AMD B650 Motherboard Roundup: VRM Thermal Testing

[Steve]

For those wanting to jump on the AM5 platform while spending as little as possible, which affordable AMD B650 motherboards are the best? We'll be torture-testing eleven motherboards to find out.

Permalink to review.

https://www.techspot.com/review/2633-amd-b650-motherboards/

 

[hahahanoobs]

Appreciated 🙂

 

[Burty117]

Wow, Asus really dropped the ball on the lower end.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Now THIS is the kind of quality journalism that made Steve Walton famous and made me a fan.

As far as the µATX boards go, I'd say that the clear winner here is the Gigabyte B650 DS3H. It only costs $155 but it still works better than many if not most of its competitors. I can personally attest to the fact that the DS3H boards have phenomenal availability as I see them literally everywhere.

The only way it could be challenged would be if someone decides that an M.2 slot that supports PCI-e5 is worth the extra and chooses the ASRock B650 PG Riptide. Who knows, it might be worth it in the very-long-term sense (especially in Australia where it's only $10AUD more) but the question would be just how long because right now, the data rate of PCI-e4 is already overkill for non-data-centre applications as it is almost indistinguishable from PCI-e3 to most people.

With regard to the ATX boards, ASRock takes it with the B650 PG Lightning for the same reason that ASRock's X670E PG Lightning is the board to get for the X670-series. Ironically, it's for the very thing that I questioned the value of, PCIe5. I do question the value of it but if it's being offered for free and nobody else has it, then yeah, get it! At $200, the ASRock B650 PG Lightning is one of the least-expensive ATX boards so you're not paying more for PCIe5 and the board has no other real weaknesses. The VRM thermals are great and the relaxed memory timings can be easily fixed to maximise the gaming performance.

As for the others, I personally don't like MSi but not because I think that their products are bad, I was just badly-treated by them in the past. I know that their products are quite good. OTOH, ASUS is really starting to slip. I've never personally owned an ASUS board because I've never been willing to pay more just to have a certain brand-name on a product if the specifications didn't exceed a competitor's enough to be worth it. Since ASUS boards have always had similar specifications as those of ASRock, Gigabyte and MSi, I never bothered with them. My craptop is an ASUS so it's not like I have anything against them but I never considered them to be superior to the other big three (or EVGA for that matter).

The ASUS Prime used to be a pretty good value, but, ASUS is clearly getting greedy because they know that there are enough sheep out there who will ONLY buy ASUS motherboards (usually because they've never owned anything else and therefore don't know any better). This situation always results in skimping on the specifications instead of raising prices to increase profits because "<insert-brand-name-here>-only" people tend to not understand the specs anyway and only buy whatever brand (in this case, ASUS).

In any marketplace, noobs look for the brand that they want and buy whatever they can afford with that brand-name on it. Experts look for the spec that they want and buy whatever they can afford that meets said spec. The former get fleeced easily while the latter never get fleeced. If you find yourself only looking for one brand, you might want to do a little homework and save yourself some serious coin.

All in all, a fantastic comparison in the true Steve Walton tradition that we all know and love. Cheers!

 

[Tran Bronstein]

Thanks for all the work you put into this, Steve. I am genuinely shocked at the poor ASUS results. They are my current favorite motherboard manufacturer, though to be fair I stick exclusively to their more well-known Republic of Gamers line of products. I know TUF is a line below but I wouldn't have expected it to do so badly compared to ASRock and Gigabyte. Good to know I should avoid these. Thanks again.

 

[n1njoe23]

Thanks for this. Finally jumped to AM5 from an old X79 Xeon gaming PC.

 

[BrwPCnrd87]

Great content and it illustrates yet again that you can't say any specific manufacturer is the correct choice. They all make good and bad products, except Asrock, I just cannot stand their BIOS. lol.

 

[yRaz]

Great content and it illustrates yet again that you can't say any specific manufacturer is the correct choice. They all make good and bad products, except Asrock, I just cannot stand their BIOS. lol.

I somehow ended up with 4 Asrock AM4 boards in my server room, I know what you mean. It's not that it's hard to navigate or anything, it's just unpleasant to use. I don't know how to describe it other than "I just don't like being here right now"

 

[passwordistaco]

Fantastic article! Looks like Gigabyte had it together on their B650 boards. I hope there's a B650E comparison on the works, too. That seems to be the "sweet spot" in AM5 chipsets.

