The B550i Uh Aorus Pro AX: A Solid Option for PBO Overclocking

The ASUS ROG Strix X570-I Gaming motherboard is a popular choice among enthusiasts, but it's not without its limitations. However, there's another option that's worth considering: the ASRock B550i Ac. It may seem counterintuitive to choose the cheapest B550 ITX board over the more expensive Strix, but bear with me as we dive into the details.

One of the main advantages of the ASRock B550i Ac is its price point. At $180, it's significantly cheaper than the Strix, which makes it an attractive option for those on a budget. However, one thing you're giving up by choosing this board is PCIE 4.0 support, which may be a downside if you plan to run a PCIE 4.0 SSD. But if you're not planning to use one of these high-speed storage devices, then the lack of PCIE 4.0 support won't be an issue.

The ASRock B550i Ac is still a solid motherboard when it comes to memory overclocking. It may not have the same level of features as the Strix, but it can still handle manual overclocking of your RAM. This is thanks in part to its new memory topology, which allows for more flexibility when it comes to overclocking.

Of course, one of the biggest advantages of the B550i Ac is its ability to support PBO (Powersave Boost) overclocking. The Strix has been known to have issues with PBO, but the B550i Ac seems to handle it much better. In fact, according to the reviewer's experience, even high-end CPUs like the Ryzen 5950X can be pushed to their limits on this motherboard.

In terms of features, the ASRock B550i Ac has a more modest list than the Strix. You get four SATA ports internally and two M.2 slots (one of which is PCIE 4.0 enabled), as well as Wi-Fi 5 and Realtek LAN. However, one thing you don't get is Q-Flash functionality or a second M.2 slot, which may be a disappointment for some users.

Overall, the ASRock B550i Ac is a solid option for those looking for a budget-friendly ITX motherboard that can handle PBO overclocking. While it may not have all the bells and whistles of the Strix, its price point and feature set make it an attractive choice for those on a budget.

A520i AC: The Cheapest B550 ITX Board

If you're looking for the absolute cheapest option available, then the A520i Ac is the way to go. At $120, it's one of the most affordable ITX motherboards available, and it's worth considering if you can live without PCIE 4.0 support.

Of course, there are some sacrifices you'll have to make by choosing this board over a more expensive option like the B550i Ac or Strix. For starters, you won't get Q-Flash functionality or Wi-Fi 6, which may be a disappointment for some users. You also only get one M.2 slot, but it's still PCIE 3.0 enabled.

However, there are still some benefits to choosing the A520i Ac over the B550i Ac. For starters, you'll save $20 compared to the B550i Ac, which may be worth it for those on a tight budget. You also get one more USB port internally and an additional gigabyte of Realtek LAN.

One thing that's not as well-suited for high-end CPUs like the Ryzen 5950X is the A520i AC since its CPU support is limited.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys bill zoid here from the actually hardcore overclocking channel and today we are going to be doing the am4 motherboard roundup for the end of 2020. we will be covering atx m80x and itx boards um also in that order and before we get into it um i'd like to point out that i'm not factoring in the current state of the biases for the motherboards in the list because uh the bios is right now are a bit of a mess because new cpu launched amd is messing around with the agsa which basically means amd is making a mess of the agsa and by extension making a mess of the biases so there are bugs like usb port issues memory overclocking issues which includes xmp issues infinity fabric stability issues i'm surprised i've not yet heard about a sleep bug but i'm sure that's going to show up eventually so just generally the biases are a bit buggy right now basically all motherboard vendors are affected to some extent because this is like mostly coming from the amda gsa and everybody uses the same agsa before that this video is brought to you by ek waterblocks and it's rtx 30 series vector water blocks the ek quantum vector blocks include options for founders edition 3080 and 3090 cooling asus tough and strix 3080 blocks evga xc3 and fdw3 blocks and more ek has blackout acrylic and rgb blocks available including new special edition blocks with minimalistic aesthetics learn more at the link in the description below so i'm not factoring in the current state of the biases because hopefully in like a week maybe two worst-case scenario a couple months uh amd will finally you know stop messing up the agsa and we'll have stable biases but uh for now um yeah they're not exactly finished um the other thing i'm not factoring in is any sales that are going on for the motherboards the list is mostly going by msrp because there was quite a few boards that i saw that were on very deep discounts for like 24 hours which you know the video would lose its relevance very very quickly if i if i was like considering you know motherboards that are currently on sale so yeah with that out of the way let's get into it starting off with what i consider the baseline uh am4 motherboard just in general right now and that is the msi b550a dash a pro the reason why i consider this the baseline motherboard is because it basically does a little bit of everything you've got troubleshooting leds you've got an internal type c connector you've got six sata ports two m.2 slots second one is pcie 3.0 the first one is 4.0 um you get your you know 16x 4.0 pcie slot from the cpu and then you've got the second pcie for 4x slot from the chipset that runs at 3.0 um we've got a vrm fully capable of pb owing a 5950x and for the rear i o you've got bios flashback functionality so you can update the motherboard bios without having a compatible cpu um you've got you know a decent number of usb ports one gig real tech lan uh you've got a you know type c port in the rear i o as well so basically this does everything a motherboard should do um the only real like well it's not even a real complaint because at this price point you just don't have motherboards that do this better but the only potential issue you might run into with this motherboard is that it does use a four layer pcb and so when it comes to memory overclocking it's just not as good as some of the more expensive boards and if you're just running two memory sticks this won't really affect you at all if you're running four memory sticks then you might find that instead of being able to take your four memory sticks all the way up to like 4 000 ddr4 4000 speeds you'll be stuck in sort of the 3600 range um well more like you'll be stuck at 3600 or slightly above 3600 you won't be able to go all the way up to 4 000. you know and i don't really consider that a huge deal because if your goal is to just run an xmp memory then that's fine it doesn't matter um that you're stuck at 3600 because if you're if your goal is to go above 3600 you have to start manually setting the fclk and there's probably a good chance that your cpu won't be stable if you raise the