Introduction

It has been just over a year since AMD released the budget-friendly B550 chipset, and it continues to be a smash hit among consumers. Like the X570, It also provides PCIe Gen4 support to the AM4 socket, but keeps the focus on a lower entry price. These two things are the biggest selling points of the B550. With the launch of the X570 chipset in mid-2019 came an unexpected price hike that left many AMD fans frustrated, as many consumers felt they were taken advantage of with an early adopter tax for the PCIe Gen4 support.

AMD's answer to appease the community was to release the B550 chipset that still includes PCIe Gen4 support, but at a lower entry price point, with a few internal cutbacks to reach that goal. The main change over X570 is the removal of the chipset fan and downgrade to the 4x PCIe 3.0 CPU uplink instead of 4x Gen 4.0. This in turn means all additional PCIe slots and M.2 sockets are not directly linked to the CPU operate at PCIe Gen3. Depending on the user, this change has minor implications as it still supports the same CPUs and has PCIe Gen4 support, which is the main feature on both B550 and X570.

Following the ASRock X570S PG Riptide, the B550 variant aims to replicate the same features that made the other a successful product for a gamer on a budget. The B550 PG Riptide taps into the APU market as well with an included HDMI output and the ability to easily replace the CPU at a later date to any of the Zen 2 (3000) or Zen 3 (5000) series lineup.


In today's review, we will be taking a close look at the ASRock B550 PG Riptide. Featuring a PCIe 4.0-ready solution with 2.5 GbE Ethernet powered by the Killer E3001G, Wi-Fi Ready, DDR4-4933+ memory support, unique GPU support bracket, and ASRock's software suite to round out the experience, the time has come to jump in and find out what the Riptide is all about!

Specifications