AMD B550 Chipset Motherboards Priced Roughly on-par with B450 Based Ones

[btarunr]

AMD's upcoming B550 desktop chipset, which plays second-fiddle to the premium X570, could bring relief to gaming PC builders wanting to put together 3rd gen Ryzen desktops with PCI-Express gen 4.0 graphics and M.2 SSD connectivity on the cheap. Pricing of a handful ASUS B550 motherboards was leaked to the web by Australian retailer ICIT.net.au, who listed the somewhat premium ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming for AUD $262.90, including GST (converts to USD $167 including all taxes). The retailer also lists TUF B550-Plus Gaming and Prime B550M-A at the same exact price, which could be pre-launch inflation (so we're going by the price of what could be the best-endowed SKUs among the three).

If this pricing holds up, B550 based boards could launch at prices close to those of B450 boards at launch. The B550 is AMD's mid-range desktop chipset that is expected to enable PCI-Express gen 4.0, at least where it matters the most (the main x16 slot and the M.2 slot that's wired to the AM4 SoC). Much like its predecessors, the B450 and B350, it could enable CPU- and memory overclocking. Reports dating back to Q3-2019 point to the B550 being ASMedia-sourced, and having a far lower chipset TDP than the X570 (making do with passive heatsinks like the AMD 400-series).



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[londiste]

ASUS ROG Strix B450-F Gaming is ~130€
ASUS TUF B450-Plus Gaming is ~100€
ASUS Prime B450M-A is ~75€

Assuming AUD, the B550 prices are ~150€

 

[Caring1]

Never heard of them (Australian retailer ICIT.net.au), and bad gateway 502 on every link to them.

 

[TheLostSwede]

ASUS ROG Strix B450-F Gaming is ~130€
ASUS TUF B450-Plus Gaming is ~100€
ASUS Prime B450M-A is ~75€

Assuming AUD, the B550 prices are ~150€

Don't take early prices like this as gospel. A lot of companies put up early prices that are 50-100% higher, or more, than the final retail prices.

 

[btarunr]

Never heard of them (Australian retailer ICIT.net.au), and bad gateway 502 on every link to them.

Not surprised as it's WA-based.

 

[Caring1]

Not surprised as it's WA-based.

A lot of PC imports actually come through W.A. and I have been researching suppliers/ retailers for years yet never once come across their website.

 

[s3thra]

Well their site is down today, but it looks like they've been online since as far back as 2003:

Wayback Machine

web.archive.org

Here's their online store from 9th of March 2020:

!Shortage Lexar NS100 1TB 2.5″ SATA SSD – 550/450MB/s Read Shock/Vibration Resistant DASH Software 3yr Warr. (LS) - interconnect IT solutions

Lexar NS100 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD - 550MB/s Read Shock/Vibration Resistant DASH Software 3yr Warr. FEATURES - Upgrade your laptop or desktop computer for faster startups, data transfers, and application loads with read speeds of up to 550MB/s 1 - Faster performance and more reliable than traditional...

web.archive.org

 

[Metroid]

Lets hope they are as good as msi b450 boards, besides msi there are no cost benefit b450 boards. I'm owner of a b450 gaming plus for about 15 months and so far no problems, very happy with it and since pcie4.0 is not yet an issue i see no need to upgrade. However is good to have a b550 board in the market in case my board stop working and same price, it's a win win.

 

[Caring1]

Well their site is down today, but it looks like they've been online since as far back as 2003:

Yep, I'm not denying they exist, just they seem to be a small retailer that I have never come across before, to me it seems they are using those prices as place holders until they have confirmation.
I will be looking for a B550 from one of my usual sources though as I don't like waiting too long once a decision is made.

 

[Decryptor009]

Although i am happy with my 2600X i have been thinking of moving to Ryzen 3000.

If B550 offers better value then it may just happen.

 

[Ruru]

Lets hope they are as good as msi b450 boards, besides msi there are no cost benefit b450 boards. I'm owner of a b450 gaming plus for about 15 months and so far no problems, very happy with it and since pcie4.0 is not yet an issue i see no need to upgrade. However is good to have a b550 board in the market in case my board stop working and same price, it's a win win.

Exactly. Been thinking about switching to mATX, but I might as well wait for B550 boards to arrive. Otherwise I'd stay with my huge EATX cube, but my friend has a Define Mini C for a pretty fine price to sell.

 

[watzupken]

Considering that this is new, it is likely to cost more than a B450 which has been around for couple of years. The B550 should maintain its price since Intel is also getting aggressive in terms of pricing. So if AMD is willing to offer cheaper CPU, I feel they will also do the same for the motherboard chipset (even though AMD can sell this at a higher price because this is an overclocking friendly chipset).

