MSI Expands Pro Series with B350 and A320 Chipset Mobos
Ron Perillo / 7 years ago
MSI is expanding their Pro Series of motherboards with new additions sporting the B350 and A320 chipsets. The B350 and A320 chipsets are specifically designed by AMD for budget builds. That does not mean they are lacking on features however. It just means better performance is accessible to more people.
B350 and A320 Chipset Features
The main difference between the B350 and the A320 is overclockability. Users who have no intention of overclocking can go for the A320 chipset and still get the same SATA, and USB2/3 ports as the B350. The only other advantage is an additional USB 3.1 port, and two more PCIe 2.0 lanes.
| X370 | B350 | A320 | |
| Overclocking | Y | Y | N |
| Dual PCIe 3.0 x8 | Y | N | N |
| PCIe 2.0 | 8 | 6 | 4 |
| USB 3.1 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| USB 3.0 | 6 | 2 | 2 |
| USB 2.0 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| SATA | 6 | 4 | 4 |
| RAID | 0,1,10 | 0,1,10 | 0,1,10 |
MSI Pro Series
The two new latest additions include the B350M Pro-VD Plus and the A320M Pro-VD Plus. Unfortunately named, but fortunately priced well under $100 USD. These boards look identical having the same VRM configuration and two DIMM slots. They even have the same PCIe expansion slot layout. Both have a Realtek ALC887 HD-audio codec and a Realtek RTL8111H Gigabit Ethernet controller. They even have the same USB port count and SATA port count. The only difference really is just in the price and overclocking support.