 

[Gimp65]

Avoid the Intel i225-V NIC, one of the most troublesome NIC's in the past years. Even after many revisions and driver "fixes" over the years, the i225-V still hast lots of various problems, just do a search and you will find that this particular NIC is crap. Unfortunately alot of the boards have this NIC, but there are realtek options among them.

 

[BrwPCnrd87]

I somehow ended up with 4 Asrock AM4 boards in my server room, I know what you mean. It's not that it's hard to navigate or anything, it's just unpleasant to use. I don't know how to describe it other than "I just don't like being here right now"

Exactly. I have a three of them in basic office/workstation pc's and that is how I feel.

 

[Julnor]

From reading a few of these it seems like usually MSI is the way to go. Asus tends to be a mixed bag. Asrock as long as you avoid their PG boards can be fine, their Pro stuff seems to usually be the best value (although this time I think they are too expensive). Asrock tends to have sales on newegg but I don't trust newegg anymore after a few bad buying experiences.

Surprised how good Gigabyte is. I have an older Gigabyte build, they seem fine.

Also as someone wrote above you must avoid the Intel-225-V NIC, in fact I would say just avoid all Intel LAN entirely to be safe. Get the Realtek instead. I personally have no need for wifi since I wired my house, but I would want a discount for it not being on the board since other mobos do have it.

I'm still not buying at these prices. 6700k is aging but for my purposes is still fine. A PS5 is cheaper if I just want to play new AAAs. I still expect prices to continue to decline but it may take another year or two. I'm looking forward to the 7x3D reviews before I'd purchase regardless.

 

[trparky]

Where's the Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX in this list?

 

[trparky]

Avoid the Intel i225-V NIC, one of the most troublesome NIC's in the past years. Even after many revisions and driver "fixes" over the years, the i225-V still hast lots of various problems, just do a search and you will find that this particular NIC is crap. Unfortunately alot of the boards have this NIC, but there are realtek options among them.

And it seems that the i226-V is even worse. How Intel managed to f**k up this badly, I'll never know.

 

[wiyosaya]

No mention of PCI-e 5.0 on several of the boards for the M.2 slots. Is it safe to assume that they are not 5.0?

Personally, I would have liked to have seen mention of the PCI-e version on the M.2 slots for all the boards.

I guess I will just have to dig the M.2 specs up myself. 🤷‍♂️

 

[Khamul]

Funny how everyone was/is sh!tting on the DS3H.

 

[ddferrari]

I've used Gigabyte mobos exclusively for all my builds and have never been disappointed. They always offer rock-steady high-end power delivery, overclock well, and look nice.

Yes, their software is still garbage, but most of it just offers shortcuts to options you can do directly in the BIOS - which is well laid out and loaded with options.

 

[Biostud]

These are just the least expensive boards; next round will contain the next price bracket. There has been reports that the new AGESA 1.0.0.5c bios should reduce boot times significantly.

Personally I'm planning to get the Asrock B650E PG Riptide WiFi, as it is the cheapest B650E board that also has WiFi built in, and I already own a Sound card, so I don't mind the old sound codec.

 

[trparky]

There has been reports that the new AGESA 1.0.0.5c bios should reduce boot times significantly.

About time. My Gigabyte board sits at a black screen with EXPO enabled for ten to fifteen seconds at boot. Scary.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Thanks for all the work you put into this, Steve. I am genuinely shocked at the poor ASUS results. They are my current favorite motherboard manufacturer, though to be fair I stick exclusively to their more well-known Republic of Gamers line of products. I know TUF is a line below but I wouldn't have expected it to do so badly compared to ASRock and Gigabyte. Good to know I should avoid these. Thanks again.

I can guarantee you that they're all pretty much the same. I've had ASRock, Gigabyte, Biostar, ECS/Elitegroup and MSi. Other than the fact that the MSi board failed on me, I've been 100% satisfied with their features and performance levels because motherboards have a very small (if any) effect on overall PC performance. As far as actual PC performance was concerned, I never noticed a difference between any brand because, let's face it, the actual working parts of the motherboards (the chipsets) are all supplied by AMD or Intel (although at the time, AMD chipsets were ATi and nVidia also had their nForce chipsets) so a board's features were dictated by which chipset was used. That's still true today.

