Gigabyte B550i Aorus PRO AX review

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Final Words & Conclusion

Conclusion

Mini ITX is sexy and you know it, especially when done as good as the B550i Aoris PRO AX really is. Now I am still fighting the idea that B550 is the budget series, but realistically if it shaves off a few coins in pricing, B550 really offers everything you need. Now I write this specifically as I went into this review 'blind' on pricing, meaning I had no clue what this board MSRP would be. With the current trends and Aorus Master pricing, I really expected this to be a motherboard in the 250 USD range, I mean I would not have been surprised about that. But much to my surprise, this gorgeous little motherboard is priced quite fair at 179 USD. 


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DDR4 Memory

Memory compatibility should not and likely will not be an issue as long as you stick to recently released DIMMs. I'll keep repeating this, but there are some really good Ryzen optimized kits out there. With Ryzen Generation 3 you can go higher in DDR4 clock frequency if you want to. We advise that up-to 3600 MHz, CL16 is fine, after that frequency value a 2:1 divider kicks in, and that can have an effect on the Infinity Fabric bandwidth, inter-core CCX bandwidth. We see no reason for faster DDR4 memory anyways, it's expensive and does not bring in added perf, much like what you see on Intel platforms as well.

Power consumption

With Ryzen 3000 processors now fabbed at 7nm, you may see some interesting energy efficiency. now we used a 12 core 3900X on B550 which is a little excessive I agree. The load values are excellent. The 3900X on B550 did show 60 Watts idle load, ergo read my previous statement on the motherboard. The load values with 12 cores stressed topped 215 Watts (entire PC). So yeah, it's all good there. 

Performance & tweaking

Your motherboard will not be a restriction for tweaking and overclocking, the processors and ASIC quality alongside cooling these days are the more important factor.The original Ryzen series from 2017 revealed clocks in the 3900~4000 MHz range on all cores. For Ryzen 2000 / Zen+ that was a notch higher. Ryzen 3000 seems to take an all-core clock of 4300~4400 MHz at best. Ryzen 7 3700X was able to reach a stable 4400 MHz, but that was on proper liquid cooling and really absolutely the maximum. If you tweak to the maximum, likely 1.425v~1.450v is needed for a stable 4.3 GHz on all cores. The thing is, and I have been thinking about this for a long time, I would not recommend overclocking and tweaking. These processors by themselves can boost 1 or 2 cores to 4500, 4600 and, on the 16-core part, even 4.7 GHz. So while the rest of the cores will be binned slower, that's where you get your extra game performance. The positives of an all-core 4400 Mhz would not outweigh the positives of the default high Turbo clocks. It is something to think about for sure. At least you can try and see what works best for you. But the binned clock recipe that AMD has applied to the processors at default likely will work out the best in most scenarios, including power consumption. This is going to be a generic and general consensus for all many-core processors really. 



Final words

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. The 17x17cm board really impressed me all the way. I mean the performance among X570 and B550 is simply put the same with minor differences here and there. You can argue the lack of PCIe slots on Mini ITX of course, and the ability to go for Multi-GPU in the form of SLI or Crossfire but other than that, what more would you need for a motherboard? I mean even audio is done right. We have to talk shop about the VRM design, I mean even that has been done well, 6+2 phases in total (not doubled up) with 90A (ISL99390) power stages. We barely reached 56 Degrees C there. So you can tick that box as well. Any negatives then? Well, I would have liked to see a few more fan connectors and obviously you'll get fewer USB ports over ATX / X570. But really, my nagging ends there. So yes, if you're in the market for a compact yet strong build that can even house many-core processors, you should put the B550i Aorus PRO AX definitely on your short-list. It is definitely a top pick as far as we are concerned. This and AX (WIFI6) and 2.5 GigE at 179 USD, I like it.

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