fclk2i like at that point you're basically memory overclocking you're just not bothering with the important part of it so which would be the memory timings so you know i don't really consider that a massive flaw on a motherboard like this and if you're on two memory sticks you're fine so you know if you want a higher capacity just run two by 16 instead of four by eight if you're doing a ryzen build right now this is the motherboard i would look at and if you don't like the price point wait until we get to the mitx part of the video because we're going to cover some cheaper boards in the mitx section and if you don't like the feature set well then consider some of the more expensive boards that we're going to go over next so next up we've got the b550 aorus pro v2 in terms of overall feature set this is very similar to the a a pro from msi right you've still got six data ports though you do get a thunder like thunderbolt header over there there's an internal type c port um you still have troubleshooting leds and you get an extra pcie x4 slot from the chipset so you don't really get you know anything like that that's like the biggest extra connector that you get along with the thunderbolt header so if you wanted to get a thunderbolt add-in card you can for this board um you get a better vrm this is a 12 power stage uh vrm using 50 amp power stages whereas this this uses discrete mosfets um so in terms of like you can actually properly overclock a 5950x on this also this uses a six layer pcb with a updated memory topology this thing is really good at memory overclocking um going up to ddr4 5000 on two memory sticks is no problem and on four memory sticks you should have no pro like actually this topology if you're going to run like four by 32 can go all the way up to like 4 000 if maybe a little bit higher than that depending on your cpu or maybe a bit lower you know so like i don't know how my cpu compares to the like worst case scenario 5950x but um yeah so the memory overclocking support on a motherboard like this is actually really real on this motherboard is really really solid and uh you also get somewhat more stuff in the rear i o you've got two and a half gig lan um from realtek and qflash which is gigabytes version of bios flashback and you get more usb ports which i'm a big fan of so yeah and this board's 180 most of the like it's the 180 ish dollars right sometimes it's on sale some places is more expensive but it should be around 180 and i i really like this board if i consider like what i do with my personal system like i would probably go for a board like this because just getting a more expensive board than this just doesn't make sense to me like mostly you're just getting extra sata ports or extra m.2 slots you don't really see any massive noteworthy upgrades going with more expensive boards than this yeah it really depends on your needs but i think this is kind of the like as an overclocker i consider this the sweet spot motherboard anyway let's move on to the first of the x570 boards the tough gaming x570 plus wi-fi from asus there is a non-wi-fi version of this board as well now the reason you would consider this motherboard is because it comes with eight sata ports which is just not something you can have on a b550 board b550 boards only go up to six this has eight so if you need a lot of sata ports this is a motherboard for you if you want two m.2 slots both of which are pcie 4.0 um this is also a motherboard for you if you want great memory overclocking the b550 aorus pro is better because this is on a newer memory topology than this is this is still a six layer pcb so it's still going to clock memory better than the uh a pro but it's not going to be as good as the b550 aorus pro so yeah vrm wise it's also very similar to what the aorus pro v2 has so you know cpu overclocking is not going to really be any better on this either you do get color-coded troubleshooting leds but you don't get an internal type-c header and for the rear i o you get somewhat less usb ports um you get only one gig real tech lan but you do get wi-fi five so if you want wi-fi well you should probably consider a b550 motherboard with wi-fi instead because that's gonna be a cheaper way of getting wi-fi like the main reason this motherboard is on the list is for those people who just want a bunch of sata ports or you know dual m.2 slots that are pcie 4.0 um because other than that this board really doesn't do anything better than the aorus pro as far as i'm concerned at least oh i guess you got wi-fi as well so yeah anyway moving on uh now we get a motherboard where you know we take the connectivity options to the limit like now we've really maxed out what the chipset is capable of doing the x570 tai chi this thing is 200 oh i think i forgot to mention this is around 190 dollars so it's also not that one it's not that different in well this tends to go on sale for less than 190 a lot of the time but msrp is 190. um anyway this right here is the x570 tai chi it's 270 dollars and uh the whole reason you'd get this board again it's not because of the overclocking because especially in the memory department the aorus pro is just to beat the tai chi by kind of a lot i almost said wipe the floor but it's not quite that bad that would be more like aorus pro versus cheap four layer motherboard not you know um kind of expensive six layer but the thing is this is on the older it is on an older memory topology so this just doesn't clock memory as well as some of the newer boards but you do get a postcode power button reset button clear cmos so you know um you'll know exa like the board will tell you that your memory settings are bad and what exactly is wrong with them but you won't be able to do much about it um anyway the reason this gets onto the list is you get eight sata ports again you get an internal type c header but you get three m.2 uh pcie 4.0 slots and which incidentally you can't use all of the m.2 slots at the same time as all of the sata ports so it's one or the other you can't have both at the same time you do also get two pcie slots running x8 connected to the cpu which means the motherboard supports sli which isn't really that useful these days but it also means if for whatever reason you just need an x8 slot let's say you want to run five m.2 ssds well you could buy a pcie to m.2 adapter card plug it into that second pcie slot and now you've got the option to run five m.2 ssds on other motherboards you'd have to give up your primary pcie slot for that because the the am4 platform doesn't actually have that many pcie lanes available or like any other card that you can't run it through the chipset it has to be connected to the cpu well this motherboard is for that and unfortunately getting a motherboard with two x8 pcie slots really it doesn't get cheaper than 250 ish dollars the cheapest motherboard with dual x8 slots is actually like compromised in sort of a bunch of other ways so that's why this gets onto the list this is just the most flexible you get you know a bunch of m.2 slots bunch of sata ports you get the about as much pcie flexibility as you're going to get on an xf or any am4 motherboard um solid memory overclock like you know not the best memory overclocking but it's