When I worked at Tiger Direct, I had the opportunity to really look at the difference between many motherboard manufacturers because we had ASRock, ASUS, Biostar, ECS/Elitegroup, EVGA, Gigabyte, Jetway and XFX. The differences were mainly cosmetic with the biggest differences being the number of USB and SATA ports, the number of PCI and PCI-Express slots and whether or not they had IDE and Floppy Drive connectors. There weren't even huge differences when it came to the BIOS because they were all by American Megatrends.

I honestly don't know how ASUS got the reputation that it has because I've never found them to be overly-impressive. In fact, I've never been impressed enough to pay the extra cost associated with them and so I've never owned one. My stepfather, the one who got me into computers at the age of 8, has owned several ASUS motherboards but, like most Baby-Boomers, he's a bit of a brand-wh0re because, in his day, brand-names actually mattered so, you know, old habits and all that.

He got an ASUS TUF X570 motherboard and he had audio issues with it. He had to RMA it but he had no motherboard to use with his R9-3900X. I lent him my ASRock X370 Killer SLI board and then went back to install his TUF motherboard when he got it back many months later. He lives 3 hours away from me so I ended up driving 12 hours total. I bought him a Unicomp keyboard a couple of years prior (bloody expensive) and I found it, mostly unused, in his basement. He said it was too loud (well, it IS an IBM model M, so yeah...) and gave it to me (I love that thing!). In the end, he asked me if I just wanted to take his TUF board and leave the Killer SLI. I refused because I didn't think that trading an X570 board for an X370 board was fair to him and put the TUF back into his PC.

So, here's a guy who swears by ASUS but was satisfied with an ASRock X370 board to the point that he was willing to trade his ASUS TUF X570 for it. That should tell you all that you need to know about being a brand-wh0re when it comes to motherboards.

Thanks for this. Finally jumped to AM5 from an old X79 Xeon gaming PC.

Wow, that's one helluva jump! Congrats!

Great content and it illustrates yet again that you can't say any specific manufacturer is the correct choice. They all make good and bad products, except Asrock, I just cannot stand their BIOS. lol.

Different strokes, different folks I guess. My last two motherboards have both been ASRock (X370 Killer SLI, X570 Pro4) and I've been perfectly satisfied with them. They used to have a really cool feature where you could do a BIOS update online from the UEFI screen. Sadly, they discontinued it, but it was incredibly convenient. I've never really had an issue with their BIOS, but AFAIK, everyone's BIOS is made by American Megatrends (AMI) anyway.

Avoid the Intel i225-V NIC, one of the most troublesome NIC's in the past years. Even after many revisions and driver "fixes" over the years, the i225-V still hast lots of various problems, just do a search and you will find that this particular NIC is crap. Unfortunately alot of the boards have this NIC, but there are realtek options among them.

You had me worried for a second because both my ASRock boards (X370 Killer SLI and X570 Pro4) have an Intel Gigabit NIC. I've had no problem with either but I checked the specs on them. Thankfully, they both use the Intel i211AT.

You know, it really makes you wonder... Intel's i211AT is a rock-solid gigabit NIC so why didn't they just leave it alone? The i225-V is also a gigabit NIC so it's not like there's any real performance difference between them, except for the fact that the i225-V is unstable.

I'll keep my eye out for that i225-V NIC and avoid boards with it. Thanks for this very valuable info. I'm sure that you've saved a bunch of people a lot of headaches with it.

From reading a few of these it seems like usually MSI is the way to go.

Where do you get that from? Steve wasn't very complimentary of MSi in this article. I don't like MSi because of a bad experience but these are Steve's words, not mine:
"Starting with the MSI Pro B650M-A WiFi, at $200 this can be considered a mid-tier board for this roundup. In terms of features it's a well equipped MicroATX motherboard though I have to say there's nothing particularly noteworthy about it, as there's no PCIe 5.0 support, you get the standard two M.2 slots and three PCIe expansion slots."
and then:
"For an extra $20, there's an ATX version called the MSI Pro B650-P WiFi, though as of writing it was on sale for the same $200 price. This is more than a stretched out version of the Pro B650M-A, though they do look similar."
Steve is pretty clear that he is quite unimpressed with MSi's offerings:
"But those boards seemed fast compared to the 53 seconds the MSI boards took, and we saw these same sluggish load times with both BIOS revisions. So this is something MSI will have to work on and it's a disappointing result, especially when compared to the Gigabyte boards which were more than twice as fast to boot up."

