM5, the CPU socket no longer presents any SATA interface either, whereas AM4 could have 2 SATA ports (at the cost of 2 PCI lanes).

AFAIK, Intel's B660 isn't much better off, since it shares its PHY assignments with USB 3 ports as well. Z790 doesn't seem to fundamentally change that, so I'm not expecting much of the future B760 either.

EDIT: B550 and X570 slides have some notes at the bottom, which are to be read as representing the entire platform's IO, not just the chipset. B650 slide doesn't have those notes.





EDIT: just for fun, X570.



X570:
8 PCIe 4.0
4 PCIe 4.0 or 4 SATA
4 PCIe 4.0 or 4 SATA (again)
4 SATA
So would I be right to assume B-SERIES is adequately well-placed for a gaming build? Something like a 7600X/7700X and hopefully paired with a 40-series/RDNA3 card which levels up to previous Gen 6900XT/3090TI performance (if not better). Storage: 2TB NVME stick to begin with and maybe a second one a year later, if needed.
Posted on Reply
#41
Why_Me
wheresmycar

I'm not surprised by the mid-tier $200-$250 asking price (my previously speculated estimation in another thread) although I was hoping we'd get some entry level $150'ish options dropped in the same release window. Maybe later?

If you permit, the way i see it - preliminary AM5 boards were always going to be a little more pricier with a some-what $50/+ mark-up. I kinda sensed this from AM4's gen-2-gen fwd support success - all the way up to 5000-series/X3D. Essentially, a very likely influencer to get people excited with a fresh AM5 board with 3-year"+" support plan. Whether its adds value or not, i can only speak for myself... obviously i'd rather pay less but i don't mind investing $50 more for future upgrades on the same platform. So i'm seeing these sneaky leaks with a 50 subtraction policy in exchange for fwd-investment providing the boards are not short of quality and feature-sets which best represent hi-performance gaming (no, not the flagship GPU rubbish and 6/8 cores will do me just fine).

I have to admit, i expected the Mini-ITX variants to cost more... hope the chipset fan ain't louder than my PSU (that would be a no-go)



So would I be right to assume B-SERIES is adequately well-placed for a gaming build? Something like a 7600X/7700X and hopefully paired with a 40-series/RDNA3 card which levels up to previous Gen 6900XT/3090TI performance (if not better). Storage: 2TB NVME stick to begin with and maybe a second one a year later, if needed.
TBH I expect Intel's B670 DDR5 boards to be priced about the same. Hopefully the locked Intel 13 gen cpu's are comparable in price to their 12 gen counterparts.
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#42
wheresmycar
Eskimonster200$ is what i pay for a pair of shoes, i realy cant see a problem paying that, for adopting a new generation of cpu´s,
lucky you. I'm saving for my next Gen graphics card hence no more shoes for me... flip flops next stop!
Why_MeTBH I expect Intel's B670 DDR5 boards to be priced about the same. Hopefully the locked Intel 13 gen cpu's are comparable in price to their 12 gen counterparts.
I hope not... i'm liking intels marginally better value propositions in recent times. If they continue under-cutting AMD, AMD will surrender to lowering prices. 13th Gen looks promising hence hope the boards are equally reasonably priced.
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#43
AusWolf
Guys, look at the article about the leaked ASRock motherboards. One has a 6-layer PCB, the rest are 8-layer and the m-ITX is 10-layers. This is supposedly a requirement for PCI-e gen 5. This probably why they're so expensive.
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#46
trsttte
wheresmycarIf you permit, the way i see it - preliminary AM5 boards were always going to be a little more pricier with a some-what $50/+ mark-up. I kinda sensed this from AM4's gen-2-gen fwd support success - all the way up to 5000-series/X3D. Essentially, a very likely influencer to get people excited with a fresh AM5 board with 3-year"+" support plan. Whether its adds value or not, i can only speak for myself... obviously i'd rather pay less but i don't mind investing $50 more for future upgrades on the same platform. So i'm seeing these sneaky leaks with a 50 subtraction policy in exchange for fwd-investment providing the boards are not short of quality and feature-sets which best represent hi-performance gaming (no, not the flagship GPU rubbish and 6/8 cores will do me just fine).
AM4 was pretty good in terms of support but was very uncertain for a good part of the way there, I wouldn't buy AM5 on promises, let alone the vague statements they gave so far
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#47
TheinsanegamerN
AusWolfGuys, look at the article about the leaked ASRock motherboards. One has a 6-layer PCB, the rest are 8-layer and the m-ITX is 10-layers. This is supposedly a requirement for PCI-e gen 5. This probably why they're so expensive.
Sure, that's part of it, but there is also no denying that companies like MSI, asus, gigabyte, ece are no more immune to taking advantage of the *current times* then any other company. Strangely, with supply costs and manufacturing costs demanding these higher prices, the *margins* of many companies are putting the 90s boom to shame. Funny, that......

I'll bet that these boards come with fatter margins for MSI, easily.
Why_MeBetter audio codec also.

www.msi.com/Motherboard/MAG-B660M-MORTAR
Realtek ALC1200
Any board over $200 should have the ALC1200 on principle, if not better.
trsttteAM4 was pretty good in terms of support but was very uncertain for a good part of the way there, I wouldn't buy AM5 on promises, let alone the vague statements they gave so far
I would take the safe bet that the 8000 or 9000 series wont be initially supported on 600 series chipsets and the community will need to take AMD to task over the issue yet again.
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#48
trsttte
TheinsanegamerNI would take the safe bet that the 8000 or 9000 series wont be initially supported on 600 series chipsets and the community will need to take AMD to task over the issue yet again.
Only if they don't "need to" make an sAM5 with a couple of connection points changed to "facilitate board layout", wouldn't really fly on a mainstream segment but crazier things happened.
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#49
wheresmycar
trsttteAM4 was pretty good in terms of support but was very uncertain for a good part of the way there, I wouldn't buy AM5 on promises, let alone the vague statements they gave so far
I was hearing the same weather forecast for AM4 in 2017 and grabbed an Intel 7700K. No regrets though, overclocked like a charm unlike todays CPUs + serviceable preference for integrated graphics.

I'm confident AM5 will see 2 more Gen-ups which is enough to satisfy the upgrade itch in a few years time (or earlier). A third Gen-up would be a blessing in disguise!! Granted 1440p most likely won't benefit as much with the type of incremental advances we are seeing with each Gen hence i like the idea of starting off with a baseline 7600X (or/if 7600) and then a few years later grabbing something like a 9700X3D / 9900X / etc. I'm just not feeling Intels lack of long term support on their platforms which over the years have been constrictive with quick upgrades.
trsttte......let alone the vague statements they gave so far
Can you expand on that? I'm not the most informed hence i'm all ears for past/present/forthcoming developments.
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#50
AusWolf
trsttteAM4 was pretty good in terms of support but was very uncertain for a good part of the way there, I wouldn't buy AM5 on promises, let alone the vague statements they gave so far
Your other option is Intel's LGA-1700 which will definitely be ditched with 14th gen. It's a miracle that it even supports 13th gen. Which one is better?

Edit: I never recommend anyone to buy a platform based on potential future upgrades. A new CPU generation brings maybe 15-20% more performance to the table? It's not something you feel in real life. If you like the platform for what it offers right now, buy it. If you don't, don't.

Edit: typo
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