AssimilatorB550 is DOA at these prices - $279 for a midrange chipset, you have gotta be kidding me. At least it will push X570 and B450 board prices down.

Well, you don't buy chipset, you buy motherboard. This one is the only B550 with 3x M.2 PCIe 4.0 connected directly to CPU. And 802.11ax wifi. There's no such X570 board for this price.

The B550 AORUS Elite is actually look really nice

The ITX board is $40 cheaper than its X570 big brother. And it looks it has the same 6+2 90A power delivery, the same rear IO, and the "B" board has 2.5G lan, while "X" has 1G.
The only downside (for me at least) is CPU support. "X" supports Ryzen 2000, "B" doesn't. But if I can get a 3300 for 100ish EUR, instead of a 2600, I will probably go for the B550.

TheLostSwedeOk, the Master is WAY more expensive than I expected. That's simply a no buy for anyone going B550.

Especially if one can get the X570 Tomahawk for around 230 and get full PCIe 4.0 support. I mean hell even half of Gigabyte's own X570 lineup would be cheaper with only Ultra, Master and Xtreme being more expensive. B550 should not exceed 175. From that point upwards it becomes very difficult for them to compete against X570 that has a superior feature set.

Unless Ampere and RDNA2 fully utilize PCIe 4.0 and someone desperately needs PCIe 4.0 NVMes for work multitasking, I don't see a proper reason to upgrade from B450. Might hold onto a little more and upgrade to AM5, because in current financial conditions, barebone amount of consumers will upgrade to Zen 3 + B550.

One more negative for B550 is the lack of support for 2000 series. Even MSI will not support those on their B550 according to the slide.

I thought the entire purpose of this chipset is to allow an affordable entry into Zen 2. Where are the 60 dollar boards for the people buying the 3100/3300x?

BlaazenWell, you don't buy chipset, you buy motherboard. This one is the only B550 with 3x M.2 PCIe 4.0 connected directly to CPU. And 802.11ax wifi. There's no such X570 board for this price.

These should be midrange boards and midrange boards should not cost 200 bucks period. Do new X570 boards if you want to offer new connectivity.

Some of these boards cost almost the same money as an MSI X570 Tomahawk that has similar or better I/O, same or better VRM, also WIFI for 220US. Would you buy a B550 board at 200 instead of that?
These should've come in about 30 to 40US lower and then it would make sense as it would be still a noticable price bump over B450 boards, but you could say you are paying for PCIe 4.0 and longetivity.

Now if I want to buy a semi decent Gigabyte B550 Elite board to replace my 3 year old B350 Gaming-3 I would pay 70% more for it, better yet B450 Elite is still available and said B550 Elite would be a 80% price bump over it...

I was planing on getting an 3700X when ZEN3 hits the market, but at this rate I'll just update my BIOS and slap it in my current board...

So now the question becomes, when can we expect X670? Or, a wave of X570 refreshes?

@ sutyi

I agree that Tomahawk X570 is priced very well but it has worse VRM, has only two M.2 slots and has worse debug options.

Blaazen@ sutyi

I agree that Tomahawk X570 is priced very well but it has worse VRM, has only two M.2 slots and has worse debug options.

Thought the VRM on the MASTER was the same as the AORUS PRO, I was wrong.

Still by the time that 279USD B550 AORUS MASTER hits the stores here Euroland I'm looking at like 310-310EUR pricing. For that money I can buy an X570 AORUS ULTRA board where I don't need to worry about the slot bifurcation shenanigans going on with the B550 to provide them M.2 slots you mentioned. Even tho even restricting the main x16 slot to PCIe 4.0 x8 this way probably wouldn't be saturated for a while.

Hi,

Beware! GB is not updating lower end 470,450 boards with the newest AGESA bios (F51) - only the higher end boards have received it so far. boards like www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B450-AORUS-PRO-rev-10/support#support-dl-bios and www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X470-AORUS-ULTRA-GAMING-rev-10/support#support-dl-bios which are Aorus and Gaming brands did not receive it.

Mind this when making a future proof GB purchase.

Here are prices for Asus B550 motherboards. Just divide these by 75 for USD.

Oh brother! Almost $300? I paid $240 for my Aorus Master.... my Z390 Aorus Master that is. And the Z390 Master is a OC & feature-set beast. Like someone mentioned, where are sub $100 boards? Most of B550 boards should be sub $100, since this is a budget/entry level chipset. This is $200 worth of lipstick on a $79 pig.


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Yeah i think i will sit this whole B550 thing out...When I'm ready i will just go X570..

TheLostSwedeBut the way they wired it up, makes it a really weird choice over almost any X570 board imho. I mean, who wants three PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives, but are willing to compromise on the graphics card lanes to x8? Yes, I know it makes nearly no difference whatsoever in game, but considering how many people out there are screaming that Intel is better for gaming because you get 2-3% more performance on average, then this would give you a further 2-3% disadvantage.
I just find it a really odd product in every way possible.

