MSI Mortar B350M Motherboard w/ Ryzen 2400G Review

MSI Mortar The motherboard market is always packed full of great solutions for seemingly every budget. Now with the new Ryzen with Vega processors brings APUs back to modern systems, affordable motherboards are back in the spotlight. Now, at just under £100, this is a little more expensive, but it does come packed full of features that are sure to make it an appealing choice for mid-budget system builds. CPU or APU With the AM4 socket, this motherboard will house everything from the Ryzen range, such as the Ryzen 3, 5 and 7 series, including the 1800X. However, today we'll be testing it with the Ryzen with Vega 2400. With the cost of the CPU and motherboard coming in at around £230, and not requiring a GPU for 720P and even 1080p gaming performance, that's a tempting deal for many consumers. Features This motherboard may "only " be a mATX design, but it's hardly lacking in features. With support for fast DDR4 memory, all AM4 processors (including APUs), Turbo M.2, multi-GPU configurations and more. A mid-budget motherboard it may be, but you could still build a pretty serious system with it. The only Supports AMD® RYZEN Series processors and 7th Gen A-series / AthlonTM Processors for socket AM4 Supports DDR4-3200+(OC) Memory DDR4 Boost: Give your DDR4 memory a performance boost VR Ready: Best virtual reality game experience without latency GAMING LEDs: Ambient LED lights for an awesome look & feel Lightning Fast Game experience: Turbo M.2 Audio Boost: Reward your ears with studio-grade sound quality for the most immersive gaming experience GAMING LAN with LAN Protect: The best online gaming experience with lowest latency and bandwidth management Military Class 4, Guard-Pro: Latest evolution in high quality components for best protection and efficiency MULTI-GPU: With Steel Armor PCI-E slots. Supports AMD Crossfire™ Mystic Light Sync: Synchronize other RGB solutions with your gaming rig and control all LEDs in one click In-Game Weapons: Game Boost, GAMING Hotkey, X-Boost, Xsplit Gamecaster EZ Debug LED: Easiest way to troubleshoot Click BIOS 5: Award-winning BIOS with high resolution scalable font, favorites and search function GAMING CERTIFIED: 24-hour on- and offline game and motherboard testing by eSports players WHQL certified for Windows 10 Specifications For in-depth specifications, please visit the official product page here. A Closer Look The Mortar is a great looking motherboard, and features a dark PCB design, with mostly black hardware. Overall, it's got a fairly stealthy look, and short of a few tiny red highlights on the motherboard, it should blend in with virtually any colour scheme easily enough. The top PCIe slot is reinforced, allowing it to more easily support the weight of modern graphics cards. This is a dual GPU capable motherboard though, so I would have liked to see the second full-size PCIe slot armoured too, but it's hardly a deal breaker. Tucked into the middle, you'll find an M.2 mount, perfect for super fast storage. Connectivity is reasonable, with four SATA ports, pretty much enough for most mATX builds. There are two USB 3.0 headers, and a good number of USB 2.0 headers, so hooking up the rest of your hardware should be easy enough. Four DIMM slots, nothing too crazy, but they support 3200MHz+ (OC) DDR4 memory. The power delivery for the CPU is a single 8-pin header. This runs through some pretty competent VRM/chokes, identical to those found on this motherboards bigger brother. Of course, there's also a good size heatsink on the CPU power hardware, and its low profile design shouldn't impede CPU cooler mounting. Connectivity around the back is pretty amazing. There are five full-size USB ports, as well as a single Type-C. However, with HDMI, DP, and DVI, you'll have zero worries about hooking up a monitor. Finally, we also have PS2, and RJ45 LAN ports, as well as five gold-plated audio jacks and Optical out. Testing and Methodology Test Procedure 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 motherboard reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Rember 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 the software. Therefore, your experience may vary. Each benchmark runs three times, and the average figure is taken to try to reduce the effect of hardware variation. Of course, any relevant details regarding the parameters will be listed below. Test Systems AM4 Ryzen With Vega RAM - GSkill DDR4 3200 MHz Dual-Channel 16GB CPU Cooler - Stock Cooler and Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (for dGPU testing only) iGPU - 11 Vega Cores (disabled for dBPU testing) Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Z370 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - Crucial DDR4 2400MHz Dual-channel 16GB Intel Core i7-8700K CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X399 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - Crucial DDR4 2400MHz Quad-Channel 32GB CPU Cooler – Noctua D15S Graphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X299 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - Crucial DDR4 2400MHz Quad-Channel 32GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit AM4 Ryzen R3, R5 and R7 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - GeIL DDR4 2977MHz Dual Channel 16GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Z270 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 2666 MHz CPU Cooler – Noctua D15S Graphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X99 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM – Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 2666 MHz CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Open Air Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 64-bit Games Used All games are tested on a 60 Hz display with V-Sync off for all tests. Previously we would use "extreme" presets, but these have now been adjusted to "Medium" or equivalent to better test the capabilities of the CPU, not the GPU. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Pure Hair Off Deus Ex (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Ghost Recon: Wildlands (Uplay) Medium Preset Turf Effects Off Far Cry Primal (Uplay) Normal Preset Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download) FireStrike (1080p) Benchmark Unigine Superposition (download) 1080p Extreme Benchmark PCMark 10 Professional (download) Express Benchmark WPrime (download) 32M and 1024M Power usage recorded at 1024M 50% complete, thermals recorded at 75% CineBench R15 (download) CPU Multi CPU Single Handbrake (download) Custom MP4 to MKV 4K conversion (details below) AIDA64 Engineer (download) CPU-Z (download) HWMonitor (download) Handbrake To stress processors to their absolute limit and accurately judge their performance in video editing workloads, we transcode a 7.7GB compilation of gaming footage; this particular file is freely available from here. The captured footage is 22 minutes and 12 seconds long, it has a bit rate of 50.1 Mbps and it uses the Advanced Video Codec. Additionally, the video runs at a constant 30 frames-per-second and opts for a 3820 x 2140 (4K) resolution. Once loaded into Handbrake, we then transcode the 4K MP4 to an MKV file using the "normal" profile. Other Notes A rest period of 2-5 minutes is observed between each piece of software allowing the system to return to its idle power usage and temperatures. Background services like Windows Update are checked to not be running during the testing period by setting WiFi to Metered Connection. Thanks Thank you to Noctua, Crucial, ASUS, Gigabyte, Lian-Li, be quiet!, OCZ, for providing the hardware that helps makes these tests possible! Synthetic Benchmarks To date, we've only tested one other motherboard with the Ryzen 2400G, so comparisons are pretty easy but forgive me if I lack much detail on the comparison, as we're still treading new ground here. The other motherboard from Gigabyte is a mini-ITX model. However, the Mortar is mATX, and has a bit chunkier hardware, which likely gives it the small performance edge seen below. It pulled ahead in almost every benchmark, albeit not by a huge margin that would be really perceivable to the end user experience. Some of the stock benchmarks are where the Mortar pulled ahead, and things levelled out a little for overclocking, as both motherboards hit the same speeds, with the CPU at 3.9 GHz, and the GPU cores at 1500 MHz. 3DMark Firestrike Stock Overclocked Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme Stock Overclocked PCMark 10 Express Stock Overclocked WPrime 32M and 1024M Stock Overclocked Cinebench R15 Stock Overclocked Handbrake MP4 to MKV Conversion 4K Stock Overclocked Gaming Performance With VEGA iGPU The Gigabyte motherboard did a fantastic job with the 2400G, however, the slightly larger Mortar does seem to take the lead. Of course, it's only a small lead, but I suspect more robust power delivery hardware helps it maintain the overclocks and higher frequencies in general. This means it gains around 1FPS over the other motherboard. While that's not a lot, we're already looking at low FPS here, so every single one helps. Of course, if you're going to game on this CPU, we still think 720P is where the magic happens. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided 1080p Stock 1080p Overclocked Rise of the Tomb Raider 1080p Stock 1080p Overclocked Ghost Recon: Wildlands 1080p Stock 1080p Overclocked Far Cry Primal 1080p Stock 1080p Overclocked gam Power Consumption and Temperatures Power Consumption It comes as no surprise that the Mortar uses a smidgen more power than the Gigabyte motherboard. It's a bit bigger and accommodates a little more hardware. However, with the 2400G at the heart of it, the power consumption is nothing short of incredible. Super low power usage means super low running costs. Stock Overclocked Final Thoughts Pricing The MSI B350M Mortar AM4 Motherboard is available now with an MSRP of £99.99. However, you can readily find it at major retailers for just £80, which is a freaking bargain. The Gigabyte mini-ITX motherboard we tested was £100, although smaller motherboards often do come at a premium. Overall though, that's a very fair price for a motherboard of this calibre. Overview The latest motherboard from MSI may not be their most outlandish and extreme, but it's still a competitive product with great potential. With the Ryzen 2400G, it's a very good mid-budget pairing to go with the affordable CPU. Of course, with the Vega cores built-in to the CPU, you don't need a GPU either, but you could add one later if you desired, as it's still a Ryzen 5 quad-core, which are very competitive. Value for Money With a current retail price of £80, you do get a lot for your money. Good quality onboard audio is a welcome addition, as is a good range of connectivity on the rear I/O. A few more rear USB ports would be nice, but it's hardly a deal breaker at this price range. Of course, you are limited to just 4 x SATA ports, but there's plenty of USB 3.0 and 2.0 headers, as well as an M.2 mount for good measure. What's Missing There are no onboard controls to reset bios or control power. I guess I'm just so used to them myself, as we tend to review a lot of higher end motherboards. However, in 2018 I would happily pay a tiny bit extra to see these become standard features. Built Quality A big thumbs up here, as the motherboard looks very nicely designed and feels durable. The use of a chunky VRM cooler around the CPU is welcome, as are the quality chokes as seen on the full-size ATX model. Armour on the PCIe slot is nice too, although having both armoured would have been twice as nice. Again, clutching at straws, as the Mortar ticks all the right boxes, and there's no fault with the design that I couldn't live with. Pros Tidy aesthetics Good overclocking M.2 support Good connectivity Armoured PCIe slot Great price Solid stock and overclocked performance Cons None Neutral Only 4 SATA ports No onboard power controls