Looking forward to seeing some good ITX boards based on the B550. Been holding off the ITX board purchase to see what B550 offers.

 

[Jism]

A overclocking friendly chipset? You know the northbridge and all that is housed into the CPU these days. The only role a mobo has is to bring the wiring and the southbridge all together.

In my mind a overclocking friendly chipset would be a chipset that allows to tinker with FSB's or have a seperate clockgenerator for the CPU without harming the PBO's ability in the first place. If your talking about setting a multiplier for just the CPU; again this is within the CPU set by AMD, not the chipset.

 

[Ruru]

Yeah, these days the "chipset" is like what the southbridge was before.

e: Damn, you said it already, well, anyway... the major difference between AMD chipsets these days are the amount of SATA etc., and that's just exactly like southbridges were.

 

[Jism]

Yeah, these days the "chipset" is like what the southbridge was before.

We're getting to a point that a motherboard actually starts to have less features then before, aside from the USB3/Nvme/PCI-E/VRM and all that apart. I mean back in the days you could choose a high-end motherboard and chipset combination that could easily do 330Mhz FSB on the already stock 200Mhz. That was considered a high-end board with a beefy VRM that could pack some serious watts.

Now we have a dozen of the same shit sort of say, the only thing making it special would be whatever you need it to your wishes. But VRM's these are no longer a selling point anyway. You could drive a 3900X on a cheap 50$ B350 board and still overclock it. All are designed within AMD's specs (and they have to) to ensure full stability even with high-end CPU's.

We have to rely on what boardmakers gives us special these days. Have a overshoot in PBO for example. Or some other cool gimmick, but we're pretty much at a point that almost every board is like the same. I bought an Asus 470-F strix. First time in my life the onboard NIC just blew up, stopped being recognized. Intel stuff obviously. I dont know what it is with Intel these days but the quality of their NIC's is'nt what it used to be anymore.

 

[Ruru]

Yeah, I got your point. Back in the day the cheapest boards were so stripped that they were fine for office use etc., but these days you can build even a budget gaming rig with a cheap motherboard.

And overclocking is just artificially disabled on those non-overclockable components. Though overclocking a CPU isn't what it used to be before. I run my R5 2600 at stock and still have custom loop cooling, at least it's silent.

 

[Jism]

Yep. If you take into account that PBO already maxes out your CPU's ability to overclock, then the fun is getting less and less with the day. It takes exotic cooling that goes subzero to extract some more out of it.

 

[RH92]

Although i am happy with my 2600X i have been thinking of moving to Ryzen 3000.

If B550 offers better value then it may just happen.

Unless you are absolutely in need for PCIe 4.0 then Ryzen 3000 will do just fine on your B450 . B550 only makes sense for newcomers .

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

If the B550 were to be much more expensive than the B450, then there's little to no point in getting one since it's essentially a B450 with PCIe gen4 wiring/support.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

Not surprised as it's WA-based.

What does "WA based" mean?

 

[ARF]

What does "WA based" mean?

I guess Western Australia.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

Yep. If you take into account that PBO already maxes out your CPU's ability to overclock, then the fun is getting less and less with the day. It takes exotic cooling that goes subzero to extract some more out of it.

Most people don't find overclocking "fun", and the vast majority of users don't want to have to tinker with their CPU to get the performance they've paid for.... Maxing out CPU performance at the factory is the smartest and best thing to do

 

[ARF]

Most people don't find overclocking "fun", and the vast majority of users don't want to have to tinker with their CPU to get the performance they've paid for.... Maxing out CPU performance at the factory is the smartest and best thing to do

Overclocking is good but not on Ryzen because they tend to not overclock well.
Do you remember the first Core 2 Duo chips that overclocked from 1.5 GHz to 3 GHz ?

It's good to extract more performance.

 

[kapone32]

B450 boards are currently overpriced in Canada. There are some B450 boards within $10 of cheap X570 boards on Amazon and Newegg. I fully expect that these will be no lower than $160 in Canada,

 

[TheLostSwede]

What does "WA based" mean?

West Australia.

If the B550 were to be much more expensive than the B450, then there's little to no point in getting one since it's essentially a B450 with PCIe gen4 wiring/support.

And you know this how? So far, we've had zero information about what's new in the chipset itself. If it comes with PCIe 3.0 over PCIe 2.0, that in itself would be a big step up imho. Why? Because your NVMe drives will run at full tilt, instead of being limited to the much slower PCIe 2.0 bus.