I actually think it's a very clever way of wiring up and using all the available resources of Ryzen SOC + B550. Ryzen SOC provides 20 usable PCIe gen4 lines, B550 provides 10 usable PCIe gen3 lines, of those 10, 2 are shared with the 5th and 6th sata ports. This board wires 4 of the gen4 lines to the first m.2 slot and the other 16 of the gen4 lines go to the GPU slot, or 8 to the graphics slot and two x4 to the m.2 slots 2 and 3 if used. 8 of the gen3 lines of the chipset are wired to the other two expansion slots.
The interesting thing is this: The first m.2 slots is x4 dedicated to the CPU. Now if you want additional m.2 drives you have the option of them being gen4 using the provided m.2 slots but obviously, as there are no more dedicated gen4 lines available, you have to share the ones to the GPU, so the GPU runs at gen4 x8. If the GPU supports gen4 like the RX 5700 of AMD and the upcoming nvidia generation then you have the same badnwidth as gen3 x16 which is more than plenty. But you have the option of pluggin the m.2 to the other expansion slots wired to the chipset as gen3 using one of these very cheap pcie->m.2 adaptors.
So, long story short, this board in my opinion offers the best possible use of the available resources in B550: first m.2 gen4 dedicated, the others could be gen3 with adaptor on pcie slot or gen4 sharing gpu bandwidth. Now that gpu cards are supporting gen4 this is a non issue.
P.S: We are talking about the B550 AORUS Master, forgot to add.

AssimilatorB550 is DOA at these prices - $279 for a midrange chipset, you have gotta be kidding me. At least it will push X570 and B450 board prices down.

Word. The Asus STRIX Z490-G Gaming (Wi-fi) I recently picked up didn't even cost that much. m-ATX board, but still. On the Z490 chipset.

I guess B450 will carry the midrange until AM4 gets replaced when Zen4 and DDR5 are here.

AMD needs reasonable sub-$100 motherboards to go with its sub-$200 processors. Nobody allocating their budget sensibly is going to buy a high-end motherboard to drop a 3300X into it, let alone a 3200G or 3100.

Gmr_ChickWord. The Asus STRIX Z490-G Gaming (Wi-fi) I recently picked up didn't even cost that much. m-ATX board, but still. On the Z490 chipset.

wow 6x sata on a matx,nice looks,reasonable price.

Gmr_ChickWord. The Asus STRIX Z490-G Gaming (Wi-fi) I recently picked up didn't even cost that much. m-ATX board, but still. On the Z490 chipset.

The issue is that AMD's chipset market segmentation isn't clearly defined. For example, X570 is supposed to be the high-end yet we now have the supposedly midrange, but newer B550 with better features (e.g. 2.5G LAN). It ends up creating confusion for buyers while forcing them to make unnecessary choices.

Intel's rigid chipset segmentation and re-releasing gets a lot of flak for some deserved reasons, but at the end of the day you know that a Z-series will have overclocking while a Q- and H-series won't, and that if there's a Z490 at the high-end there will be a H390 for the midrange (even if that H490 is just a rebranded H470).

What AMD should have done, IMO, is released B550 as B650, as well as a slightly updated X570 as X670 at the same time.

it is what it is,pick whatever you like most at your chosen pricepoint.

cucker tarlsonit is what it is,pick whatever you like most at your chosen pricepoint.

With Intel Z/H + Q, and AMD X470/B350 and earlier, the price point was a good indicator of the chipset and thus feature set. With this X570/B550 mess, that's no longer true. Staggered chipset launches don't work because they confuse consumers - Intel has learned this, AMD has not.

The differentiation between AMD's high-end and midrange chipsets has always been blurry due to the fact that both support OC, this blurs the line even more to the point where I question the value of having separate chipsets at all. Design one with a fuse that controls whether it behaves like high-end or midrange and ship it, job done.

I'm not sure when X670 will be released but I really hope that we will see B650 at the same time, even if the latter is just a reskinned B550.

AssimilatorThe issue is that AMD's chipset market segmentation isn't clearly defined. For example, X570 is supposed to be the high-end yet we now have the supposedly midrange, but newer B550 with better features (e.g. 2.5G LAN). It ends up creating confusion for buyers while forcing them to make unnecessary choices.

Intel's rigid chipset segmentation and re-releasing gets a lot of flak for some deserved reasons, but at the end of the day you know that a Z-series will have overclocking while a Q- and H-series won't, and that if there's a Z490 at the high-end there will be a H390 for the midrange (even if that H490 is just a rebranded H470).

What AMD should have done, IMO, is released B550 as B650, as well as a slightly updated X570 as X670 at the same time.

2.5G is not standard feature on all B550 boards. The same way it's not standard on all X570 boards.
X570 is still the high end chipset being a complete top to bottom PCIe 4.0 solution and giving out much more 3.1g2 USB ports etc.

Infact for the price B550 is inferior because it does not support cheap 2000 series CPU's.

Tomorrow2.5G is not standard feature on all B550 boards. The same way it's not standard on all X570 boards.

2.5G is a high-end feature and thus should only be available with high-end chipsets. Except there is no new high-end chipset to release it with, only a midrange one. So now we have high-end features on midrange boards which makes those board look higher-end, which makes the lesser-featured high-end boards look middle-range, and the whole thing is just a mess.

TomorrowInfact for the price B550 is inferior because it does not support cheap 2000 series CPU's.

X370/B350 aren't supposed to support Zen 2 yet literally every motherboard manufacturer has released BIOSes that do. I can guarantee you that B550 will support Zen+ and possibly even Zen in the same way.

Wow... so in the discussion on Intel / AMD and favoring the price cuts of AMD... and in the recent discussion on the cost of Z-boards and cooling for Intel 10th Gen....

This is reality, right here. Good luck with that 99 dollar board, you know what'll happen with 8c16t on it... FX all over again. So bottom line you're looking at similar price for the platform between both camps, where Intel has the good old distinction on the Z boards that guarantee strong VRM sections.

History repeats.