MSI MAG B550M Mortar Motherboard Review

How Much Does it Cost?

Of course, I’m writing this review before the stock is available on Amazon. However, I will update the prices as the stock goes live after we publish the review. For now, though, you can check the up to date stock of the MSI MAG B550M Mortar Motherboard on Amazon UK here, and on Amazon US here.

Overview

I quite like this board overall, it’s getting a big thumbs up from me purely for its form factor. mATX boards are in seriously short supply these days. I should know, all my personal cases are mATX and the B550 mATX boards are the next likely upgrade route for me. I actually use the B450 Mortar myself and know a few others that fell in love with that board for similar reasons. Now we have an upgraded version and I suspect it’ll prove just as popular.

Build Quality & Design

It’s a more affordable design, there’s no escaping that fact and I’m OK with that given that B550 is technically the mid-range chipset. I actually don’t like the design that much, I think it has far too many decals on it and would look much nicer if it were a little blander actually. That being said, it’s still a well-made motherboard, it doesn’t have huge amounts of armour everywhere, but it does have it where it’s needed. The top PCIe slot is armoured, and there’s a fairly big VRM heatsink on there too.

Performance

mATX and mid-budget it may be, but that didn’t stop it delivering perfectly competitive performance in all our tests. That being said, with motherboard reviews the performance is often so close that I could test tomorrow and it will change places. Overall though, for gaming, productivity, etc, it’s right on the money.

Added Value

Of course, the big thing for B550 is PCIe Gen 4, which you get on the top M.2 slot as well as the top PCIe slot. Perfect for the latest NVMe drives and GPUs. They’ve put a strong focus on decent audio hardware too, which is always welcome. It’s basically all the features you would want for a focused gaming rig, which makes sense since they plastered the ESO Pro League logo all over the product page. There’s no WiFi on this model though, but the upgrade to 2.5 GbE LAN is certainly welcome.

Should I Buy One?

It may be mATX but it hasn’t compromised on the good stuff. You still get decent VRMs, dual GPU support, Gen 4 support, and great audio. It’s not quite as well equipped as the ATX models, but at the right price, this is one of the best options out there for a compact gaming rig.