1. Introducing ASRock B550 Extreme42. Features and Hardware3. Test Set-up and CPU Tests4. Temperatures and Power Draw5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

Luke has reviewed a series of motherboards with an AMD B550 chipset that range in price from £150 all the way close to £300! B550 is supposed to be a budget chipset so it comes as a relief that this ASRock B550 Extreme4 is widely available at £190 while also promising a full list of enthusiast features. And of course we're going to check whether or not it lives up to the claim of being Extreme.

To set the scene and put this review in context we strongly recommend you glance back at one or two of Luke's reviews. This ASRock B550 Extreme4 has a fair amount in common with the MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk and also the Asus ROG Strix B550-F Gaming, while Luke's personal high water mark was set by the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master. You know full well that 2020 has been an awful year for fluctuating prices and short supply so do please check current pricing when you refer to those reviews as prices may well have changed.

The thing that especially excited Luke about the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master was the way it sports a true 16-phase VRM configuration which pretty much makes it an honorary X570. By contrast ASRock claims the B550 Extreme4 uses a 14-phase power set-up which we demonstrate is 6×2 phases for the Vcore + 2 phases for the SoC. In other words we are dealing with a conventional midrange design, which is part of the reason the price is set below £200. This begs the question of whether you get a decent set of features for your money.

Key features

• Supports AMD AM4 Socket Ryzen 3000, 4000 G-Series and 5000 Series Desktop Processors
• 14 Power Phase Design, Digi Power, Dr. MOS
• Supports DDR4 4733+ (OC)
• 1 PCIe 4.0 x16, 1 PCIe 3.0 x16, 2 PCIe 3.0 x1, 1 M.2 Key E for WiFi
• Graphics Output Options: HDMI 2.1
• AMD CrossFireX
• 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC1220 Audio Codec), Nahimic Audio
• 6 SATA3, 1 Hyper M.2 (PCIe Gen4 x4), 1 M.2 (PCIe Gen3 x2 & SATA3)
• 2 USB 3.2 Gen2 (Rear Type A+C), 5 USB 3.2 Gen1 (2 Front, 2 Rear, 1 Front Type-C)
• Dragon 2.5G LAN

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