MSI MEG B550 UNIFY Motherboard Review

MSI, need I say more, really? They are one of the most prominent motherboard manufacturers out there, releasing new products all the time and new motherboards for every new CPU that comes out. Whether you're a fan of AMD or INTEL, MSI has you covered! Today, we are taking a look at their MEG B550 UNIFY Motherboard, which is designed for AMD's latest Ryzen based processors. The MEG UNIFY is normally one of their top boards, so it will be interesting to see what it offers a more budget-friendly chipset. Can it be the best B550 board out there? Well, only time will tell, so let's jump into it! MSI MEG B550 UNIFY Motherboard Looking to be the top B550 board out there, the MEG B550 UNIFY has quite a bit going for it. From four M.2 slot,s three of which are Gen 4 (Take notes Intel) to WiFi 6 and more, the MEG B550 UNIFY looks like one hell of a board on paper! The all-black aesthetic is going to allow it to fit in nicely with almost any build and really give users full control over how they want things to look. Is RGB slowly dying off? I highly doubt it, but it is nice to see an option without it, Kudos MSI! Features Supports AMD Ryzen™ 5000 & 3000 Series desktop processors (not compatible with AMD Ryzen™ 5 3400G & Ryzen™ 3 3200G) and AMD Ryzen™ 4000 G-Series desktop processorsSupports DDR4 Memory, Dual Channel 5100(OC) MHz+Quadruple M.2 Connectors: Maximum onboard 4x M.2 slots, support the latest Gen 4 solution with up to 64GB/s bandwidth for maximum transfer speed.Extreme Power Design: Direct 14+2 phases with 90A Power Stage and dual CPU power connectors to unleash your true power.Premium Thermal Solution: Aluminum Cover with additional choke thermal pad rated for 7W/mk and PCB with 2oz thickened copper are built for high performance system and non-stop gaming experience.2.5G LAN with LAN Manager and Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX Solution: Upgraded network solution for professional and multimedia use. Delivers a secure, stable and fast network connection.Lightning Fast Game experience: PCIe 4.0, Lightning Gen 4 x4 M.2 with M.2 double-side Shield Frozr, AMD Turbo USB 3.2 GEN 2.Flash BIOS Button with Optmized ClearCMOS Function: Simply use a USB key to flash any BIOS within seconds. Restore the BIOS to the default settings without any additional actions.Pre-installed I/O Shield: Better EMI protection and more convenience for installation. More Info For in-depth specifications, please visit the official Manufacturer Motherboard product page here. Looking to Purchase? Check it out on Amazon UK Here We actually have a few bits in the way of accessories that comes with the MEG B550 UNIFY motherboard. Alongside our manuals and standard hosts of cables, we also have some motherboard stands! These are unique and not something I have seen before and will be used to rest the motherboard on similar to a test bench. This is going to allow for some overclocking fun and really allow people to push the limits of what the MEG B550 UNIFY has to offer. So, the whole idea behind these stands is so you can mount your motherboard in a test bench like fashion, ideally something that would benefit overclocker's or even just someone who wants to test the board out before they install it into their case. Now, the even cooler thing (you'll see what I did there) is that they have also added a place so you can mount a fan on the underside of the motherboard. This fan is going to allow you to blow cool air to the underside of the CPU socket to help keep things as cool as possible for those amazing B550 overclocking sessions. Yes, I know it sounds rather weird thinking MSI are trying to push this B550 board as an overclock board when it is on the budget chipset. However, MSI is well-known on the overclocking scene so maybe, just maybe, they know something we don't, so we should give them the benefit of the doubt here! The easiest way to get the fan mounted was to mount the motherboard first, then turn the legs as needed to get the fan mounted. As you can see in the image below, the legs aren't going to all be straight so it takes a bit of work to get the fan on the first time around, but nothing too major. It definitely has some decent clearance off of the floor so should have no issues with creating a good amount of airflow to the bottom side of the CPU socket. Hopefully, this will help the overclockers among us out keep their temps as low as possible! If nothing else, it is a cool way to set up an easily accessible testbench with an extra bit of cooling on the underside. A Closer Look Getting this beast out of the box, and as you can see, not a single RGB LED to be found anywhere! While I do personally like RGB, it is also great to see options that come without it! There is nothing like a clean white build or an all-black stealth build and not a single LED in sight! So, even though this is B550, it is designed for overclocking and as such, has quite a bit of 'extra' power connectors. For 8-pin power connectors, which supply power to the CPU, MSI has gone with dual 8-pin connectors! This should be more than enough for their MEG B550 UNIFY board, even during