AORUS B450 Pro Motherboard Review

A Closer Look

My first impressions of this motherboard are pretty darn good. I mean, it’s fairly hard to tell this much apart from any other high-end Aorus motherboard and it certainly looks like the more affordable B-series has taken a step up in the hardware leagues. It looks like the Aorus X470 Gaming 7 WiFi, albeit one that’s been stripped down a little bit, because it has been. However, plenty of goodies still remain for you to enjoy.

The VRM is a little smaller on the B450 range, but with the newer Ryzen chips using less power, this isn’t as big of a problem as it may seem. Furthermore, they’re hardly small VRM coolers either, and more than up to the job of maintaining higher overclocks.

Power Delivery

The board uses a Hybrid Digital PWM design. You’ll also notice the rear I/O shroud is enlarged, giving the motherboard a cool design that flows together nicely.

The socket is the standard AM4 design, ready for stock coolers out of the box. Of course, you can remove that for an aftermarket solution if desired.

Unlike the X470 range, there are no RGB lights or armour on the DIMM slots. However, you do still get four slots, so plenty of room for lots of RAM. Or you could match it up with that lovely Aorus RAM that comes with two dummy modules too. Located here, you’ll also find a D_LED header, as well as two SATA connections.

Further down the board, four more SATA connections, giving us six in total, as well as a USB 3.0 header.

M.2 Mounts

Storage options get a big boost here too, with the inclusion of two M.2 drive mounts, each with Thermal Guards. Of course, they’ll support NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 and X2 drives in RAID, as well as configurations that use AMD Store MI software.

The audio hardware is reassuringly robust too, offering the fantastic ALC1220-VB chipset, high-end audio capacitors, and WIMA Audio capacitors. The end result here is high-quality, powerful, and distortion free sound.

While the motherboard has RGB lighting on the audio trace, rear I/O guard, and chipset cover, it also has another D_LED header here, as well as a 12v GRBW header. Make sure you use the right one though, or you can break your lighting as they use different voltages.

On the rear, the guard is built into the motherboard. To see this on a non-flagship motherboard is fantastic, as it looks super clean and professional. There’s not a vast amount of ports here, as per the limitations of the chipset. However, it’s pretty competent for most system builds. I’m happy to see an optical out included too, which is handy for some high-end gaming headsets.