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
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.
72 Comments on First B650 Motherboard Pricing Detailed by B&H
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.
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?
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.
www.msi.com/Motherboard/MAG-B660M-MORTAR
Realtek ALC1200
I'll bet that these boards come with fatter margins for MSI, easily.Any board over $200 should have the ALC1200 on principle, if not better.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.
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.Can you expand on that? I'm not the most informed hence i'm all ears for past/present/forthcoming developments.
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