those crazy intense overclocking sessions. With all that power and overclocking potential, you are surely going to need plenty of fans to keep the airflow going and keep things cool. MSI has you covered with plenty of fan headers, and as we can see in the top righthand side of the board, we have our CPU and SYS FAN headers as well as a PUMP FAN header which is generally used for an AIO PUMP. We can also see the LED Debug display and a dirty, dirty RGB header! Jokes aside, as we saw the board doesn't have RGB, adding a couple of RGB headers for those who want to like up their PC like a rainbow is only fair. MSI's MEG B550 UNIFY comes with a 14+2 Power Delivery system with 90A Power Stage and Titanium Choke III to make sure your PC runs as stable as possible no matter the task at hand. This board was definitely designed for overclockers, and it really shows with things like the 90A Power Stages. For the RAM, this board can support up to 5100MHz RAM with any supported CPU being used. However, some CPUs may allow you to push your ram to 5600+MHz where need be! There are not currently a lot of kits that are even rated for these speeds yet, so it will likely be overclockers hitting such speeds. Average everyday users will have no problems running their RAM at the more standard 3200-3600MHz speed. Looking at the bottom half and we can see quite a few screws on the heatsinks. This is because all four of the M.2 drive slots come with their own heatsinks, all of which can be individually removed as needed. Taking all of the heatsinks off and we can see that we have different length M.2 slots. All of the slots support the standard 2280 length, but two of the slots also support the 22110 sized M.2, and while I have never personally seen one of these longer M.2 SSDs, knowing you have the support for them is always nice! 6We have what seems to be the new standard amount of SATA ports at the moment with six 6Gb/s ports. Ever since M.2 drive has become more mainstream, we have notice companies including fewer SATA ports which is just fine with us! The faster our storage is, the better and with four M.2 slots, do we really need standard SATA storage? Across the bottom of the board, we have a fair few connectors and headers as per normal. We have the front audio header, a 6-pin power connector that will provide extra power to the PCI lanes for GPUs, a few random headers with an RGB header in the middle and then a pair of PWM Fan headers. Moving along and we have a pair of USB2 headers, a single USB 3.0 header, reset and power buttons and lastly, our front panel power connectors. Alongside a whole host of different USB connections, the rear IO actually has a couple of very useful buttons on it. The Flash BIOS Button is going to let you flash the BIOS without the need for a CPU in, and the Clear CMOS button is going to do just that, cleat the CMOS without the need for opening up your case! Clear CMOS ButtonKeyboard / MouseUSB 2.0 Ports2.5G LANWi-Fi /BluetoothHD Audio ConnectorsFlash BIOS ButtonUSB 2.0 PortsHDMI 2.1 PortUSB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gbps (Type-A)USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gbps (Type-A+C)Optical S/PDIF-Out On the back of the board, we have a whole lot of nothing going on! Just as we would hope, though. How We Test Here at eTeknix, we endeavour to disclose vital information regarding the benchmarking process so that readers can quantify the results and attempt to replicate them using their hardware. When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of motherboard, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there’s always a margin for error when using any software. Therefore, your experience may vary. Testing Your Own System We typically focus on commonly available benchmarks so that you too can run the same benchmarks on your own system. We hope this makes it easy for our readers to gauge the performance improvement available to them when they upgrade their own systems. Gaming Tests All games are run at their specified resolutions using the "high" settings or equivalent. We avoid using the Ultra settings as these often offer diminishing returns for performance vs visuals. Test Bench ProcessorAMD Ryzen 9 5900XMotherboardMSI MEG B550 UNIFYMemory2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO SL 3200MHzGraphicsGigabyte GeForce RTX™ 3080 GAMING OC 10GStorageSeagate Firecuda 510 1TBPower SupplyCorsair HX750SoftwareWindows 10 Professional Build 19042DriversNVDIA GeForce 445.87 WHQL Synthetic Benchmarks Online Benchmarks Compression & Rendering Experience Lara Croft’s defining moment as she becomes the Tomb Raider. