ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ax review - Introduction

ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ax review
Small, ruthless and priced at 209 USD

Meet one of the more delicate and smallest B550 Chipset based motherboards we review, the Mini-ITX based ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ax , at 17x17cm they loaded this B550 motherboard with some useful features including dual M2 slots, 2.5 GigE Ethernet, AX WIFI and a nicely designed VRM. Well, simply put it's nearly a mega motherboard at a mini size. ASRock amped up this B550 motherboard with functional features including dual M2 slots, 2.5 GigE Ethernet, AX WIFI, and refined VRM design. Well, simply put it's nearly a mega motherboard at a mini size. Priced at 209 USD we wonder if this motherboard even belongs in the B series within the mind, that small form factor.

All Ryzen processors Gen processors this board is about performance and aesthetics, heck even the CPU socket has an 8-pin CPU connector. And this motherboard has 6+2 phases with 90A stages fro the CPU. ASRock applies a familiar dark/grey shielded design, optimized for cooling, and armed with a proper feature set build around 2 power stages purely for that Ryzen processor. It also has and has nice M2 slots, one of them with one shielded at the top side, the other one is hidden away under the motherboard. The motherboard has been fitted with the usual suspects and then some, including a 2.5 Gigabit (Intel I225-V) ethernet and then WIFI6 in the form of AX. When it comes to audio you will run into an ALC 1220 Codec from Realtek. So what is B550? Well, believe it or not, the B series typically are business (quick add-in) motherboards, or for consumer, we refer to it as the B for budget. Alongside the Ryzen 3 3000 series, there is X570, and now a B550 chipset for socket AM4 processors. PCI Gen 4.0 still is applied to the x16 slot and one M2 slot (the processor provides it (you need a Ryzen 3000 processor for PCIe Gen 4.0, older procs will offer PCIe Gen 3.0). The B550 chipset and DMI uplink otherwise are all PCIe Gen 3.0. The board will provide you with one x16 PCIe Gen 4.0 graphics slot, and that's it (due to form factor space constraints). The motherboard has two reinforced RAM slots for up-to 64 GB of DRAM with a listed Max OC rated 5400 MHz.

The board, as stated, is positioned in a high-end / enthusiast region of what is considered the mainstream segment, stuff we like of course. Also, the new board has some interesting new features Have a peek, and then let's head onwards into the review my man.