Asus tends to be a mixed bag.

Yeah, I honestly never could tell where ASUS got their reputation from because I've owned motherboards by ASRock, Biostar, ECS/Elitegroup, Gigabyte and MSi and the only motherboard that I've been unsatisfied with was my MSi K9A2 Platinum. The rest never failed on me.

Asrock as long as you avoid their PG boards can be fine, their Pro stuff seems to usually be the best value (although this time I think they are too expensive).

Have you been reading the same articles that I have? Steve has said the exact opposite of that in more than one article. In The Best AMD X670E Motherboards: 22 Board Roundup, VRM Thermal Test, Steve had this to say about the ASRock X670E PG Lightning:
"For those of you looking at spending $300 or less on an X670 motherboard, there are over half a dozen options. The most affordable one is the Asrock X670E PG Lightning and it also happens to be an X670 Extreme motherboard. As far as entry-level X670 motherboards go, the Asrock X670E PG Lightning and Gigabyte X670 Gaming X are in our opinion the best options."
So, you're saying that people should avoid a board that is, in Steve's opinion, one of the best options? Then, in the current article, Steve praises the ASRock PG Riptide, specifically over the MSi board.
"Moving on to Asrock, the B650M PG Riptide WiFi is on offer at $180, making it one of the most affordable AM5 motherboards. For the money it appears well equipped. Asrock has squeezed four PCIe expansion slots onto a Micro ATX board, along with two M.2 slots and one of those M.2's supports PCIe 5.0, a feature missing from both MSI models."
That's the exact opposite of "MSi is the way to go" and "Avoid ASRock PG motherboards".

Steve does say that the best high-end X670E motherboard is the MSI MEG X670E ACE but then he goes on to say that the Godlike is ridiculously overpriced. So, that's praising MSi on one hand and panning them on the other:
"The best high-end X670E motherboard is simply the MSI MEG X670E ACE. The stupid expensive Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme and MSI MEG X670E Godlike are excellent motherboards, but we can't justify the asking prices, especially in the case of the Godlike."
Your post is very pro-MSi and anti-ASRock PG for no apparent reason. You then try to support your claim by talking about getting this "impression" from articles that say the exact opposite. Sure, the best high-end X670E motherboard is an MSi board, but that's the only one that Steve seems to like. He certainly isn't a fan of their B650 offerings based on this article so maybe you're confusing different reviews here.

I don't have an axe to grind as the only motherboard brand that I've never owned is ASUS (unless you count the motherboard in my ASUS craptop). If you have any real information about why MSi is the way to go, by all means, reveal it. If you're right, you'll have helped a lot of people. The problem is, from what Steve says, it sure doesn't look like you're right.

Also as someone wrote above you must avoid the Intel-225-V NIC, in fact I would say just avoid all Intel LAN entirely to be safe.

I have no love for Intel but the i211AT Gigabit NIC used on my ASRock X370 Killer SLI and ASRock X570 Pro4 has been rock-solid over nearly six years of near-constant use. I've had no issues with it on either board, it just works. Intel was just being their stupid selves by not leaving well-enough alone. Their management "team" is so incompetent that they'e been shooting themselves in the foot left and right over the past ten years so them managing to royally screw-up something that just works would just be par for the course. I agree that RealTek is the way to go in most cases because their chips just work without any frills or fanfare and there's a lot to be said for that.

And it seems that the i226-V is even worse. How Intel managed to f**k up this badly, I'll never know.

Excellent! I'll avoid that one too.

No mention of PCI-e 5.0 on several of the boards for the M.2 slots. Is it safe to assume that they are not 5.0?

Actually there is mention of it. The primary M.2 slot of these boards are PCIe5:
ASRock B650M PG Riptide WiFi
ASRock B650 PG Lightning
ASRock B650 Pro RS
ASUS Prime B650M-A WiFi

All other boards in the roundup only have PCIe4 M.2 slots.

Where's the Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX in this list?