still solid for day-to-day usage is going to be just fine um solid cpu overclocking because again this vrm is actually very very similar to what you get on the tuff and the aors pro funnily enough and then for the rear i o you get one gig lan wi-fi six uh the one gig line is intel you get a clear cmos button bios flashback button and a okay number of usb ports um so yeah this board is primarily for people who just want sata ports and m.2 slots and the you know dual pcie though there are other options for the dual pcie x8 slots so yeah this is not the only option but this is kind of the option that does everything at the same time um well except for the part where you know sata ports and m.2 slots share bandwidth so you can't actually plug in all of them at the same time but you certainly have the option to choose with this motherboard down the line instead of when you're buying it so anyway let's get to the last atx x570 motherboard and that's the x570 creator this thing's 500 dollars and the reason this gets onto the list is very very simple it has 10 gig lan it has one gig lan and it has dual thunderbolt 3 ports that's basically it you also get bio flashback wi-fi six less usb ports than what i'm comfortable with somebody's gonna be like you can adapt type c like the thing is the only thing that uses type c that i have is my phone so to me type c ports don't count as usb ports anyway you get an internal type-c header over there eight sata ports unfortunately only two m.2 slots um but uh yeah like this is also the only motherboard with this type of rear i o connectivity so i'm assuming some of the like one of the m.2 slots got converted into thunderbolt ports um anyway you do get a postcode power button reset button clear cmos button same memory topology as what you get on the tai chi which does mean that the ars pro v2 is again going to be a better memory overclocker than the creator and vrm wise this is actually the strongest of the vrms here so this is a better vrm than what you get on some of the previous boards but in terms of how that actually affects cpu overclocking you're probably not going to notice a difference because the ryzen chips they aren't really that difficult to power and if you're using pbo then the vrm doesn't matter basically at all like as long as the vrm doesn't overheat it just doesn't matter what it actually is you know you still get sli support on this board so you do get the two x8 pcie slots yeah so if you're doing a you know workstation build and you need the 10 gig and the thunderbolt then this is a really solid option for that anyway let's move on to the m80x motherboards here we have the b550m mortar from msi and this gets onto the list because like internally it's a very solid motherboard the rear i o is in my opinion not the best but like what you get sort of inside the case is great so you've got an internal type c you get troubleshooting leds six zeta ports your pcie slots are arranged so that you can actually plug in a triple slot gpu and still use the bottom pcie slot if you need to you get your two m.2 slots again second one is 3.0 because this is a b550 motherboard and you also get the strongest vrm on a m80x motherboard that you can get for am4 so this will do a great job of overclocking even a 5950x now the bad news is that this is also on a four-layer pcb so in terms of memory overclocking it'll be very comparable to this that's the one downside i can't tell if any of the matx motherboards are six layers for the other vendors um actually no for gigabyte i know for a fact they aren't for asrock i know for a fact they aren't and with asus i can't tell um and if if if the asus one is a four layer then it's gonna be comparable to this and the asus one doesn't really have the same sort of feature set as this so yeah that's why this gets onto the list and um you know if you're not trying to push really high memory frequencies the the memory topology just doesn't affect you anyway moving on we've got the b550m aorus pro-p this thing's around 120 and do get the dash p version the non-p version is significantly worse in terms of the vrm the the dash p is perfectly fine for use with a 5950x the non-p version is going to run really hot um if you decide to overclock so yeah that's why and the thing is like the non-p version costs the same so there's very little reason to get that version instead in my opinion anyway um there are some downsides to this board because this is a whole lot of erm attached to not a whole lot of motherboards so there's no troubleshooting leds there's no internal type c port you only get four sata ports you do get you know two m.2 slots second one is 3.0 again and we get the pciex16 slot in a location where if your gpu takes up anything more than two pcie slots well you're not going to get to use that last pcie slot so that's very unfortunate effectively you have the connectivity of an itx board here in terms of pcie because of this slot spacing which is uh in my opinion a bit dumb you do get an upgrade in terms of the rear i o at least in my opinion compared to the mortar i have well you do give up the wi-fi but you do still get two and a half gig real tech lan and way more usb ports and you get q flash in on the rear i o as well so yeah um basically as long as you don't want wi-fi this is a really really solid option and you don't mind the you know less usb ports oh well less sata ports thing and the missing troubleshooting leds uh which like i care about like the troubleshooting leds are super helpful if you're doing a lot of memory overclocking anyway moving on cheapest motherboard with pcie 4.0 the b550m pro 4. you would buy this board because you want to run your cpu at stock or your cpu doesn't have very many cores and you just want some connectors on your motherboard so you've got six sata ports two m.2 slots you know pcie 4.0 x 16 the second this m.2 slot over here is 3.0 of course um you get a vrm heatsink so you can run this high core count cpus at stock and honestly you can probably do a little bit of pbo as well just depends on your like case airflow setup um four layer pcb so the memory overclocking is going to be you know on par with like this and this and this um with some differences because you know different motherboard vendors do use different topologies but ultimately it's just like you're not going to see a four layer pcb beating a six or really even being comparable to a six um so that's kind of the thing well actually that's not entirely true like technically you could have a six-layer pcb that is just like set up completely wrong and then a four-layer could beat it but assuming a good six-layer layout you're not gonna you know have a comparable comparable memory overclocking on a four layer though asrock can do really high frequencies depending on which memory sticks you use um and only two memory sticks you can't use four um anyway for the rear i o um you get one gig real tech lan okay number of usb ports some display outputs not much else so yeah if you just need like the bare minimum with pcie 4.0 support well this is the bare minimum for pcie 4.0 support because if you go any lower on the price you don't get pcie 4.0 anymore though i would like to point out that pcie 4.0 doesn't make that