[Test] Asus TUF Gaming B550M-Plus WiFi |Specs | Price

Hi all !

The AMD Ryzen 3000 series have been on the market for almost a year now, signaling the introduction of PCIe 4.0 and the X570 chipset. But unfortunately for anyone who wanted to take advantage of this famous PCIe 4.0 without shedding at least € 180 in a motherboard, AMD had not yet declined a mid-range chipset. Fortunately, the B550 is now here to change things, although we doubt it will change much for Mr. Toutlemonde. For this test, Asus sent us its TUF Gaming B550M-Plus WiFi, a model available at 190 €.

Chipset B550

The AMD B550 chipset therefore replaces the B450 and it logically brings some improvements. First of all, the motherboards have a PCIe 16X port and an M.2 NVMe 4X to standard 4.0, for a total of 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes coming from the CPU. This will therefore allow the use of a 4.0 graphics card (only the latest generation AMD Radeons for the moment, RX 5500XT, RX5600 XT or RX 5700XT for example) as well as an NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD if that plugs you in. Even if this is a good thing, we can only repeat that for the moment, there is no gain in practice on a GPU and during conventional use, there will be no difference between a PCIe SSD. 3.0 or 4.0, except in the benchmarks to see who has the biggest.

PCIe 3.0 for other ports

For the other lines and ports managed directly by the chipset, there are also better compared to the PCIe 2.0 lines of the B450. Indeed, the B550 now has ten flexible PCIe 3.0 lanes. With this, motherboard manufacturers can vary the equipment of their products. On a card equipped with six SATA for example, there are only four lanes available for a PCIe 4X port only, or two PCIe 1X and an M.2 NVMe 2X. So there may be shared lines between the SATA and NVMe (not connected to the CPU), if you install an SSD in the latter, it is very likely that this disables at least two SATA ports.

PCIe Bifurcation for SLI

Until then, only the X series chipsets (like the Intel Z) allowed PCIe Bifurcation, or roughly the possibility of dividing the lines of a PCIe port coming from the CPU into several ports. For example, all mainstream X570 (or X470 / X370 / Z490 / Z390) motherboards compatible with SLI allow upgrading from one 16X PCIe port to two 8X PCIe ports if two graphics cards are installed. The B550 is the manufacturer’s first mid-range chipset to allow this PCIe Bifurcation.

But that doesn’t mean all motherboards are SLI compliant. On the one hand, the manufacturer must pay Nvidia to display compatibility with this technology, and the second 16X port must also be standard 4.0. You will therefore only find a few B550 motherboards with this technology, such as the Asus ROG Strix B550-E Gaming available at almost € 300.

CPU compatibility

When the AM4 platform was released, AMD then assured that the first chipsets (A320, B350 and X370) would be fully compatible with all CPUs until 2020 (included). But since then, the founder has taken a step backwards, the fault of a chip that contains the BIOS too small to drive all the CPU catalog. And when it should be easy for anyone who wanted to change CPU while keeping his motherboard, it’s now quite complicated to navigate! Besides the official compatibility with the next Ryzen 4000 CPUs which will be based on Zen 3, the B550 of course accommodates the current generation Ryzen 3000, and that’s it!

Indeed, if you were to go on a B550 motherboard with an AMD Ryzen 1000 or 2000 Apacher CPU while waiting for Zen 3, it is bad because you will end up with a black screen! Worse still, not all Ryzen 3000s are compatible, as the Ryzen 3 3200G / Ryzen 5 3400G and Athlon A APUs are not based on Zen 2, neither can they be installed on a B550. Either way, even if it were, the PCIe 4.0 ports would turn into 3.0 because only Zen 2 and the ryzen 3000 have a 4.0 controller.