The best result we've recorded to date of any AM4 motherboard was the Aorus Xtreme at 55C while the worst result technically comes from the MSI MPG X570 Gaming Edge WiFi which had to throttle the CPU during this test for its own survival. The X570-A Pro ran hotter, but avoided throttling in this test. Moving down to the bottom third, the audio section on the left is in plain sight, not using any shrouds or faraday cages for the Realtek ALC1200 codec. We also see four gold Nippon audio capacitors. We don’t find any fancy op amps or the like here. However, the audio solution should still be fine for most users. This was a very lazy review. All of the cons really are not cons for 99% of the people building a mATX build.

Then in terms of features, you're getting an additional M.2 slot which supports PCIe 4.0 SSDs, and of course, the primary PCIe x16 slot supports PCIe 4.0 as well. Other features include USB 3.2 Gen 2, 2.5 Gigabit LAN, front USB Type-C, M.2 shields, better PCB, pre-installed I/O shield, much larger VRM cooling to go with the bigger VRM, a better board layout and just a higher quality motherboard in general. There's really no comparing the two generations as they're in completely different tiers, and pricing reflects that.For recording temperatures we're using a digital thermometer with K-Type thermocouples and we'll be reporting the peak rear PCB temperature. We're also not reporting Delta T over Ambient, instead we maintain a room temperature of 21 degrees as this is by far the most accurate way to conduct this testing. Monitoring the ambient temperature is a thermocouple positioned next to the test system. Should also note that there is an updated version of this board, denoted with a -P, that upgrades the ethernet to 2.5Gb and ups the supported RAM speed to DDR4-4400. The audio solution may or may not be different (different model numbers are shown in the Newegg listings). Otherwise it seems identical. Supports DDR4 2667/ 2800 /2933 /3000 /3066 /3200 /3466 /3600/ 3733 /3866 /4000 /4133 /4266 /4400+ MHz by A-XMP OC MODE

kaalus said:Why would you want more than 4 SATA ports? 4 is too many already, 2 would be perfectly fine. SATA is legacy anyway, and most people should have their harddrives in a server, not in their desktop. No WiFI? That's a plus. And who needs so many USB ports? Personally, 4 SATA ports is just about perfect. 1 NVME M.2 port for the boot drive, 1 SATA for large storage for the main machine and 3 SATA for the VM server. Or, just put all 4 SATAs to the VM and map the large storage for the main system to the server. It would almost be as fast as local storage. For this test we'll be mirroring the setup we used with the X570 motherboards as we want to compare that thermal data. Do note that X570 boards were tested some time ago using earlier AGESA versions, so there might be some small discrepancies there. This is a fairly extreme VRM test setup, as the idea was to stress high-end X570 boards to ensure they could handle all conditions. The plan was to revisit the testing with the Ryzen 9 3950X, given the 3900X was the most high-end AM4 CPU available at the time of testing, but after all the 3950X doesn't use that much more power than the 3900X, so we didn't bother. Rather than installing the boards in an ATX case like we often do, we're using an open air-test bed with no direct air-flow. However, through further testing we've found that the results in a poorly ventilated case are actually worse, so we guess this isn't an absolute worst case scenario, no pun intended. Placing load on the CPU is Blender running the Gooseberry workload and the temperatures are reported after an hour. In the middle of the board, we spot three PCIe slots: two full-length and one single x1 size slot. The primary GPU slot uses Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable PCIe armor for additional shearing protection and retention strength for heavy video cards. The top slot is fed from the CPU and runs at PCIe 4.0 x16 speeds. The second full-length slot is fed from the chipset and runs at PCIe 3.0 x4 speeds. Meanwhile, the x1 slot, also sourced from the chipset, runs at PCIe 3.0 x1 speeds. The only concern I have with this configuration is the x1 slot’s location. If you use anything more than a single-slot video card, it will cover the x1 slot, making it unusable. That said, it’s a MicroATX board, so there isn’t a lot of room and many similarly-sized boards run into the same issue.Before we get into testing, let's briefly discuss why B550 motherboards are more expensive than what most were expecting. For this discussion we'll use the MSI B550 range as a point of reference for a number of reasons: they had some of the best quality B450 boards with the Tomahawk and Pro Carbon, we have two of their new B550 boards for testing, and they also provided us with a detailed breakdown of their entire B550 range, including VRM configurations and pricing. What we may be witnessing here is increased demand for Ryzen products and board makers want to get in on the action. Ryzen has made it through that period of uncertainty since the first generation, as a result B450 sales were significantly higher than that of B350, which we're told by all accounts did very well. Supports AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series/ Ryzen™ 5000 G-Series/ Ryzen™ 4000 G-Series/ Ryzen™ 3000 and Ryzen™ 3000 G-Series Processors Supports AMD Ryzen™ 5000 & 3000 Series desktop processors (not compatible with AMD Ryzen™ 5 3400G & Ryzen™ 3 3200G) and AMD Ryzen™ 4000 G-Series desktop processors