MSI B450M Mortar Micro-ATX Ryzen Motherboard Review

A Closer Look

Just like the other Mortar series motherboards, the B450 is a pretty fantastic looking motherboard. Sure, it’s not completely over the top, but it doesn’t have to be for this chipset. It’s got a subtle military design and a pretty monochrome finish that will blend in well with any other hardware in your system.

Connectivity is excellent on this motherboard. There are plenty of fan headers to deal with your cooling; for an mATX system at least. There’s a good selection of USB options too, including a 3.1 header.

Mystic Light

There’s an RGB header, with support for Mystic Light and Mystic Light Sync. I love the design of the heatsinks too, simple, yet stylish.

There are four DIMM slots, with support for DDR4 up to 3466 (OC). They’re not armoured or RGB, but that’s to be expected at this price range anyway.

The standard AM4 socket, which supports all Ryzen processors and APUs. Of course, this includes all the features of the latest Gen 2 Ryzen 2000 CPUs.

VRM

The upgraded heat sink design uses multiple layers of overhang, increasing the surface area despite the compact size. This, combined with their improved PWM will help you maintain your overclocks and system stability with ease.

There are two full-size PCIe slots, with the top one wired as 16x and the bottom as 8x, offering support for SLI/Crossfire. The top slot is armoured to support the weight of heavy GPUs. However, the bottom one will do just fine and does come with some metal braces to give it added strength. There are also two 1x slots, as well as two M.2slots for added connectivity.

Around the back, connectivity is fantastic given this is a B series, not an X series motherboard. there’s plenty of USB ports, including a Type-C connector. There are gold-plated audio jacks, as well as an optical port. There’s even a pair of display outputs, and BIOS reset button; not bad for a mid-range board, not bad at all!