AMD B650 Motherboard Roundup: 35 Motherboards Tested

[Steve]

We can finally present to you the results of our extensive AMD B650 motherboard roundup. It's been a massive undertaking that took several months to test 35 boards in total, but it's finally complete.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/2699-amd-b650-motherboards/

 

[yRaz]

35 whole motherboards? not 34, not 36, but 35? Brilliant, absolutely stunning!

 

[takaozo]

Thanks for the review, that's quite a bunch of boards here.

This gen is insane, AM5 boards from 120 to 430 and only one chipset!

Looking at motherboards these days the mATX especially, when inserting a GPU those slots are not usable. I got a ATX board and from 7 slots only the bottom 2 are somehow usable. You have to leave some space for airflow on the GPU.

2,5 slots GPU need at least 2 full slots for airflow, this makes only for GPU 5 slots. And since I still use a Pci-E sound card that is the reason that made me buy an ATX board.

 

[bluetooth fairy]

Lords of the boards, definitely

 

[m3tavision]

All better than the outgoing LGA1700 boards....

 

[mcnabney]

Was there any other testing of the boards outside of measuring the backside of the board at load?

Was there variation in performance when using the same RAM, CPU, and GPU? Was there difference in system power draw at idle and at full load? Board temp is really easy to mitigate (increase case ventilation) while other inherent board advantages / disadvantages are not.

 

[Biostud]

I thought I was going with a B650E board, but in the end, I went with a X670E. I tend to keep my system for a very long time, and the $50 more for a X670E board being sure that I don't run out of M.2 slots/PCIe lanes was worth it.

 

[Badvok]

Have we reached a stage where there is no variation in performance between motherboards? The only differentiator being VRM temperatures and IO?

 

[torchyear]

Thank you Steve for the comprehensive review.

Just something I’ve noticed - I’ve been planning out a TrueNAS build recently and it looks like B650 boards have largely dropped ECC RAM support (which was sorta present in AM4 B550 such as Asus and Asrock). Was wondering what the state of AM5 with ECC is currently.

EDIT: turns out the Asus ProArt B650 has ECC RAM support, which fits with its target use as a workstation mobo. A few other forums point out AGESA issues that are yet to be resolved for DDR5.

 

[dangh]

Only two mini-atx? I was hoping to see something nice from Gigabyte there.

 

[wiyosaya]

Thanks for the comprehensive article. I'm planning at least one, and possibly four builds in the not-too-distant future, and this will help.

 

[wrodrigu]

Thank you Steve for the comprehensive review.

Just something I’ve noticed - I’ve been planning out a TrueNAS build recently and it looks like B650 boards have largely dropped ECC RAM support (which was sorta present in AM4 B550 such as Asus and Asrock). Was wondering what the state of AM5 with ECC is currently.

EDIT: turns out the Asus ProArt B650 has ECC RAM support, which fits with its target use as a workstation mobo. A few other forums point out AGESA issues that are yet to be resolved for DDR5.

All ddr5 supports internal ecc, are you sure you need to spend extra on external ecc as well?

 

[torchyear]

All ddr5 supports internal ecc, are you sure you need to spend extra on external ecc as well?

Good question. It's for a NAS that stores master media files for clients - RAW files and A-roll / B-roll video - so the data's pretty valuable. Perhaps even unbuffered non-reg ECC (which is the limit of consumer AM4 support) isn't good enough for that application. I've been quite disappointed with the off-the-shelf Synology and QNAP offerings, and was investigating AM4/AM5 custom build options with TrueNAS before heading into Xeon territory. ECC support was one of the selling points of Ryzen consumer CPUs, but 12th/13th gen Intel seems to have opened up ECC support as well - although only with workstation (W680) chipsets.
Edit: Reddit discussion on AM5 ECC support - link

 

[Facilitat0r]

This is an absolutely incredible article. THANK YOU for having written it!!

Now, please inform me... Is there any point buying a board now if waiting for Zen 5 (8xxx) processors to come out? (Since the AM5 boards are supposed to be compatible with them)? Thanks!

 

[javierkaiser]

Thanks, awesome article!

 

[Beerfloat]

So much garish gamer blah. When there are unique B650(E) boards out there like the Gigabyte MC13-LE1!

 

[takaozo]

Looking at block diagram

There is possible to have a board without the chipset if you don't need/want: SATA, USB2, COM and other legacy stuff.
A minimal design with 20 lines PCI-e 5.0 and 8 lines 4.0 should be enough for me.
I wonder how much will they ask for such a board.

