MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI Motherboard M-ATX - Supports AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Processors, AM4, DDR4 Boost (4400MHz/OC), 1 x PCIe 4.0 x16, 3 x PCIe 3.0 x16, 1 x M.2 Gen4, 1 x M.2 Gen3, Gigabit LAN, Wi-Fi 6

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USB 3.2 Gen 1 5Gbps ports (1 Type-C internal connector, and 2 ports are available through the internal USB 3.2 Gen 1 5Gbps connector)

Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168 Supports Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual band (2.4GHz, 5GHz) up to 433 Mbps speed. Zooming in on the top half of the board, we’re greeted by a lot of exposed PCB. There is a small heatsink attached via pushpins to the left VRM bank, while the top VRMs are left bare. I’m not a big fan of pushpin-attached heatsinks, as they don’t tend to hold as well as those that are screwed on. Power comes from a single 8-pin EPS connector, located next to the top VRM bank.Just to the left of the DIMM slots is the first (of three) 4-pin fan headers. All fan headers support both PWM and DC control, but do not mention power output. We’ll assume the standard of 1A/12W. There are four DIMM slots that support up to 128GB of RAM at speeds up to DDR4 4000 (DDR4 4733 for latest generation Ryzen APUs). To the right of the DRAM slots are two (of four) RGB headers, a 3-pin and 4-pin for aRGB and RGB, respectively. Just below this is the 24-pin ATX connector that delivers power to the motherboard.

I have to give you props for creativity, but when it comes to those of us that don't have a baller AM4 board (or any AM4 board) and are vaguely interested in throwing a box together on the cheap, recommending option 5 out of 4 legit choices might as well be saying to divide by 0. I have to admit however, if your option 5 out of the 4 was a real world choice here, I'd take that X370 over a B550 any day.)Why so serious? I only put it there because nobody had posted anything and it's funny (because of option 5 out of 4). Of course it doesn't work unless someone already has the board. It's one of those "D'UH" posts that just takes up space. It also informs people that it is an option. One could say "everyone knows that" and I would've agreed once upon a time but then someone asked me for a source when I mentioned that Zotac is just Sapphire in disguise (and I thought everyone knew that).Sliding down to the bottom half of the board, on the left side is a fully exposed audio section showing off the mid-range Realtek ALC892 codec, along with four Chemicon brand audio caps. This isn’t the best audio solution we’ve seen, but again, par for the course on the budget end and sufficient for most users. Moving to the bottom half of the board, on the left side are the audio bits. Fully exposed, we see the low-cost Realtek ALC887 audio IC, along with four audio caps. Get used to this, as none of these boards run the premium Realtek audio ICs. That said, the ALC887 should still be acceptable for most users. If you need better audio, you’ll need a better board or a separate DAC. x DIMM, Max. 128GB, Supports DDR4 1866/ 2133/ 2400/ 2667/ 2800/ 2933/ 3000/ 3066/ 3200 MHz by JEDEC It doesn't have PCI-Express v4.0 but that's irrelevant except for high-speed NVMe drives at this point. Superior power delivery when compared to the A-series and B-series boards. Platform is mature and stable. Far more nice features on an X-series board like more USB, Intel Gigabit LAN and the audio is Realtek ALC892 with 7.1 channels. Premium Thermal Solution: 7W/mK pad, additional choke thermal pad and M.2 Shield Frozr are built for high performance system and non-stop works