GIGABYTE B550

Von den großen ATX-Ablegern wechseln wir nach den letzten Tests auf das kleinere Mini-ITX-Format, bleiben jedoch zunächst bei AMDs B550-Chipsatz. Mit den kleinen Platinen lassen sich nicht nur sehr kompakte Gaming-Systeme kreieren, sondern auch das Thema Overclocking hat bei vielen Anwendern in diesem Bereich eine große Bedeutung. Genau ein solcher Kandidat kann das Gigabyte B550I AORUS Pro AX sein, das wir uns nun näher anschauen wollen.

Focusing on the GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX, and GIGABYTE has a pretty competitive offering for the mini-ITX crowd; in a trifecta of ways, including price, performance, and spec. The only PCIe 4.0 limitations to B550 on ITX are those that include two PCIe M.2 slots like this one, with one operating at PCIe 4.0 and the other reverting PCIe 3.0. The CPU drives the full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, and that both NVIDIA and AMD have been consistently pushing users away from multi-card setups, which of course, mini-ITX isn't compatible with. Other storage options include four SATA ports, all with support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays as per AMD specification, and GIGABYTE has done a good job at utilizing space around the board.

The Gigabyte B550I AORUS Pro AX is a well built, practical board with great features, including 2.5 Gb/s LAN, a top-shelf VRM, and an integrated I/O shield. When it comes to looks, the Gigabyte B550I AORUS Pro AX may not turn heads like some more flashy designs, but the neutral gray and black theme of the B550 AORUS Pro has an appeal of its own that easily fits almost any build.

The Gigabyte B550I AORUS PRO AX Motherboard gets a huge thumbs up from me before it even went on the test bench. It’s mini-ITX and that’s honestly a very rare thing these days. Most of the brands put out mostly ATX, and maybe one mini-ITX. If we’re lucky, we may see an mATX too, but those are even rarer than new mini-ITX models these days. Not for AORUS though, they’ve given us the premium mini-ITX board I’ve been waiting for. Plus, they’ve really crammed in a LOT of cool features and premium hardware, ensuring it can keep up with its full-size ATX counterparts.

Dare I say it, with motherboards this good and diverse incl PCIe gen 4.0 support, who needs X570? That said, pricing is the trivial point here as Gigabyte just overloaded this motherboard with premium features., but at 179 I am absolutely not disappointed. Dual M2 slots, WIFI6, and 2.5 GigE are some of the premium features. Then there's the single M2 shield and of course, the sheer performance as B550 on that processor and feature level runs as fast as the more expensive X570 boards.

We've used the word compromise a lot when discussing the B550 chipset. Partly because any time a company produces a more affordable take on a big chipset they've had to cut some stuff out to make the pricing work, and partly because the results have been so good across the board that we often wonder where exactly those compromises come.

The Gigabyte B550M AORUS Pro is a well built, practical board with great features. When it comes to looks, the Gigabyte B550M AORUS Pro may not turn heads like some more flashy designs, but the neutral gray and black theme of the B550M AORUS Pro has an appeal of its own and will be an easy fit in almost any build.

Wem die Konnektivität zusagt und die Optik gefällt, dem sind sicher auch die ca. 260 Euro nicht zu viel, die man aktuell für das Gigabyte B550 Vision D bezahlen muss. Den Argumenten, dass man dafür bereits gute Boards mit X570-Chipsatz und besserer PCIe 4.0 Anbindung erhält, kann man nicht wiedersprechen, wenn es um den reinen Durchschnittsanwender geht. Nur wird sich dieser so ein Board ja eh kaum kaufen. Zu wenig RGB, zu wenig Gaming-Prestige, das sich oberflächlich meist nur über die Optik definiert. Für den Einsatz im Creation- oder B2B-Bereich, wenn es um mehrere Netzwerke und ggf. das Anbinden von Thunderbolt-Peripherie geht, relativiert sich das ganze recht schnell, denn das Bord ist ein kontaktfreudiger, kühler Geselle und keine Kirmesbude. Wer das erkennt, dem wird das Motherboard samt des Preises sicher nicht quer im Magen liegen. Mir persönlich gefällt es, objektiv aus dem Test heraus betrachtet und subjektiv, weil ich eher auf solche Dinge stehe. Was nicht heißt, dass ich mit Gaming-Produkten nichts anfangen könnte. Aber fürs Arbeiten bevorzuge ich eher den stillen Mitarbeiten und kein bunt-schreiendes Hardwarekollektiv. Und eines noch zum Abschluss: der Mut zur auffälligen Farbe muss einfach belohnt werden, selbst wenn es ein schlichtes Weiß ist. Wer sich meine Webseite anschaut, der weiß, was ich damit meine. Auffallen ohne umzufallen. Passt also.

