We have reached the end of the review, and it is once again time to consolidate everything into a few talking points. As with previous reviews, I will start with what Gigabyte could improve upon the B650E AORUS Master to make this an even better product, before finishing on a positive note.

First, let's discuss the motherboard's BIOS and what state it is currently in. It's not unexpected to come across issues for a new platform, especially early on in the products life-cycle. So far there's been numerous updates that have been solving some of the early issues and strengthening memory compatibility. Currently, as it stands, the first initial boot sequence will be anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes. If any changes are made thereafter, such as enabling the memory's XMP or EXPO profile, the next boot will be the same long duration again. Subsequently, every boot afterwards (as long as you don't lose power) will be relatively quick, approximately 30 seconds or less. Besides this annoyingly long boot process, Gigabyte has done a great job with this motherboards BIOS setup. It seems very complete and has a easy setup menu for control over all the minor things like setting memory profiles, fan speed control and boot priority, without needing to dig deep into the BIOS. Those who do enjoy tinkering will find the majority of needed settings are present, except for the extreme voltages reserved for sub ambient cooling.

Circling back to the memory situation. Overall, support could be better, but as pointed out in the overclocking section of this review, a lot of this has to do with AMD AGESA updates. Gigabyte has validated to this motherboard with numerous memory kits operating at 6600 for the QVL list. However, this was simply not possible to achieve the same results at this time. To be clear, it's not just this motherboard or Gigabyte that is the issue, as it has been the same for every motherboard tested so far. It's still not that horrible and I think this motherboard does an excellent job for the vast majority of users. For example, without having to fiddle with any of the voltage settings or settings related to the memory in the BIOS, this memory will run four single-ranked DIMMs at DDR5-6000. DDR5-6200 is completely doable as well, but that currently involves some voltage tinkering. Therefore, at this current time it is recommended to stick with buying DDR-5600 to DDR5-6000 memory until future AGESA updates.

Going down the list we still have a few things to point out about this motherboard. Following the new current trend of removing the common five 5.1/7.1 analog outputs and replacing it with Line Out (Stereo) and a Mic in, this will affect different groups of people. Some who rely on onboard audio will not notice the change if they only have a stereo setup. Those who have a dedicated surround sound system we'll have to rely on that SPDIF or use an external audio DAC that also supports five analog outputs instead.

Next up is not so much of an issue as to just point out that this motherboard only has four SATA ports. This is because the B650E chipset only supports four SATA ports natively. Since this chipset is aimed at consumers that are more on a budget, some of these extra connections have been cut back. That is not the only limitation here. This motherboard also has some oddities like for example, the two lower PCIe slots. While they're both internally wired for 4X Gen4, only one supports this, while the other operates at x2 Gen4. It is still nice to have extra PCIe slots for add-on cards, even if these are set up strangely.

Lastly, something potential buyers should be aware of is how the M2 sockets are set up. While having up to two Gen5 M.2 sockets is completely feasible with minimal effort due to the way PCIe lanes are allocated from the CPU. Having additional sockets either comes from the chipset or extra requires a little bit of engineering know how. Gigabyte's engineering team has figured out a way to accomplish this feat by taking half of the primary 16x PCIe slot lanes by splitting it into two additional Gen5 4x sockets. The only problem with this design is that when either of these two additional M.2 sockets are populated, the primary slot will drop to PCIe x8. A commonly asked question arises. Can PCIe x8 Gen4 provide enough bandwidth for your needs? Most would agree that yes it does. However, in certain scenarios when using the graphics card compute abilities, this limited bandwidth can become a bottleneck. In the future when graphics cards become Gen5 certified, this will no longer be a concern. For now, its just something to be aware of.

Up until now, like many past reviews, the focus starts out on things that may impact different users. This often paints a picture that the motherboard in question is just not a good product. Sometimes that is true, though often is just part of the review process to explain different scenarios in which the desired configuration could be unsupported or worse, flawed in a way that really can cause a large amount of distress. So what does Gigabyte get right with the B650E AORUS Master you may ask? Well the major thing here is future-proofing. In the computer world, this phase is often seen as a good inside joke. While future-proofing isn't something often thought of as practical for computers, here AMD is seemingly doing just that. We (the consumers) just hit a major technology wave over the last year. The AM5 platform as a whole is designed to capitalize on this. Every Ryzen 7000 CPU has the ability to support DDR5 memory, PCIe Gen5 and M.2 Gen5 sockets. AMD is betting on that throughout the AM5 life-cycle, these three things will become cheaper and more mainstream. However, just like other B650E and X670E motherboards, this type of future-proofing has not been fully realized yet.

The price is considered a positive win for this review, which may upset some readers. Often when we think of a budget computer, we tend to think cheap. That cheapness can have a negative impact in the form of build quality and it can also be a balance of price to amount of features. The B650E chipset is supposed to feature more budget friendly motherboards. The Gigabyte B650E AORUS Master certainly not the cheapest B650E motherboard. Though, for many gamers this B650E AORUS Master makes the entire X670E motherboard lineup irrelevant, unless you need more USB ports, 10 Gb LAN or just more PCIe lanes. What Gigabyte has done here is create a product that is designed to last through the entire life-cycle of the AM5 platform. It may not have the biggest power delivery system, but it can certainly handle any AMD processor currently on the market, and quite possibly any in the future. This is in part thanks to the VRM designed around sixteen 105 amp power stages and a great VRM heatsink design.

The Gigabyte B650E AORUS Master certainly is not going to be a no holds barred overclocking monster by any means, or provide everything the AM5 platform has to offer. However, for most PC enthusiasts and gamers, this motherboard is absolutely up to the task of delivering a great end to end user experience. With that in mind, it's worth pointing out that Gigabyte isn't the only motherboard vendor, or the cheapest, but this B650E AORUS Master still gets some encouraging praise and should be seriously considered when building a new AMD based system.