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 on Amazon UK here, and on Amazon US here.
Overview
The AORUS range has become a byword for fantastic quality and performance over the last few years. I mean, really they’re Gigabyte boards, but AORUS is their high-end range much like STRIX is for ASUS and MEG is for MSI. The pro shows us that they can still compete with or beat anything else out there. They haven’t changed the design much for the B550 boards, but that’s awesome, you can look at the X570 series, even Z470 on the Intel side of things, and you’ll find AORUS boards are very uniform, there’s no compromise on the design for B550.
Build Quality & Design
Black and grey hardware with a few RGB highlights, the AORUS PRO is a very slick looking motherboard. However, it also looks quite industrial, with thick heatsinks, matte black finish M.2 heatsinks, reinforcement on the PCIe slot (top one only), there are Nichicon gold caps on the audio hardware, WIMA capacitors, premium chokes and capacitors for the CPU, a thick 6 layer PCB. The list goes on, and it’s all good stuff. It really is the sum of its rather lovely parts.
Performance
AORUS takes their hardware pretty seriously and with the 12+2 Phases Digital VRM with DRMOS, 50A stages, premium chokes and capacitors, there’s no doubt this motherboard can hit the boost clocks all day long. What I love the most is the Fins Array heatsinks on the VRM. It’s basically more like the cooler you see on a CPU or GPU, rather than just a chunk of metal.
It doesn’t matter what CPU you put in here, it’s certainly got the power to push it pretty hard, and that’ll no doubt appeal to gamers, content creators and beyond.
Added Value
This is a premium motherboard with a premium price. However, you do get a lot for your money and the upgrade to 2.5 GbE rather than 1GbE LAN is welcome. The only thing missing is WiFi, which doesn’t bother me as I have my main rigs all wired, but it’s something to keep in mind. The slightly more expensive MASTER board has it though.
You do get a lot of connectivity though, and even just for cooling, you get 8 Fan/Pump headers, 7 internal temperature sensors, 2 external sensors. Then you have 3 x ARGB headers, 3 x RGB headers. You get Gen 4 PCIe, USB Type C Gen2, and some truly fantastic audio hardware thanks to the ALC1220-VB chipset.
Should I Buy One?
The AORUS B550 Pro is sitting in a sweet spot for high-end motherboards. It’s certainly an expensive option for the mid-range B550 chipset, but you still get a lot of the luxurious of the AORUS Master at a lower price point. If you want a board that looks and performs like its X570 big brothers but you don’t need a load of extra Gen4 lanes, it’s going to be a great choice for your new build.
