B450 mATX Motherboards Comparison: MSI, ASROCK, ASUS and GIGABYTE

B450 mATX Motherboards

B450M-PLUS TUF GAMING motherboard

A motherboard is perhaps the most important part of Computer hardware that you can buy, it essentially brings everything together and is a platform to plug all your PC components into. A good motherboard can save you a lot of hassle and hence you should know what features a certain motherboard offers when making the purchase. Today, we will be looking at B450 mATX Motherboards by four different well-reputed brands: MSI, ASROCK, ASUS and GIGABYTE

What is the difference between mATX and ATX?

Generally, modern motherboards come in two form factors, mATX, and ATX, the “m” in mATX stands for micro whereas ATX stands for Advanced Technology eXtended. mATX boards are smaller in size as compared to ATX boards and hence compromise on certain features. For example, a mATX motherboard will probably have fewer expansion slots than an ATX motherboard. This can include, fewer ram slots, fewer PCIe slots, fewer SATA slots and so on. However, while a mATX board may have fewer expansion slots its size is considerably smaller than anATX motherboard which grants it some advantages of its own. For example, if you want to build a compact PC with a smaller CPU case then mATX motherboard is the way to go.

What is a Chipset?

without going into too many details, all you need to know is that motherboards come in varying numbers of chipsets. A certain chipset type dictates how many features and what sort of features a motherboard will possess. For example, an enthusiast level chipset like AMD’s  X399 will have far more features than a mainstream chipset like AMD’s A320. One affords more options to the user than the other, like the ability to overclock, the ability to install high-speed RAM etc. The same is true for Intel’s X299 or Z370 chipset, which are both enthusiast level chipsets, the motherboards that support those chipsets have far more features than any mainstream chipset by Intel like H310.

Today we are looking into the upcoming AMD B450 chipset mATX motherboards. The B450 is AMD’s latest chipset and it comes in mATX form factor motherboards as well which we will be looking into today. The B450 is thought to be a mid-range chipset and we shall see what sort of features the upcoming B450 motherboards possess.

Which Processors does the B450 Chipset Support?

AMD’s newest chipset, the B450 supports Second-gen Ryzen processors aka Pinaccle Ridge. These include:

B450 mATX Motherboard Comparison: MSI, ASROCK, ASUS and GIGABYTE

 ASROCKASUSASUSASUSGIGABYTEGIGABYTEMSIMSIMSIMSI
FeaturesB450M Pro4PRIME B450M-A/CSMPRIME B450M-KB450M-PLUS TUF GAMINGB450M DS3HB450 AORUS MB450M BAZOOKAB450M GAMING PLUSB450M MORTARB450M PRO-M2
Cost          
PredecessorAB350M Pro4PRIME B350M-A/CSMB350M-ETUF B350M-PLUS GAMINGGA-AB350M-D3HGA-AB350M-Gaming 3B350M BAZOOKAB350M GAMING PROB350M MORTARB350M PRO-VH PLUS
DIMM Slots44 (64GB)2 (32GB)4 (64GB)444242
DisplayPort1
DVI Ports1 (D)1 (D)1 (D)1 (D)1 (D)?(1)1 (D)1 (D)1 (D)
HDMI Ports11 (2.0b)1 (2.0b)111111
VGA1111
Audio Jacks*MinimumMinimumMinimumMinimumMinimumFullMinimumMinimumFull**Minimum
M.2 Slots21 (M)1 (M)1111121
PCIE x11211112222
PCIE x162112221121
PS/21221111111
SATA3 Ports26 (6Gb/s)4 (6Gb/s)6 (6Gb/s)442444
USB 3.1 (Gen1)7444888576
USB 3.1 (Gen2) 221      
USB-C1111
USB (Front Panel) 1 (Gen1)2 (Gen1)1 (Gen1)      
VRM          
Case Fan Connectors 2 (4 pin)1 (4 pin)2 (4 pin)      
RGB Header/Software Aura SyncAura Sync      
CrossfireX/Multi GPU Yes      

As can be seen in the table above. All the motherboards listed have 4 DIMM slots except B450M GAMING PLUS and B450M PRO-M2, both of which have only 2. Next, none of the motherboards seem to have a display port except for just one, B450M MORTAR. As for DVI ports, all of the motherboards have one DVI port except for B450M MORTAR. Coming to HDMI ports, all of the motherboards have it except PRIME B450M-K. Half of the motherboards seem to have VGA ports but we won’t bother mentioning them because let’s be honest who uses VGA connectivity in this day and age.

As for storage connectivity, B450M MORTAR, and B450M Pro4 has two M.2 slots. The remaining motherboards all have one. The B450M Pro4, B450M-PLUS TUF GAMING, B450M DS3H, B450 AORUS M, and B450M MORTAR all have 2 PCIe x16 slots.

to sum it up, all the boards featured in this article from Asus, MSI, ASRock, and Gigabyte offer different sets of features, we cant make a decisive judgment on which one is better among all the ones mentioned as the prices are not known as of yet. You will have to make that decision for yourself depending on what sort of features are you looking for, later when the prices are made public we will be able to stack these motherboards against each other in terms of value.

However, for the most part, B450M-PLUS TUF GAMING by Asus seems like a promising choice for those who seek to run their dual AMD cards in crossfire configuration, the motherboard offers 2xPCI X16 slots and support for 64 GB DDR4 memory, on top pf that it has 6 SATA 3 slots as well for raid configuration. Going by these features, The B450M-PLUS TUF GAMING  seems to be the ideal choice for gaming enthusiasts. However, for something more casual, any of the rest of the motherboards will do just fine.

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