The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on June 16, 2020 11:00 AM ESTASRock B550M Steel Legend
The smaller mATX version of the Steel Legend is, for the most part, similar to the larger version but with the same features in a smaller form factor. We still get the design that comes across as a stainless steel implementation, with RGB LEDs on the rear panel cover and chipset heatsink, but this time the chipset heatsink covers the main M.2 slot rather than the secondary one (and the secondary one doesn’t have a heatsink at all).
The CPU power is an 8-pin and a 4-pin, and the socket area has access to three 4-pin fan headers within easy reach. The DRAM slots are single sided latch designs, and on the right hand side of the board we get an RGB LED header, the 24-pin ATX connector, the USB 3.0 header, two vertical SATA ports, and four regular SATA ports. All the SATA ports in this configuration come from the chipset, with no additional controllers.
On the bottom of the board is another RGB LED header, three more fan headers, two USB 2.0 headers, and another USB 3.0 header. Above this is a PCIe 3.0 x2 slot without a heatsink.
The PCIe slots are configured for an x16 PCIe 4.0 from the CPU, and the other full-length slot is a PCIe 3.0 x4 from the chipset. On the right side of the board is the upgraded audio, which has signal separation, filter caps, and runs a Realtek ALC1200 codec without an additional amp.
On the rear panel of the motherboard, we get a Clear CMOS button, HDMI video output, Display Port, two USB 2.0 ports, a combination PS/2 port, a Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, a Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a Realtek RTL8125BG 2.5 gigabit Ethernet port, and audio jacks.
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Savikid - Tuesday, August 25, 2020 - link
But the new oculus stuff only uses 1 usb port, so that right there is a drop. I use 2 for keyboard and mouse, one for a wireless controller, and one for my HMD.Gigaplex - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
"On that one I added a USB PCI card to get enough ports."That's not really helpful to the user who said they can't add in a card on their mITX system.
eye4bear - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
Must be nice to have no external hard-drives, I have 3 all needing their own USB 3 port, along with a Logitech dongle that runs both my mouse and keyboard, finally a Bluethooth dongle as my computer has none built-in. Yes I would need 6 USB ports (one open for USB sticks) just to keep even.consolessuck - Friday, November 6, 2020 - link
No, I have 3 usb ports on my laptop and i only use 1 for my mouse. As it turns out, the most amount of usb ports i use at once is two when i am making a wired data transfer with my mouse plugged in. Actually, I almost never transfer data to my phone with a wire, instead just sharing them via bluetooth. and considering i never make large data transfers to my phone, this works out just fine. as for a desktop, however, i'd like a minimum of 3 as i'll always have not only a mouse, but a keyboard plugged in all the time.taz-nz - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
The Asrock B550M Steel Legend has 8 port on the back:4x USB-A 3.1 ports
1x USB-A 3.2 port
1x USB-C 3.2 port
2x USB-A 2.0 ports
And you still have two USB 2.0 internal header, plus two USB 3.1 internal headers.
So that allows you to have another
4x USB-A 3.1
4x USB-A 2.0 ports.
so that's 16 Ports
Now if you like me and need Internal USB 3.2 USB-C header, you can use the PCIe 3.0 x2 m.2 slot to add one of these:
https://www.delock.de/produkte/S_63998/merkmale.ht...
or if you want two more USB 3.1 internal header you could add one of these:
https://www.delock.de/produkte/G_62843/merkmale.ht...
So if you can live without a second m.2 slot you have four more USB-A 3.0 ports.
That gives you 20 USB ports without giving up a PCIe slot.
taz-nz - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
oops, just noticed you said mITX not mATXdesii - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
Do any of these motherboards support ECC RAM (either buffered or unbuffered)?drSeehas - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
Socket AM4 CPUs support only unbuffered RAM.PixyMisa - Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - link
I did a quick look on ASRock's site, since they're pretty good on ECC support, and every B550 board I checked lists ECC as supported.Samus - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
I think AMD screwed up here with pricing their platforms appropriately. I understand the push for PCIe 4 but they can't have average motherboard prices hovering between $200-$300. There has to be $100 motherboards to be taken seriously especially by OEM's if they want 4000 parts to become mainstream.But maybe they don't...maybe they plan to milk the 3000 parts for a few years. After all, there isn't much reason not too. They have no competition from Intel in the budget segment right now.