much of a difference in terms of performance for even high-end gpus right now like even an rtx 3090 doesn't really lose a bunch of performance if you use it on a 3.0 slot instead of a 4.0 slot so um yeah this is worth keeping in mind okay like it doesn't make that much of a difference but hey if you want the like primarily the pcie 4.0 here in my opinion is for the m.2 slot more so than the you know than the x16 for gpus anyway cheapest board in this entire video the a520m aorus elite this gets onto the list for the very simple reason that you can run a stock 5950x on this if you just want to run a stock 5950x have one hard drive in one gpu this is fine um it still seems kind of like a weird combination of parts but not actually that different from what you might see in time inside like a oem pre-built system right where it's just like some crazy cpu on a terrible motherboard which this isn't even that bad it still has a vrm heatsink if you go any cheaper those go you know those stop being a thing and with the high core count cpus that's actually a bit of an issue depending on what kind of cooling system you have for the cpu so yeah that's why this gets into the list mostly because of the vrm heatsink um other than that you do get q flash which is pretty neat for a motherboard at this price point i'm pretty sure is one of the very few motherboards down down in this price range where you still get q flash though gigabyte actually has it on their entire lineup for a520 as well but for a lot of the other vendors like you you don't get bio flashback functionality at all you do only get four sata ports and only one m.2 slot and the rear i o um well you do get six type a's but there's no type c anymore at all anywhere on the motherboard and you get one gig real tech lan so yeah if you just want the bare minimum to connect like you're you need to attach your cpu to some ram and a gpu and maybe an ssd then you know this is the bare minimum that that'll sort of achieve well no you could go even lower but i wouldn't recommend it at that point um so yeah it is worth noting that a520 the chipset does support seat memory overclocking so you can run xmp so if you have like a 3600 cl16 memory kit you could totally run that on a board like this and this does have a four layer pcb and i believe it actually clocks memory a bit worse than the more expensive four layer boards but i'm not 100 certain about that let's move on to the itx boards so here we have the rog strix x570i gaming um this is the most expensive am4 itx motherboard but like if you're going to be overclocking a 16 core or a 12 core a lot this one also has the best vrm of any itx motherboard and it comes with its own included fan so if your case airflow isn't properly set up for cooling the vrm well the motherboard will ensure that it does still cool the vrm so yeah that's why it gets into the list other than that it's reasonably capable in terms of memory overclocking but the voltage controls are bad let's just put it that way if you're considering this motherboard from the perspective of i just want to overclock memory for fun and therefore i want a motherboard with two memory slots because it's better for memory overclocking uh this actually loses to this and i know that because i have a x570i gaming and i also have a gigabyte motherboard that uses this memory topology and yeah like this this is like like it's not a huge difference but it is slightly worse and also the voltage controls for the memory on this motherboard are extremely limited um so i'm really not a big fan of that but cpu overclocking on a for like itx board for cpu overclocking you're not going to find a better option also you do get troubleshooting leds on this thing and they're color coded so if you can't see them you know properly you can still tell what part of the like which led is lighting up based on the color instead of well like if they were all the same color you won't be able to tell which led lit up if you can't look directly at them but here you can you know as long as you can see a hint of the like the color for the troubleshooting led well you can tell what's wrong so that's pretty helpful in my opinion especially in an itx application you do get also two m.2 pcie 4.0 slots on this board because it is x570 for sata ports and the rear i o for an itx board is actually pretty good you got one gig intel lan good number of usb ports by itx standards and a wi-fi and wi-fi six so i really like this as an itx board um this one's really cool in my opinion so anyway but let's say you wanted a cheaper itx board then i would go for the b550i aorus pro ax because actually this board tends to go for 250 to 300 there seems to be some supply issue with it which is why it tends to go like why it gets so expensive sometimes anyway if you wanted a cheaper board there's the b550i uh aorus pro ax this thing's 180 it's actually a better memory overclocker because like this the funny thing is like the same applies to asus asus has a b550i gaming motherboard and that's also a better memory overclocker than the x570i gaming just because the b551 has a new memory topology whereas the x570 has the old memory topology so yeah um but the thing is the b550i from asus is 230 dollars and in my opinion very overpriced so it's not on the list but this is on the list because at 180 you get a motherboard that depending on the airflow you're running can overclock a 5950x pbo should certainly be fine and manual overclocking the thing is pbo doesn't really like ever go over 200 watts in my experience you can punch in whatever limits you want and it'll basically boost up to 200 watts um even if you have the power limit set to like 250 or 300 or 500 or whatever it'll not really want to go over 200 watts for some reason um which does mean that you know boards like this are perfectly acceptable for pbo overclocking even a 16 core and then the memory overclocking performance is going to be very solid there's no troubleshooting leds unfortunately you do get four sata ports internally and you do get a pcie 4.0 m.2 slot and a 3.0 m.2 slot um so you do still get two m.2 slots for ononite which you know it's kind of a lot for an itx board and uh for the rear i o you get less usb ports you do still get two and a half gig real tech lan actually you'd get two and a half gig real tech lan instead of one gig intel which was on the x570i strix and you get wi-fi six um as well as a q flash button so you can you know bios flashback functionality right there which that's not present on the strix so yeah um sort of a different feature set and compared to the strix board um but at 180 like this is a really solid option for for an itx motherboard if you're considering the higher core count cpus now let's say you just want the cheapest possible itx motherboard well i would probably go for the a520i ac and the reason why i would go for the a520i ac is because the only thing you're giving up by going with this board instead of like the cheapest b550 itx board is the pcie 4.0 support and i guess if you want to run a pcie 4.0 ssd that kind of you know that might like that's actually okay that's a downside but if you're not planning to run a pcie 4.0 ssd then you know this this is fine um as i mentioned before