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara must master a deadly jungle, overcome terrifying tombs, and persevere through her darkest hour. As she races to save the world from a Maya apocalypse, Lara will ultimately be forged into the Tomb Raider she is destined to be. Available now on Steam. Shadow of the Tomb Raider Performance Seventeen years after a global nuclear catastrophe, civilization re-emerges from the chaos to find a world dramatically changed. In Hope County, Montana, the remaining populace has gathered into different groups, each with their own rules for survival. In this new world order, the vicious Highwaymen, led by twin sisters Mickey and Lou, travel from place to place bleeding people dry of all available resources. As the Survivors try to defend their lands against the Highwaymen's relentless onslaught, it's up to you to come to their aid and lead the fight. In the latest instalment of the award-winning Far Cry franchise, you are the last line of defence in a transformed, post-apocalyptic Hope County. Help the community of Survivors grow stronger, craft a makeshift arsenal through Turf Wars and cross-country Expeditions, and form unexpected alliances to fight for survival in a dangerous new frontier. Available now on UPlay. Far Cry New Dawn Performance Metro Exodus is an epic, story-driven first-person shooter from 4A Games that blends deadly combat and stealth with exploration and survival horror in one of the most immersive game worlds ever created. Flee the shattered ruins of dead Moscow and embark on an epic, continent-spanning journey across post-apocalyptic Russia in the greatest Metro adventure yet. Explore the Russian wilderness in vast, non-linear levels and follow a thrilling story-line inspired by the novels of Dmitry Glukhovsky that spans an entire year through spring, summer and autumn to the depths of nuclear winter. Available now on Epic Game Store. Metro Exodus Performance World of Tanks enCore RT is the demo of the updated Core graphics engine. It will let you know how well your PC will perform in World of Tanks with the updated Core engine. Available now here. World of Tanks Performance Memory & Storage Power Consumption How Much Does it Cost? Currently coming in at £179.99 on Amazon UK, the MSI MEG B550 UNIFY is one hell of a motherboard. Its all-black aesthetic is absolutely beautiful to look at, and the plethora of features it has is going to more than enough for most anyone. For the price, you are getting a top of the range model for what the B550 chipset has to offer. Now, this also puts it in the price range for lower end X570 based motherboards which is a bit strange really. B550 is supposed to be the more budget-friendly chipset, but MSI seems to have pushed its limits and have a real contender here for your next Ryzen based motherboard. Overview Looking like it will likely be one of the top B550 board on the market, MSI's MEG B550 UNIFY makes a good argument to be your next Ryzen based motherboard. Coming with quad M.2 slots, plenty of which are Gen4, it is looking to make the most from Ryzen processors and really push the B550 chipset to its limits. If overclocking is your thing, then this is definitely a board worth checking out. Although it is the B550 chipset, MSI has really gone above and beyond and this is not your average budget chipset board. Build Quality & Design This is MSI's top of the range B550 board, so you can be sure the quality and design are there. MSI has gone with a 6-layer PCB design and a 90A Power Stage to get things started. Throw in some massive VRM coolers and M.2 Shield Frozr cooling on all the M.2 drives, and it is easy to see why the MEG UNIFY boards are top of the range from MSI. The MEG B550 UNIFY also has a sleek black aesthetic that is going to allow it to fit in with Performance The performance is on par with all of the B550 boards we have tested. However, while we didn't get to fully test this, where it will really stick out is its overclocking performance. This board is designed to be pushed to the limits of literally catching on fire and making sure all your other components can be pushed just as far as well. Knowing MSI, do not doubt that this board can help push your hardware further than most would think! However, as mentioned I didn't get to test that so as far as the normal performance goes, this board is right on par with everything else and will not let you down. Added Value For a B550 board, the MSI MEG B550 UNIFY has some good features that can be considered as added value. For starters, it comes with four M.2 slots, three of which are Gen4 which is amazing, meaning everyone will be able to get all the speed from their storage with ease. It also comes with its own and very unique test bench. While this won't be for everyone, it is definitely a pretty cool thing to have included in the box! It's also really easy to set up and get to making use of it, and as we saw in the images, you can even mount a fan to the underside for a bit of extra cooling. Should I Buy One? If you are in the market for a new motherboard and are considering either an X570 or B550 based board, then yes, the MSI MEG B550 UNIFY is a great choice. It offers a great middle grounds between the X570 and B550 chipsets and has absolutely loads of overclocking headroom. It also comes with four M.2 slots, three of which are Gen4, so you are going to have plenty of lightning-fast storage to keep up with all your overclocked components. This is a really solid motherboard that is going to take your new Ryzen CPU to its limits, and the fact that there is;t an RGB LED insight is just a bonus if you ask me! MSI MEG B550 UNIFY