Gigabyte B550 Vision D review - Introduction

Gigabyte B550 Vision D review 
I have a dream, I have a vision?

Meet the Gigabyte B550 Vision D motherboard. This product from the Vision series (which includes also a Z490 motherboard) is an AMD AM4 socket product targeted at creators. Built-in the ATX form-factor, the design resembles GB’s Designaire models. Make no mistake, this is a high-end product. It should provide excellent stability, and boasts features not to be found in cheaper models. The design is very attractive: it’s very subtle, and doesn’t scream “I have a big-a** radiator and lots of RGB”. The GIGABYTE B550 Vision D uses a black-and-white contrasting design, with white heatsinks on an all-black PCB. This is a 30.5 x 24.4 cm, ATX-factor product equipped with a B550 chipset, and it offers such features as 14 -phase power design, 2x Gigabit Ethernet and a built-in Wi-Fi receiver. Priced at about 260 USD, it’s definitely not a cheap one, costing only slightly less than GB’s flagship model in the 550 range, the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master, which we reviewed earlier.

As for the features that make it stand out from the crowd, there is an Intel Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 interface that powers the two Type-C ports on the rear panel, Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 interface, and two Intel-based Gigabit Ethernet ports. It’s worth mentioning that USB Type-C™ with Titan Ridge allows users to daisy-chain up to 12 devices simultaneously via an incredible bi-directional 40Gbps data pipeline that includes both PCIe and DisplayPort traffic. There’s also support for ECC RAM, as well as NVIDIA® QUADRO® Professional Graphics.  On the motherboard itself, you can find an aluminium-alloy heatsink top cover that effectively improves heat dissipation. There are dual M.2 Sockets for your SSD: one of them supporting PCIe Gen4 x4, and the second one – PCIe Gen3 x4. As for the audio, you get the Realtek® ALC1220-VB codec, so the back panel line-out jack supports DSD audio, and there’s also support for DTS:X® Ultra. The power section is very impressive. You can see that it’s a 14-phase power design that should really help handle even the most demanding CPUs, such as the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X. There is some good information for RGB fans here: two regular RGB LED headers, two addressable RGB LED headers, and one header for cooler LED/RGB LED strips. Lighting can be synchronized across the range of RGB Fusion-certified accessories. So what does B550 mean in reality? The B series are typically business (quick add-in) or consumer-grade motherboards, but some say that the B stands for ‘budget’. Alongside the Ryzen 3 3000 series, there is the X570 chipset, and now also the B550 chipset for AM4 processors. The x16 slot and one M.2 slot still support PCIe Gen 4.0. This is provided by the processor, so you need a Ryzen 3000 chip to take advantage of this feature. Older procs will offer PCIe Gen 3.0, and the B550 chipset and DMI uplink otherwise are all PCIe Gen 3.0 as well. The board has two reinforced x16 PCIe Gen 4.0 graphics slots, as well as four RAM banks for up to 128 GB of DRAM, with max OC rated at 5400+ MHz. The board, as stated, is positioned in the high end of what is considered the mainstream segment, and it does look really great. Let’s have a closer look then, shall we?