even high-end gpus today don't really get much of a benefit from pcie 4.0 instead of pcie 3.0 so that's not going to be too much of a downside and a520 can do memory overclocking so in terms of memory overclocking this is actually going to be a pretty solid board and well you can't overclock the cpu so the vrm discussion is just a case of like well it'll run a stock 5950x just fine right and you get four sata ports internally and on the rear i o you do get q flash functionality but one gig real tech lan and you know no type c ports uh also just wi-fi five instead of wi-fi six but on the cheapest b550 itx board by comparison to this is basically you lose the q flash i think you even don't have wi-fi um and the only thing you get and you spend 20 dollars more and the only thing you gain is pci you don't even get a second m.2 slot you literally just get one m.2 slot but now it's 4.0 instead of 3.0 so you know it's like it doesn't make sense to me to go for that this is the cheapest itx board i would go for because like you can still run a stock 5950x on this just fine and you can overclock your memory a lot potentially because this is an itx board with only two memory slots that's it for the video thank you for watching like share subscribe and if you'd like to support us here at gamer's nexus then we've got store.gamersnexus.net where you can pick up modmats and other gamers nexus merch and we also have a patreon and there's links to both down in the description below and you know both help out immensely with running the channel so thank you for watching and goodbye thehey guys bill zoid here from the actually hardcore overclocking channel and today we are going to be doing the am4 motherboard roundup for the end of 2020. we will be covering atx m80x and itx boards um also in that order and before we get into it um i'd like to point out that i'm not factoring in the current state of the biases for the motherboards in the list because uh the bios is right now are a bit of a mess because new cpu launched amd is messing around with the agsa which basically means amd is making a mess of the agsa and by extension making a mess of the biases so there are bugs like usb port issues memory overclocking issues which includes xmp issues infinity fabric stability issues i'm surprised i've not yet heard about a sleep bug but i'm sure that's going to show up eventually so just generally the biases are a bit buggy right now basically all motherboard vendors are affected to some extent because this is like mostly coming from the amda gsa and everybody uses the same agsa before that this video is brought to you by ek waterblocks and it's rtx 30 series vector water blocks the ek quantum vector blocks include options for founders edition 3080 and 3090 cooling asus tough and strix 3080 blocks evga xc3 and fdw3 blocks and more ek has blackout acrylic and rgb blocks available including new special edition blocks with minimalistic aesthetics learn more at the link in the description below so i'm not factoring in the current state of the biases because hopefully in like a week maybe two worst-case scenario a couple months uh amd will finally you know stop messing up the agsa and we'll have stable biases but uh for now um yeah they're not exactly finished um the other thing i'm not factoring in is any sales that are going on for the motherboards the list is mostly going by msrp because there was quite a few boards that i saw that were on very deep discounts for like 24 hours which you know the video would lose its relevance very very quickly if i if i was like considering you know motherboards that are currently on sale so yeah with that out of the way let's get into it starting off with what i consider the baseline uh am4 motherboard just in general right now and that is the msi b550a dash a pro the reason why i consider this the baseline motherboard is because it basically does a little bit of everything you've got troubleshooting leds you've got an internal type c connector you've got six sata ports two m.2 slots second one is pcie 3.0 the first one is 4.0 um you get your you know 16x 4.0 pcie slot from the cpu and then you've got the second pcie for 4x slot from the chipset that runs at 3.0 um we've got a vrm fully capable of pb owing a 5950x and for the rear i o you've got bios flashback functionality so you can update the motherboard bios without having a compatible cpu um you've got you know a decent number of usb ports one gig real tech lan uh you've got a you know type c port in the rear i o as well so basically this does everything a motherboard should do um the only real like well it's not even a real complaint because at this price point you just don't have motherboards that do this better but the only potential issue you might run into with this motherboard is that it does use a four layer pcb and so when it comes to memory overclocking it's just not as good as some of the more expensive boards and if you're just running two memory sticks this won't really affect you at all if you're running four memory sticks then you might find that instead of being able to take your four memory sticks all the way up to like 4 000 ddr4 4000 speeds you'll be stuck in sort of the 3600 range um well more like you'll be stuck at 3600 or slightly above 3600 you won't be able to go all the way up to 4 000. you know and i don't really consider that a huge deal because if your goal is to just run an xmp memory then that's fine it doesn't matter um that you're stuck at 3600 because if you're if your goal is to go above 3600 you have to start manually setting the fclk and there's probably a good chance that your cpu won't be stable if you raise the fclk2i like at that point you're basically memory overclocking you're just not bothering with the important part of it so which would be the memory timings so you know i don't really consider that a massive flaw on a motherboard like this and if you're on two memory sticks you're fine so you know if you want a higher capacity just run two by 16 instead of four by eight if you're doing a ryzen build right now this is the motherboard i would look at and if you don't like the price point wait until we get to the mitx part of the video because we're going to cover some cheaper boards in the mitx section and if you don't like the feature set well then consider some of the more expensive boards that we're going to go over next so next up we've got the b550 aorus pro v2 in terms of overall feature set this is very similar to the a a pro from msi right you've still got six data ports though you do get a thunder like thunderbolt header over there there's an internal type c port um you still have troubleshooting leds and you get an extra pcie x4 slot from the chipset so you don't really get you know anything like that that's like the biggest extra connector that you get along with the thunderbolt header so if you wanted to get a thunderbolt add-in card you can for this board um you get a better vrm this is a 12 power stage uh vrm using 50 amp power stages whereas this this uses discrete mosfets um so in terms of like you can actually properly overclock a 5950x on this also this uses a six layer pcb with a updated memory topology this thing is really good at memory overclocking um