Motherboard News & Reviews

Welcome to the Motherboard News & Reviews Database. This is a collection, primarily of reviews, dedicated to motherboards from across the globe. Looking for something specific? Use the search utility, tags, or just explore through using the drop-down menu. From there, you can select your preferred motherboard manufacturer to find a listing of motherboards by chipset that have reviews available. If it’s been reviewed recently, you’ll find it. All reviews that are not natively in English will have translated links provided where possible.

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BIOSTAR B550M-SILVER: Coming Soon

December 4, 2020 by Stephen

BIOSTAR has announced their latest AMD B550 based solution, the B550M-SILVER. As you might surmise, this is an mATX board with a black substrate and silver heatsinks and accents.

BIOSTAR B550M-SILVER Micro-ATX motherboard is equipped with the B550 chipset for AMD socket AM4 and supports the Ryzen 5000 Vermeer processors. It’s well built, sturdy and with plenty of functionality and features like official PCIe 4.0 support, PCIe M.2 4.0, Debug LED, 2.5Guard, A.I TP Control and an Intel Wi-Fi 6 interface, all the features are more than necessary to enjoy a game.

GIGABYTE B550 AORUS MASTER

December 3, 2020 by Stephen

There are 8 places for installing hybrid cooling fans that also accept the installation of water cooling connectors, which were previously It was limited to certain places only, and if you make a mistake by installing it in another place, the pump or panel will be damaged, the speed of the fans can be regulated with temperature reading from sensors through the BIOS of the board or an attached program from within the operating system.

ASRock W480 Creator

December 3, 2020 by Stephen

The ASRock W480 Creator is aimed primarily at creative minds and content creators. You notice this very quickly in the lavish furnishings. In addition to Bluetooth, WLAN with 802.11ax support and two really fast network cards, it also offers support for ECC memory and Nvidia Quadro cards.

The board layout is very well thought out and has been designed to accommodate many additional cards. The already existing PCIe 4.0 support is a great feature, provided that Intel supplies the corresponding processors.

MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK

December 2, 2020 by Stephen

MSI opted to color the MAG B550 Tomahawk in a mixture of black and gray. Black is the more prominent color, but there’s a good amount of gray that adds contrast and keeps the board from looking too dull. MSI also put some RGB LEDs around the chipset heatsink that add some much-needed color to the board when it’s powered up.

MSI MEG Z490 GODLIKE

December 2, 2020 by Stephen

In case the name wasn’t a clue-and-a-half: This is no modest motherboard. MSI’s MEG Z490 Godlike is the company’s Intel Z490 flagship, competing directly with the likes of Asrock’s Z490 Taichi and Asus’ Z490 ROG Maximus XII Extreme in terms of both price and features. (The Z490 chipset is the top-end chipset for Intel’s latest desktop CPUs, allowing for extensive CPU and memory tweaking.) With an MSRP of $749.99, this deluxe motherboard certainly isn’t for the casual user or PC builder.

ASUS Adds Resizable BAR Support to Z490, H470 & B460 Motherboards

December 2, 2020 by Stephen

Resizable BAR (Base Address Register), the technology behind AMD’s Smart Access Memory (SAM), isn’t exclusive to Ryzen owners anymore. Asus has released an entire wave of new firmwares for various Z490 motherboards that enable the Resizable BAR feature.

The firmware, which sports the 1002 version number, is fresh out of the oven as Asus evidently uploaded it just yesterday. The firmware is currently in the beta stage so there might be some bugs here and there. It also lacks a detailed description of the changes. We can, however, confirm that the 1003 firmware effectively brings support for Resizable BAR, as evidenced by the newly added “Above 4G Decoding” and “Re-Size BAR Support” options in our ROG Maximus XII Apex motherboard’s BIOS.

MSI MPG B550 GAMING CARBON WIFI

December 2, 2020 by Stephen

With the B550 chipset, AMD has added a cheap alternative to the X570. With the appearance of the more modern chipset, the board partners have of course also presented new mainboards, which have become more attractive overall. Because in addition to more up-to-date standards with regard to expansion slots and network features, the power supply was also often drilled out – as is the case with the MSI MPG B550 Gaming Carbon WiFi here.

ASUS ROG STRIX B450-I GAMING

December 1, 2020 by Stephen

The mini-ITX format is a delicate matter like aligning the legs of an LGA socket. Here, a factor such as congestion / oversaturation is already starting to play a role. Adding something over and above the standard set has to be greatly perverted, resorting to non-standard solutions, “sandwich” approach, daughter boards, and sometimes to changing the usual topology.

BIOSTAR Racing B550GTQ

November 30, 2020 by Stephen

The BIOSTAR Racing B550GTQ features dual M.2 slots, each with their own full coverage heatsink, RGB lighting, a Micro ATX form factor, and even an integrated rear I/O cover. Perhaps most interesting, the B550GTQ utilizes 90 A power stages in an APU-optimized configuration. How will the VRM stand up to my Ryzen 9 3900X test CPU? Let’s find out!

GIGABYTE BIOS Update: AMD 500 Series Motherboards Get Smart Access Memory + Rage Mode

November 30, 2020 by Stephen

Taipei, Taiwan, Nov. 27th, 2020 – GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, today announces the latest BIOS update on AMD X570、B550 and A520 motherboards for the features of AMD Smart Access Memory and Rage mode. These innovative features enabling a bandwidth boost when the CPU accesses the GPU memory on graphics cards, which enhances and unleashes the ultimate system performance. Now, users with an “AMD Yes” platform on GIGABYTE AMD 500 series motherboards with AMD Ryzen™ 5000 processors and Radeon™ RX 6000 series VGA cards, will be able to experience an extra gaming and performance boost.

Through the AMD Smart Access Memory and Rage mode, the CPU has access to the GPU memory. This access unlocks the limited bandwidth to full bandwidth when running 4K gaming. By accessing the GDDR6 GPU memory more rapidly on AMD 500 series motherboards paired with Ryzen™ 5000 series processors and Radeon™ RX 6000 series VGA cards, CPU’s operating performance and gaming performance are both improved. Based on results of gaming tests with Smart Access Memory and Rage Mode enabled, the 1080P gaming improved by 17%, and a performance increase of 10% was unlocked on 2K and 4K resolutions.

To utilize Smart Access Memory for optimized performance is quite simple on GIGABYTE’s AMD 500 series motherboards pairing AMD Ryzen™ 5000 series processors and Radeon™ RX 6000 series VGA cards. Just simply update to the latest BIOS and VGA card driver from GIGABYTE’s official website. Enable “Above 4G Decoding” and “Re-Size BAR Support” in the BIOS setting, and make sure the system operating under UEFI mode. The Rage mode can be simply activated in the VGA card driver. Now you can enjoy the performance boost on GIGABYTE’s gaming platform!