Gigabyte Aorus B450 I Pro Wifi review - Introduction

Gigabyte Aorus B450 I Pro Wifi
A 17x17 cm mobo with nice looks, capable of empowering a high-perf PC.

We're going small today as we review the Gigabyte Aorus B450 I Pro Wifi, based on the new B450 chipset it is aimed at for Ryzen processors, and in specific the new Ryzen 2000 / Zen+. And with a 17x17cm, mini-ITX form factor this motherboard is small, offers good value and really has it all you need and require.

Yeah, Zen+ was launched in April, aka Ryzen 2000 or 12nm optimized Ryzen processors, the 'refresh' SKUs so to say. The new 12nm Zen+ processors will work fine with your X370 chipset based motherboard and vice versa, however, AMD launched the X470 chipset alongside these new Zen+ processors. The new chipset offers small improvements in combo with the new 12nm products. For example, to better facilitate XFR2 options. It has been a year already ever since AMD launched the first generation Ryzen processors. It had a bit of a rocky launch with the inter-core latency discussion a 1080p gaming performance as well as memory support. But the tide definitely turned for AMD as more and more people are considering to purchase an AMD processor-based PC, for their next purchase. The memory compatibility issues are mostly all gone, of course, we'll look at game performance in this article as well. But yes, things are looking good. The new 12nm processor generation can be clocked a notch higher. The upper range frequencies at 4.2~4.3 now are feasible, that also means that on the lower end of the spectrum, AMD is now capable to increase base-clock performance ion the more high-end parts. All these little tweaks bring the benefit of an overall faster processor series. Add to that improved memory latency and improved XFR2 ranges and you'll notice that the new ZEN+ generation now has become a really viable and more competitive product. So the ones that have not made a move towards AMD Ryzen just yet, now potentially could or will.  

The cute, and the quite frankly great looking motherboard is based on a 4+2 phase design, two phases apparently are reserved for a possible onboard graphics chip (APU). You will spot a proper VRM area cooling heatsink, it's been a thing that Gigabyte has been giving attention, nice to see. You'll spot 802.11ac wifi. Fun fact, if you'd pop in a Ryzen PRO proc, ECC ram memory is on your reach as well. Audio is covered by Realtek  ALC1220. The board can house one 2280 M2 SSD which is covered by a thermal shield, it has four SATA connectors. You will get two USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports on the back, together with four USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports. Of course, the usual RGB connectivity is present as well. 

The motherboard is very reasonable in its features but certainly grand considering its size in any DIY PC build. The dark and grey styled PCB does not have massive RGB accents, basically. Combine this motherboard with any Ryzen 2000 series four, six or eight-core processor and you'll have an excellent high-end DIY PC! Let’s start up the review, shall we?