This is a roundup of the "Most Affordable AMD B650 Boards Tested". Gigabyte's AORUS motherboards don't qualify as "affordable". AORUS is a premium motherboard line so it wouldn't be included here. You would find the AORUS name in a motherboard roundup that includes other premium lines like ROG and Taichi.

Funny how everyone was/is sh!tting on the DS3H.

Who was doing that? I've never seen it (doesn't mean it hasn't happened) and I sure haven't been badmouthing Gigabyte in any way, quite the opposite actually.

When I make a recommendation to people who want an affordable way to adopt the AM5 platform, I tell them to get an R5-7600 on a Gigabyte B650 DS3H with 16-32GB of either DDR5-4800 or DDR5-5200. Back when I thought that I had bricked my X570 Pro4, it was the DS3H that I was going to replace it with. Thankfully, it turned out that it was just a bad SATA cable but if it wasn't, I would have a DS3H right now.

The only bad product that I've ever seen or heard about with the Gigabyte name on it was their first-gen PSUs that caught fire. Their PSU division is completely separate from their PCBoard division (motherboards and video cards) and had some bad actors involved. Gigabyte didn't take long to sort them out though.

 

[Avro Arrow]

These are just the least expensive boards; next round will contain the next price bracket. There has been reports that the new AGESA 1.0.0.5c bios should reduce boot times significantly.

Personally I'm planning to get the Asrock B650E PG Riptide WiFi, as it is the cheapest B650E board that also has WiFi built in, and I already own a Sound card, so I don't mind the old sound codec.

Having WiFi built-in isn't really a big deal because you can always stick in a WiFi M.2 adapter (which is what "built-in" WiFi is anyway from what I've seen) after the fact. I don't use WiFi in my desktop which means that the M.2 WiFi slots just sit empty. If you were to find a motherboard for like $50 less without built-in WiFi, then it could be worth it. An M.2 802.11ax adapter is only $23 and if somehow the motherboard doesn't even have an M.2 WiFi slot, it's only $28 for a PCI-Express 802.11ax WiFi card.

I tend to buy motherboards as bare-bones as possible because if I ever have need for an extra feature, there's always a cheap card out there that I can add to get that feature.

 

[BrwPCnrd87]

Different strokes, different folks I guess. My last two motherboards have both been ASRock (X370 Killer SLI, X570 Pro4) and I've been perfectly satisfied with them. They used to have a really cool feature where you could do a BIOS update online from the UEFI screen. Sadly, they discontinued it, but it was incredibly convenient. I've never really had an issue with their BIOS, but AFAIK, everyone's BIOS is made by American Megatrends (AMI) anyway.

I have three AM4 Asrock boards in use, nothing wrong with them, just my least favorite BIOS. I actually think I prefer my gigabyte GA970 the most, old and straightforward.

 

[Biostud]

Having WiFi built-in isn't really a big deal because you can always stick in a WiFi M.2 adapter (which is what "built-in" WiFi is anyway from what I've seen) after the fact. I don't use WiFi in my desktop which means that the M.2 WiFi slots just sit empty. If you were to find a motherboard for like $50 less without built-in WiFi, then it could be worth it. An M.2 802.11ax adapter is only $23 and if somehow the motherboard doesn't even have an M.2 WiFi slot, it's only $28 for a PCI-Express 802.11ax WiFi card.

I tend to buy motherboards as bare-bones as possible because if I ever have need for an extra feature, there's always a cheap card out there that I can add to get that feature.

I have a Soundblaster AE-7 PCIe soundcard, so with the gigantic video cards and so few PCIe slots on modern motherboards, it makes good sense to buy a motherboard with an m.2 wifi card for for me. Obviously if you have no need for it, don't buy a board that includes wifi. It stupid to pay for something you don't use, which is the reason I'm getting a B650E board and not a X670E.

The boards with build in wifi/m.2 also have connections for antennas, which those without does not necessarily have.

 

[trparky]

I don’t need Wi-Fi for my desktop either but I do need Bluetooth, so I benefit from that.

 

[VoidTheWarranty]

Am I the only one who hates seeing BIOS Flashback buttons? I want a clear CMOS button. Doesn't really help me when tinkering and I have to remove a graphics card just to access a battery or short a couple pins etc.