With the B550 chipset, you get a single PCIe 4.0 for graphics, one M.2 slot, and overclocking ability. This should be enough for the majority of consumers. X570 is not worth the price premium for this user base. We also need to emphasize that B450 motherboards were significantly cheaper but, on the other hand, most B550 products are really fine, also in the VRM department. The Gigabyte B550 Vision D should handle even the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X.

Damit wir uns bitte richtig verstehen, ich teste heute mit dem Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master ein Motherboard mit AMDs kleinerem Chipsatz, also einem Mittelklasse Chip, der sich eigentlich deutlich unterhalb seines X570-Pendants einordnen soll. Doch genau dieser B550-Chip sitzt hier auf einem Oberklasse-Unterbau, der mit leichten Abstrichen und einigen fehlenden Anschlüssen so auch für das Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master verwendet wird.

Whenever it comes to deciding which motherboard you desire there are three key things to take into account. 1) What it looks like. 2) What it looks like. 3) What it looks like. What? Okay we're visual creatures and there are more elements than that, but we'll start with the obvious, the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master is an X570 motherboard in disguise.

The Gigabyte B550 AORUS Master Motherboard is incredible, it’s rammed full of premium features and well, that puts it in a very strange position. At what point do you think of going for the “mid-range” B550 chipset over the more expensive X570 chipset? This is a very high-end board for a mid-range chipset, and it’s got far more in common with an X570 but it doesn’t have the same number of Gen4 lanes. Of course, if you only need 1 Gen4 PCIe slot and M.2, I guess that’s fine too. However, this clearly isn’t going to be a mass-market choice for consumers.

Gigabyte offers an expensive but superb B550 motherboard with the Aorus Master. Every PCIe lane that was available has been rerouted and brought to use. The trick to get to 3x M2 SSDs is an x8 link on graphics, it's the one thing you'll need to forfeit on. But believe me, it's just not an issue for your gaming performance. Next to a proper looking motherboard (with very little RGB I might add) you also reap the benefits of 2.5G Ethernet and AX WIFI.

Mit dem ASUS ROG Strix B550-E Gaming (Hardwareluxx-Test) haben wir uns das erste Mainboard mit AMDs B550-Chipsatz näher angeschaut, das in der oberen Mittelklasse angesiedelt ist. Anders präsentiert sich dagegen Gigabytes B550 AORUS Pro für einen günstigeren Anschaffungspreis und absolut abzeptabler Ausstattung. Wie sich die Platine schlägt, schauen wir uns nun an.

I really enjoyed reviewing the B550 AORUS Pro. This motherboard proved to be beyond rock-solid stable throughout my testing. If you are looking for a budget option to get into the new Ryzen processors then take a look into B550 chipset from Gigabyte.

Gigabyte offers a nice B550 motherboard with the Aorus Pro. I just wish the B550 series overall would be a notch cheaper. My gut feeling tells me that if this board would be priced 150 SUD< it would have been a hit. I mean, decent features, good looks, proper performance and satisfactory VRM, but it is just that. The audio is Realtek 1220 based backed with WIMA capacitors. Next to that, you'll have an abundance of USB 3.2 connectivity at your disposal making this board really feature-rich. Of course, the VRM design is majestic, even after 15 minutes of 100% load on a 12-core processor I could place my hand on the VRM heatsink, it remains luke-warm. The overall performance is in line with X570, and memory support is great. With B550 AMD still allowed partial PCIe Gen 4.0 support on one M2 slot and your graphics card (x16 lanes), which is great to see. In closing I can keep things simple, this is your normal mainstream motherboard that will tick all the boxes you need to build even a powerful PC. Compared to X570 the differences are harder to spot compared to previous generations. Its feature set is more than sufficient for all your needs. If pricing would come down a bit, it would be a very recommended product as other then pricing it's delivering on all fronts.

The Gigabyte B550 AORUS Pro is a well built, practical board with great features, including 2.5 Gb/s LAN, a powerful VRM, and an integrated I/O shield. When it comes to looks, the Gigabyte B550 AORUS Pro may not turn heads like some more flashy designs, but the neutral gray and black theme of the B550 AORUS Pro has an appeal of its own and will be an easy fit in almost any build.