going up to ddr4 5000 on two memory sticks is no problem and on four memory sticks you should have no pro like actually this topology if you're going to run like four by 32 can go all the way up to like 4 000 if maybe a little bit higher than that depending on your cpu or maybe a bit lower you know so like i don't know how my cpu compares to the like worst case scenario 5950x but um yeah so the memory overclocking support on a motherboard like this is actually really real on this motherboard is really really solid and uh you also get somewhat more stuff in the rear i o you've got two and a half gig lan um from realtek and qflash which is gigabytes version of bios flashback and you get more usb ports which i'm a big fan of so yeah and this board's 180 most of the like it's the 180 ish dollars right sometimes it's on sale some places is more expensive but it should be around 180 and i i really like this board if i consider like what i do with my personal system like i would probably go for a board like this because just getting a more expensive board than this just doesn't make sense to me like mostly you're just getting extra sata ports or extra m.2 slots you don't really see any massive noteworthy upgrades going with more expensive boards than this yeah it really depends on your needs but i think this is kind of the like as an overclocker i consider this the sweet spot motherboard anyway let's move on to the first of the x570 boards the tough gaming x570 plus wi-fi from asus there is a non-wi-fi version of this board as well now the reason you would consider this motherboard is because it comes with eight sata ports which is just not something you can have on a b550 board b550 boards only go up to six this has eight so if you need a lot of sata ports this is a motherboard for you if you want two m.2 slots both of which are pcie 4.0 um this is also a motherboard for you if you want great memory overclocking the b550 aorus pro is better because this is on a newer memory topology than this is this is still a six layer pcb so it's still going to clock memory better than the uh a pro but it's not going to be as good as the b550 aorus pro so yeah vrm wise it's also very similar to what the aorus pro v2 has so you know cpu overclocking is not going to really be any better on this either you do get color-coded troubleshooting leds but you don't get an internal type-c header and for the rear i o you get somewhat less usb ports um you get only one gig real tech lan but you do get wi-fi five so if you want wi-fi well you should probably consider a b550 motherboard with wi-fi instead because that's gonna be a cheaper way of getting wi-fi like the main reason this motherboard is on the list is for those people who just want a bunch of sata ports or you know dual m.2 slots that are pcie 4.0 um because other than that this board really doesn't do anything better than the aorus pro as far as i'm concerned at least oh i guess you got wi-fi as well so yeah anyway moving on uh now we get a motherboard where you know we take the connectivity options to the limit like now we've really maxed out what the chipset is capable of doing the x570 tai chi this thing is 200 oh i think i forgot to mention this is around 190 dollars so it's also not that one it's not that different in well this tends to go on sale for less than 190 a lot of the time but msrp is 190. um anyway this right here is the x570 tai chi it's 270 dollars and uh the whole reason you'd get this board again it's not because of the overclocking because especially in the memory department the aorus pro is just to beat the tai chi by kind of a lot i almost said wipe the floor but it's not quite that bad that would be more like aorus pro versus cheap four layer motherboard not you know um kind of expensive six layer but the thing is this is on the older it is on an older memory topology so this just doesn't clock memory as well as some of the newer boards but you do get a postcode power button reset button clear cmos so you know um you'll know exa like the board will tell you that your memory settings are bad and what exactly is wrong with them but you won't be able to do much about it um anyway the reason this gets onto the list is you get eight sata ports again you get an internal type c header but you get three m.2 uh pcie 4.0 slots and which incidentally you can't use all of the m.2 slots at the same time as all of the sata ports so it's one or the other you can't have both at the same time you do also get two pcie slots running x8 connected to the cpu which means the motherboard supports sli which isn't really that useful these days but it also means if for whatever reason you just need an x8 slot let's say you want to run five m.2 ssds well you could buy a pcie to m.2 adapter card plug it into that second pcie slot and now you've got the option to run five m.2 ssds on other motherboards you'd have to give up your primary pcie slot for that because the the am4 platform doesn't actually have that many pcie lanes available or like any other card that you can't run it through the chipset it has to be connected to the cpu well this motherboard is for that and unfortunately getting a motherboard with two x8 pcie slots really it doesn't get cheaper than 250 ish dollars the cheapest motherboard with dual x8 slots is actually like compromised in sort of a bunch of other ways so that's why this gets onto the list this is just the most flexible you get you know a bunch of m.2 slots bunch of sata ports you get the about as much pcie flexibility as you're going to get on an xf or any am4 motherboard um solid memory overclock like you know not the best memory overclocking but it's still solid for day-to-day usage is going to be just fine um solid cpu overclocking because again this vrm is actually very very similar to what you get on the tuff and the aors pro funnily enough and then for the rear i o you get one gig lan wi-fi six uh the one gig line is intel you get a clear cmos button bios flashback button and a okay number of usb ports um so yeah this board is primarily for people who just want sata ports and m.2 slots and the you know dual pcie though there are other options for the dual pcie x8 slots so yeah this is not the only option but this is kind of the option that does everything at the same time um well except for the part where you know sata ports and m.2 slots share bandwidth so you can't actually plug in all of them at the same time but you certainly have the option to choose with this motherboard down the line instead of when you're buying it so anyway let's get to the last atx x570 motherboard and that's the x570 creator this thing's 500 dollars and the reason this gets onto the list is very very simple it has 10 gig lan it has one gig lan and it has dual thunderbolt 3 ports that's basically it you also get bio flashback wi-fi six less usb ports than what i'm comfortable with somebody's gonna be like you can adapt type c like the thing is the only thing that uses type c that i have is my phone so to me type c ports don't count as usb ports anyway you get an internal type-c header over there eight sata ports unfortunately only two m.2 slots um but uh yeah like this is also the only motherboard with this type of rear i o connectivity