GIGABYTE B550I AORUS PRO AX AM4 AMD B550 Mini-ITX Motherboard with Dual M.2, SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.2 Gen 1, WIFI 6, 2.5 GbE LAN, PCIe 4.0

Pros: Great VRMs Lots of BIOS features Cheaper than the MSI and Asus B550 itx boards 2.5gb lan 2 m.2 slots

Cons: Missing the internal USB type c header that other B550 boards have Pricey for a "B" series board (Most B550 boards are though)

Overall Review: I originally targeted the MSI B550 itx board but it has been unavailable since launch. I saw this board in stock so I decided to go for it. I have been pleasantly surprised overall. I have not had experience with the gigabyte BIOS but have found the BIOS on this board to be quite robust. There are a slew of features that I was surprised to see on a "B" series board. It has been rock solid running an undervolted 3900x. Obviously I am unable to assess the longevity of this board as I have had it for only a week. However, assuming everything holds up, this board is an easy 5 out of 5 for me.

Pros: -Good BIOS, not including my learning curve for this being my first Gigabyte mobo. -VRMs have no issue with setting manual currents in PBO. Buildzoid evaluates them and they perform as well as he predicts. -Good layout, thermals are a non-issue if there is SOME type of airflow. -Better USB port quantity on the IO than other boards (Asus, looking at your disappointing ROG B550i on this one)

Cons: -The BIOS reset button on the back is pretty easy to bump if you've got the board in a flush-backed case. Set your profiles to facilitate quick return to settings. -As others said, lack of usb-c header for front ports.

Overall Review: There isn't really much else to say. The ITX boards with B550 chipsets command a (sometimes) deserving premium, but some are seriously lacking in either features or quality. Gigabyte struck, in my opinion, a good balance of features and quality for the price. I was dead set on automatically purchasing the Strix B550i, until I realized this time the ROG Tax didn't provide nearly ANY actual features worth the high price. Enter Gigabyte with a quality board, quality components, and much cheaper MSRP at release. I'll definitely be looking at more Gigabyte products in the future based off this board.

Overall Review: As the title says this is a great board. I believe I read a review where the user mentioned a M.2 screw being too short; I thought the same thing until I figured it out. The front M.2 is basically mounted with three pieces of hardware: screw (black), intermediate stand-off (black), and the main board stand off (silver). Remove the screw and intermediate standoff. Secure M.2 drive with intermediate standoff. Secure M.2 heat sink with screw. Do that and you will not have any problems mounting a M.2 drive. The M.2 mount on the back of the board is streight forward. I used the Noctua NH-L12 Ghost Edition cpu cooler with this.....plenty of room for memory and a tight case.

Pros: wi-fi/bluetooth is nice fairly inexpensive itx board Second board seems to work fine

Cons: Random Restarts (Same as Daniel) on first purchase Maybe better QC?

Overall Review: Not going into too much detail. Daniel's review below pretty much sums up my experience as well. Random restarts were not due to GPU, RAM, or PSU. Haven't ruled out SDD or Processor, but I think this is a problem with the board. Other than this issue, the board should run fine for what I want it for, hopefully the replacement works as intended. Will update this once I get the replacement. Update: Got my replacement and it's been running for 3 days straight without any issues. A couple of bad ones are bound to slip through the cracks, and I was probably just unlucky. 4/5 eggs. Would be 5/5 if I hadn't received a bad board initially.

Pros: Excellent build quality. All the sockets seemed reinforced. Recognized a Ryzen 7, GTX 2060 and other components without an issue. BIOS setup was straightforward.

Cons: Manual missing diagram on installing the M.2 ssd. Granted, this is a minor issue, but it was the first M.2 I’ve installed, so it would have been nice to have.

Overall Review: There aren’t many B550 itx boards available as of July 2020, so you might not have another choice. If you’re on the fence, I think the build quality and feature set are worth the asking price.

Pros: Fair price, bunch of extras.

Overall Review: Came from an mini itx msi motherboard, and wow this thing is amazing! It has dual nvme slots, 1 gen4 and 1 gen3, 4 sata ports all in one easy to access spot, and extra headers for adding more rgb and features, paired with an ryzen 3700x this thing runs great.

Pros: + The board is well weighted (a good thing), making it feel premium. + Runs XMP with a pair of G.Skill Trident Z Neo (F4-3600C18D-32GTZN) sticks. + Paired with a Ryzen 3800X processor / 5700 XT + Wraith Prism Cooler fits good with the board, though the cooler is humongous when on a mini-ITX board like this + So far everything is running good with this board

Cons: - No front panel USB-C header; only an issue if you actually need or want to use it - Software is ok, but not really useful; I'm using Ryzen Master for temperature monitoring and RGB Fusion for the lighting controls on motherboard and graphics card. - Wish RGB Fusion worked with the RGB of the Trident Z sticks... but I can get around that with using the G.Skill software

Overall Review: Definitely this board is built well. The BIOS options are a plenty (I'm on version F2A), and XMP worked right out of the gate with my sticks. I definitely like having 2 M.2 ports. Its pretty cool that there is one slot on the backside of the motherboard. The front-side one is pretty cool in its placement, and has a good heatsink to go along with it. The back-side slot has enough room for an NVME drive with a heatsink like the Western Digital Black SN750, but nothing bigger than that unless your case has a deep enough "well / cut-out" on the back side of the motherboard like mine does. The rear IO panel looks awesome, and the overall aesthetics of the board are good. At some point I'll change out the Wraith Prism Cooler to something smaller so it does not cover up so much of the board. There is one other BIOS related thing, in that I found there were two (2) places to manage the "Core Performance Boost" option. I turned that off as the fan on the Wraith Prism is "aggressive" when some cores are auto-overclocking.