 

[Picanha]

Just bought a B650M-K for a R7 7700 (not planing to upgrade anytime soon). Did I just F'ed up? Will it handle my 7700 fine? I dont care about PCI-E 5, USB number or M2 slots since I only have a 2tb M.2, a mouse and a Keyboard. I'm a bit worried right now. PS: Place where I bought it only had this B650M-K jump right onto B650M PRO AX and up, that's why I bought it

 

[IronSteeleX]

Was there any other testing of the boards outside of measuring the backside of the board at load?

Was there variation in performance when using the same RAM, CPU, and GPU? Was there difference in system power draw at idle and at full load? Board temp is really easy to mitigate (increase case ventilation) while other inherent board advantages / disadvantages are not.

Steve already covered those in a previous article, on a smaller selection of the cheapest boards from each brand.

 

[IronSteeleX]

Have we reached a stage where there is no variation in performance between motherboards? The only differentiator being VRM temperatures and IO?

Steve already covered some of these other differences in a previous article, where he delved into a smaller selection of the cheapest boards from each brand. Hardware Unboxed vid:

 

[Kwarkon]

One important notice for ROG Strix B650E-F Gaming WiFi: second x16 is shared with one m.2 slot

 

[HofyPC]

This article is pointless when the charts do not specify what the formfactors are of the boards. What boards are ATX? What ones are m-ATX or m-ITX?

 

[pateltr]

Can somebody explain me the difference in ' vcore VRM ' for 1st two moterboards ?
Gigabyte B650M K 8-Phase 4C10N/4C06N
Asrock B650M-HDV/M.2 8, 50A

In review for Gigabyte B650M K they said " it uses discrete MOSFETs rather than power stages, resulting in subpar VRM thermals "

and for Asrock B650M-HDV/M.2 they said " The Asrock board is just $5 more, but offers a significantly better VRM using eight 50A power stages for the vcore. "

I'm not a much tech. guy here and generally play games with mid to high presets at FHD resolution.

Thanks

 

[neeyik]

Can somebody explain me the difference in ' vcore VRM ' for 1st two moterboards ?
Gigabyte B650M K 8-Phase 4C10N/4C06N
Asrock B650M-HDV/M.2 8, 50A

In review for Gigabyte B650M K they said " it uses discrete MOSFETs rather than power stages, resulting in subpar VRM thermals "

and for Asrock B650M-HDV/M.2 they said " The Asrock board is just $5 more, but offers a significantly better VRM using eight 50A power stages for the vcore. "

Apologies for that section of the article not being ultra clear on the differences. Gigabyte and ASRock both state that their motherboard use an 8+2+1 power delivery system. The numbers refer to how many VRMs (voltage regulation modules) are used to supply electrical current for different parts of the CPU:

> 8 are for the so-called V-Core, the main power supply for the CPU
> 2 are for the SoC, the chiplet inside the CPU that handles data, PCI Express, etc
> 1 is for general purpose current requirements

The VRM is actually a collection of components -- a power stage (which contains a driver unit and a MOSFET), a choke, and a capacitor. However, power stages can be more expensive than a separate driver and MOSFET, because they are specialized circuits and better able to provide lots of current under a wider range of conditions, than using separate drivers and MOSFETS.

Not only that but looking at the motherboards, we can see that the Gigabyte B650M K has a total of 9 chokes, whereas the ASRock B650M-HDV has 12. This means that the Gigabyte motherboard is using fewer VRMs to achieve the 8+2+1 configuration than the ASRock model, which means it is less suitable for CPUs that use lots of power or ones that are heavily overclocked.

 

[pateltr]

Apologies for that section of the article not being ultra clear on the differences. Gigabyte and ASRock both state that their motherboard use an 8+2+1 power delivery system. The numbers refer to how many VRMs (voltage regulation modules) are used to supply electrical current for different parts of the CPU:

> 8 are for the so-called V-Core, the main power supply for the CPU
> 2 are for the SoC, the chiplet inside the CPU that handles data, PCI Express, etc
> 1 is for general purpose current requirements

The VRM is actually a collection of components -- a power stage (which contains a driver unit and a MOSFET), a choke, and a capacitor. However, power stages can be more expensive than a separate driver and MOSFET, because they are specialized circuits and better able to provide lots of current under a wider range of conditions, than using separate drivers and MOSFETS.

Not only that but looking at the motherboards, we can see that the Gigabyte B650M K has a total of 9 chokes, whereas the ASRock B650M-HDV has 12. This means that the Gigabyte motherboard is using fewer VRMs to achieve the 8+2+1 configuration than the ASRock model, which means it is less suitable for CPUs that use lots of power or ones that are heavily overclocked.

Thank you neeyik for explaining what is VRM.