so i'm assuming some of the like one of the m.2 slots got converted into thunderbolt ports um anyway you do get a postcode power button reset button clear cmos button same memory topology as what you get on the tai chi which does mean that the ars pro v2 is again going to be a better memory overclocker than the creator and vrm wise this is actually the strongest of the vrms here so this is a better vrm than what you get on some of the previous boards but in terms of how that actually affects cpu overclocking you're probably not going to notice a difference because the ryzen chips they aren't really that difficult to power and if you're using pbo then the vrm doesn't matter basically at all like as long as the vrm doesn't overheat it just doesn't matter what it actually is you know you still get sli support on this board so you do get the two x8 pcie slots yeah so if you're doing a you know workstation build and you need the 10 gig and the thunderbolt then this is a really solid option for that anyway let's move on to the m80x motherboards here we have the b550m mortar from msi and this gets onto the list because like internally it's a very solid motherboard the rear i o is in my opinion not the best but like what you get sort of inside the case is great so you've got an internal type c you get troubleshooting leds six zeta ports your pcie slots are arranged so that you can actually plug in a triple slot gpu and still use the bottom pcie slot if you need to you get your two m.2 slots again second one is 3.0 because this is a b550 motherboard and you also get the strongest vrm on a m80x motherboard that you can get for am4 so this will do a great job of overclocking even a 5950x now the bad news is that this is also on a four-layer pcb so in terms of memory overclocking it'll be very comparable to this that's the one downside i can't tell if any of the matx motherboards are six layers for the other vendors um actually no for gigabyte i know for a fact they aren't for asrock i know for a fact they aren't and with asus i can't tell um and if if if the asus one is a four layer then it's gonna be comparable to this and the asus one doesn't really have the same sort of feature set as this so yeah that's why this gets onto the list and um you know if you're not trying to push really high memory frequencies the the memory topology just doesn't affect you anyway moving on we've got the b550m aorus pro-p this thing's around 120 and do get the dash p version the non-p version is significantly worse in terms of the vrm the the dash p is perfectly fine for use with a 5950x the non-p version is going to run really hot um if you decide to overclock so yeah that's why and the thing is like the non-p version costs the same so there's very little reason to get that version instead in my opinion anyway um there are some downsides to this board because this is a whole lot of erm attached to not a whole lot of motherboards so there's no troubleshooting leds there's no internal type c port you only get four sata ports you do get you know two m.2 slots second one is 3.0 again and we get the pciex16 slot in a location where if your gpu takes up anything more than two pcie slots well you're not going to get to use that last pcie slot so that's very unfortunate effectively you have the connectivity of an itx board here in terms of pcie because of this slot spacing which is uh in my opinion a bit dumb you do get an upgrade in terms of the rear i o at least in my opinion compared to the mortar i have well you do give up the wi-fi but you do still get two and a half gig real tech lan and way more usb ports and you get q flash in on the rear i o as well so yeah um basically as long as you don't want wi-fi this is a really really solid option and you don't mind the you know less usb ports oh well less sata ports thing and the missing troubleshooting leds uh which like i care about like the troubleshooting leds are super helpful if you're doing a lot of memory overclocking anyway moving on cheapest motherboard with pcie 4.0 the b550m pro 4. you would buy this board because you want to run your cpu at stock or your cpu doesn't have very many cores and you just want some connectors on your motherboard so you've got six sata ports two m.2 slots you know pcie 4.0 x 16 the second this m.2 slot over here is 3.0 of course um you get a vrm heatsink so you can run this high core count cpus at stock and honestly you can probably do a little bit of pbo as well just depends on your like case airflow setup um four layer pcb so the memory overclocking is going to be you know on par with like this and this and this um with some differences because you know different motherboard vendors do use different topologies but ultimately it's just like you're not going to see a four layer pcb beating a six or really even being comparable to a six um so that's kind of the thing well actually that's not entirely true like technically you could have a six-layer pcb that is just like set up completely wrong and then a four-layer could beat it but assuming a good six-layer layout you're not gonna you know have a comparable comparable memory overclocking on a four layer though asrock can do really high frequencies depending on which memory sticks you use um and only two memory sticks you can't use four um anyway for the rear i o um you get one gig real tech lan okay number of usb ports some display outputs not much else so yeah if you just need like the bare minimum with pcie 4.0 support well this is the bare minimum for pcie 4.0 support because if you go any lower on the price you don't get pcie 4.0 anymore though i would like to point out that pcie 4.0 doesn't make that much of a difference in terms of performance for even high-end gpus right now like even an rtx 3090 doesn't really lose a bunch of performance if you use it on a 3.0 slot instead of a 4.0 slot so um yeah this is worth keeping in mind okay like it doesn't make that much of a difference but hey if you want the like primarily the pcie 4.0 here in my opinion is for the m.2 slot more so than the you know than the x16 for gpus anyway cheapest board in this entire video the a520m aorus elite this gets onto the list for the very simple reason that you can run a stock 5950x on this if you just want to run a stock 5950x have one hard drive in one gpu this is fine um it still seems kind of like a weird combination of parts but not actually that different from what you might see in time inside like a oem pre-built system right where it's just like some crazy cpu on a terrible motherboard which this isn't even that bad it still has a vrm heatsink if you go any cheaper those go you know those stop being a thing and with the high core count cpus that's actually a bit of an issue depending on what kind of cooling system you have for the cpu so yeah that's why this gets into the list mostly because of the vrm heatsink um other than that you do get q flash which is pretty neat for a motherboard at this price point i'm pretty sure is one of the very few motherboards down down in this price range where you still get q flash though gigabyte actually has it on their entire lineup for a520 as well but for a lot of the other vendors like you you don't get bio flashback functionality at all you