MSI MAG B650M Mortar WIFI review

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Final Words & Conclusion

Conclusion

The MSI B650M Mortar WIFI is a straight-to-the-point motherboard. It looks exquisite, and there are two addressable and two regular LED strip headers for RGB lovers. You get good access to five overall 4-pin headers for the fans (it would be even better to have more, especially for more complex builds – still, probably the mATX format of this board won’t make this a tempting option). The MSI B650M Mortar WIFI has one PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, one 4.0 x4, and one 3.0 x1. The M.2 slots support two PCIe 4.0 x4 drives, and both have a solid radiator. So as you can see – the PCIe 5.0 is not available for both the GPUs and the M.2 drives, but that shouldn’t be any problem, at least soon. The DDR5 slots support up to 128 GB of RAM and handle up to DDR5-6400+ memory.


 

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The audio for this board does more than enough with the Realtek ALC4080 codec (typically used in higher-end motherboards). You’ll find six SATA ports here, so two M.2 ports shouldn’t be a significant issue when you want more storage. Seven USB Type-A ports are at the back, so most users should be satisfied. Last but not least – the power delivery should handle even such monsters as Ryzen 9 7950X thanks to the efficiently cooled 12+2+1 VRM section.


DDR5 Memory

Memory compatibility should not and likely will not be an issue as long as you stick to recently released DIMMs and check the official QVL list

Power consumption

The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X is relatively modest in the power consumption department, usually consuming less than the Intel counter partner. It’s a 170 Watt TDP processor. With the system at idle with a GeForce RTX 3080 installed/32 GB memory/SSD, and the B650 motherboard, I hovered at roughly 65 Watts in IDLE. We reached almost 300 Watts of power consumption when we stressed the processor. 

Performance & tweaking

There is not too much sense in manually tweaking the Ryzen 7000 CPUs. Also – there’s barely any OC headroom. An LCS (280mm+) is recommended to keep the used 7900X cool. If you want less struggle with the RAM settings, you better look for the RAM with the EXPO profiles (a more refined XMP profile aimed at the AMD processors). The temperatures of VRMs are suitable here, even with a high-end CPU.


 Guru3d-approved

  

Final words

The MSI B650M Mortar WIFI is the mid-tier model from MSI’s B650 family, from a MAG series. The looks are very sleek and should fit typical builds. It has an integrated I/O shield, great RGB implementation (with two aRGB connectors and two RGB compliant), PCIe 4.0 compatibility, PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives support (you can install two drives), and 6 SATA ports. There are no power/reset/clear CMOS buttons, which could come in handy when overclocking. You get a 2.5 Gbe Ethernet and Wi-Fi compatibility. MSI B650M Mortar WIFI has a reliable power delivery with 12+2+1 phase VRM. That should be enough even for the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and possibly the new processors for the AM5 socket. The power delivery section is cooled with a radiator; no fans are included (so overall, that’s good). There are five fan headers – so you shouldn’t be disappointed in that department, but some would like more (like six or eight). You won’t get Thunderbolt 4.0 ports, but on the other side, you’ll get many USB ports (7x Type-A) at the rear panel. Audio performance is above average with an ALC4080 used (which is typical for high-end motherboards). The MSI B650M Mortar WIFI is an attractive option, even though it’s a mid-tier product. The price is rather steep, as the chipset itself is expensive. The price (239 USD) is attractive due to the usage of the B650 (not X670) chipset, but on the other side, you won’t get a PCIe 5.0 or M.2 Gen5 slots here (but that’s ok with the current state of the market, where there are no such GPUs/SSDs available at the moment). The M.2 slots are placed right above and below the GPU slot; luckily, both radiators are in the default state, so there shouldn’t be a problem with cooling the drives. Still - there are 6 SATA ports. Overall – the potential buyers shouldn’t be disappointed with the performance and the provided features (well, the main complaint would be no PCIe 5.0 this time), with a reasonable price; that’s why we’re granting an “Approved” award for the MSI B650M Mortar WIFI

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