The CHEAPEST B550 ITX Motherboard! - ASROCK B550M-ITX Review.

Is it worth going for the cheapest B550 ITX motherboard? Does the Asrock B550M-ITX hold up in this review and should you consider it?... Lets find out.

Genuinely hope you enjoy.

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Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:47 Whats In The box?
1:25 Features & What You Can Plug Into It
3:10 VRM Thermals
5:07 The Biggest Problem With This Board

[Teesquared]

So I bought one of these motherboards recently in late 2023 for a budget-ish 2nd AM4 rig. It went on sale in Canada for quite a bit less, like $100 less than any other AM4 ITX motherboard available.

I've owned a few other ITX AM4 motherboards like the B450i/B550i Aorus and the MSI B450i so I have something to compare it with.

In short:

- The missing 2nd M.2 slot is the biggest downside. I think its countered by relatively inexpensive 2TB NVMe drives being widely available and the rear 10GBPS USB-C port so you can connect and external M.2 drive and get decent speeds.
- The VRMs are fine for a majority of gaming setups - I'm running a Ryzen 5600 overclocked to nearly 5Ghz at 80-90W and no problems. I have some airflow over the VRMs and while it does get hot to the touch, its never so hot I cant hold my finger against it. It should handle a 5800X/X3D with airflow over the VRMs but an overclocked 5800X or a 5900/5950X might be pushing it a little bit.
- Wifi 5 is a bit of a downside but most users will never ever notice unless they happen to have access to gigabit fibre internet. I've seen download speeds of ~350mbps sustained with the included WiFi 5 module.
- The bluetooth module genuinely sucks and I had to buy a USB bluetooth 5 adapter to get any kind of reliability
- It has subdued styling and looks more business-like than many other AM4 motherboards which is a plus for me personally.

Less short:

I think this is a good choice for building a less-expensive ITX rig where you still want 80-90% of all modern functionality but will give up the absolute latest tech to save a significant amount of money. You may find a lot of criticism towards this motherboards VRMs if you do some googling and reading on Reddit, but I think those concerns are a little overblown. You can pair this mobo with either a 5600/5700X and it will run cool and give awesome performance without really stressing the VRMs at all. It even has room for overclocking either of those chips. A 5800X at stock speeds should be doable with good airflow. The included bluetooth module is actual garbage though. It will drop connections with certain devices and then never reconnect to them even after several reboots and completely powering down and unplugging the computer. I had an adapter on hand so this didn't bother me too much but its unfortunate nonetheless. I've heard ASRock will warranty faulty wireless modules but since the WiFi works and I plan to upgrade the WiFi/Bluetooth module eventually, I didn't bother.

If you are okay with the single M.2 slot and last gen wireless connectivity, this is a great AM4 ITX option.

[Randomness]

"the biggest compromise: this board only has one m.2 slot"

me: *nods my head while using a single 2.5" sata ssd*

[yeungscs]

I've fallen in love with the Lian Li Tu-150, and shopping for B550 mini-ITX boards makes me want to cry

[tamasmasable]

Looking to build a tight budget system for myself, mostly for light gaming and a lot of college work. This motherboard is very compelling for me. Thanks for making such a concise video, I like your quick and in-depth format.

[andreasotto]

I bought this board in december as a step-up from my former i7/H110 platform and am running it with a Ryzen 5 5600X and a RTX 3070.
While the board itself runs very well so far, the power distribution across the USB3 ports seems to be a bit funky. I am using an Oculus Rift S, which is known to be quite sensible to USB power. At first, I tried both USB3_3 ports (Type A + C under the network socket), because I had the rest of my sim racing equipment (wheel, pedals and stuff) hooked to USB3_1 (next to the 8pin CPU power plug). On both ports, the Rift showed the typical issues when power delivery does not satisfy the HMD – connection losses, static noise, black display etc.
But since I connected it to USB3_2, everything works like a charm.

[houstonmuseum]

Commenting in August 2023, NVME and SATA SSDs are so ridiculously cheap at the moment. You could pop a 4tb NVME in there for way under $200 (as of currently).

I'm currently using this board to build an efficient SFF monster (Silverstone ML06-E case). 65w TDP Ryzen 5900, 70w TDP RTX A2000 (6GB) with 32GB 3600Mhz RAM, 2TB NVME ($63) and additional 1TB SATA SSD ($33) as a scratch/cache drive for video editing. It's a beast!

Excellent review!

[haziqzin]

the review is detail as hell its like the asmr for the soul

[Nanogrip]

Thanks for this, I am planning to build a very cheap budget APU mini itx computer and currently eyeing this motherboard :) Greetings from the tiny islands of Palau!

[SonHoang-qixq]

6 mins of goodness. You deserve many more subscribers. Keep up the great work!

[ichdiewurst]

Just recently bought it for $130 and felt regret that I could have gone for b450i Aorus. Phew! I'm glad I found your review. I feel much safer now. Keep up the channel. You're awesome.

[MultiRanman]

You made a great case for this board. I’m tempted to pick it up now because of your review. Worth a subscribe.

[Bultizar]

This mobo is freaking amazing if you are building a home server to host stuff like games, media, networking tools (firewall, pi-hole, etc). Plug a 5700G in it, and make as many VM's as you need with enough headroom to run minecraft.

[Artonox]

wow you just go all in to a compact small video, there is space for your type of video. I like! Hope your channel grows!

[budgetking]

Thx for the review, considering this board atm.

[weihuang]

waiting for the build with this board, will you?

[jclarkfii]

Wow this is a fantastic video format. Thanks for the concise review.

[vecremser]

Lol I bought mine on clearance today for like $80 bucks. It didn't come with an IO shield or any am4 mounting brackets, gonna stick with it but I regret going cheaper.

[tuobraun]

Thank yo very much for the video. Quick but rather detailed review with all +/- of this board. It would be nice to see a cheaper price for such limitations... I want to switch to mini-ITX but AMD mbs choices/price are making me sad :'(

[rooscow]

I built a media streaming computer to run my bedroom television accessing various streaming services such as Paramount, Peacock, Amazon Prime, YouTube, and other free streaming websites. It's connected to a 4K widescreen and my only complaint is that the base graphics is so small that I have to be on top of the television to even read them. Otherwise, the clarity is top notch. I paired it with an AMD 7 5700G, 1TB M.2 SSD, and 64 Gig of memory running W10 Pro. The low TDP of 65w keeps the heat down and runs better than most. It needed a bios update to run the more recent version of the CPU, but that was quite simple to do.

[lagginluther]

first time viewer here and im impressed, you're the only one doing a proper review of this board. you got my sub here