do only get four sata ports and only one m.2 slot and the rear i o um well you do get six type a's but there's no type c anymore at all anywhere on the motherboard and you get one gig real tech lan so yeah if you just want the bare minimum to connect like you're you need to attach your cpu to some ram and a gpu and maybe an ssd then you know this is the bare minimum that that'll sort of achieve well no you could go even lower but i wouldn't recommend it at that point um so yeah it is worth noting that a520 the chipset does support seat memory overclocking so you can run xmp so if you have like a 3600 cl16 memory kit you could totally run that on a board like this and this does have a four layer pcb and i believe it actually clocks memory a bit worse than the more expensive four layer boards but i'm not 100 certain about that let's move on to the itx boards so here we have the rog strix x570i gaming um this is the most expensive am4 itx motherboard but like if you're going to be overclocking a 16 core or a 12 core a lot this one also has the best vrm of any itx motherboard and it comes with its own included fan so if your case airflow isn't properly set up for cooling the vrm well the motherboard will ensure that it does still cool the vrm so yeah that's why it gets into the list other than that it's reasonably capable in terms of memory overclocking but the voltage controls are bad let's just put it that way if you're considering this motherboard from the perspective of i just want to overclock memory for fun and therefore i want a motherboard with two memory slots because it's better for memory overclocking uh this actually loses to this and i know that because i have a x570i gaming and i also have a gigabyte motherboard that uses this memory topology and yeah like this this is like like it's not a huge difference but it is slightly worse and also the voltage controls for the memory on this motherboard are extremely limited um so i'm really not a big fan of that but cpu overclocking on a for like itx board for cpu overclocking you're not going to find a better option also you do get troubleshooting leds on this thing and they're color coded so if you can't see them you know properly you can still tell what part of the like which led is lighting up based on the color instead of well like if they were all the same color you won't be able to tell which led lit up if you can't look directly at them but here you can you know as long as you can see a hint of the like the color for the troubleshooting led well you can tell what's wrong so that's pretty helpful in my opinion especially in an itx application you do get also two m.2 pcie 4.0 slots on this board because it is x570 for sata ports and the rear i o for an itx board is actually pretty good you got one gig intel lan good number of usb ports by itx standards and a wi-fi and wi-fi six so i really like this as an itx board um this one's really cool in my opinion so anyway but let's say you wanted a cheaper itx board then i would go for the b550i aorus pro ax because actually this board tends to go for 250 to 300 there seems to be some supply issue with it which is why it tends to go like why it gets so expensive sometimes anyway if you wanted a cheaper board there's the b550i uh aorus pro ax this thing's 180 it's actually a better memory overclocker because like this the funny thing is like the same applies to asus asus has a b550i gaming motherboard and that's also a better memory overclocker than the x570i gaming just because the b551 has a new memory topology whereas the x570 has the old memory topology so yeah um but the thing is the b550i from asus is 230 dollars and in my opinion very overpriced so it's not on the list but this is on the list because at 180 you get a motherboard that depending on the airflow you're running can overclock a 5950x pbo should certainly be fine and manual overclocking the thing is pbo doesn't really like ever go over 200 watts in my experience you can punch in whatever limits you want and it'll basically boost up to 200 watts um even if you have the power limit set to like 250 or 300 or 500 or whatever it'll not really want to go over 200 watts for some reason um which does mean that you know boards like this are perfectly acceptable for pbo overclocking even a 16 core and then the memory overclocking performance is going to be very solid there's no troubleshooting leds unfortunately you do get four sata ports internally and you do get a pcie 4.0 m.2 slot and a 3.0 m.2 slot um so you do still get two m.2 slots for ononite which you know it's kind of a lot for an itx board and uh for the rear i o you get less usb ports you do still get two and a half gig real tech lan actually you'd get two and a half gig real tech lan instead of one gig intel which was on the x570i strix and you get wi-fi six um as well as a q flash button so you can you know bios flashback functionality right there which that's not present on the strix so yeah um sort of a different feature set and compared to the strix board um but at 180 like this is a really solid option for for an itx motherboard if you're considering the higher core count cpus now let's say you just want the cheapest possible itx motherboard well i would probably go for the a520i ac and the reason why i would go for the a520i ac is because the only thing you're giving up by going with this board instead of like the cheapest b550 itx board is the pcie 4.0 support and i guess if you want to run a pcie 4.0 ssd that kind of you know that might like that's actually okay that's a downside but if you're not planning to run a pcie 4.0 ssd then you know this this is fine um as i mentioned before even high-end gpus today don't really get much of a benefit from pcie 4.0 instead of pcie 3.0 so that's not going to be too much of a downside and a520 can do memory overclocking so in terms of memory overclocking this is actually going to be a pretty solid board and well you can't overclock the cpu so the vrm discussion is just a case of like well it'll run a stock 5950x just fine right and you get four sata ports internally and on the rear i o you do get q flash functionality but one gig real tech lan and you know no type c ports uh also just wi-fi five instead of wi-fi six but on the cheapest b550 itx board by comparison to this is basically you lose the q flash i think you even don't have wi-fi um and the only thing you get and you spend 20 dollars more and the only thing you gain is pci you don't even get a second m.2 slot you literally just get one m.2 slot but now it's 4.0 instead of 3.0 so you know it's like it doesn't make sense to me to go for that this is the cheapest itx board i would go for because like you can still run a stock 5950x on this just fine and you can overclock your memory a lot potentially because this is an itx board with only two memory slots that's it for the video thank you for watching like share subscribe and if you'd like to support us here at gamer's nexus then we've got store.gamersnexus.net where you can pick up modmats and other gamers nexus merch and we also have a patreon and there's links to both down in the description below and you know both help out immensely with running the channel so thank you for watching and goodbye the\n"