With just hours to go before the big AMD Ryzen 5000 reveal, MSI is teasing a new crop of B550 motherboards, engineered with Ryzen 5000 parts in mind. Both the MSI MEG B550 Unify-X and B550 Unify feature a premium design and high-end specs. (chaicare.org)
Both boards sell for over US$279, making them more expensive than a number of X570 boards, including the well-received MSI X570 Tomahawk. Both boards feature 12+2+1 power delivery phases, leaving the door open to high-end overclocks.
With Ryzen 5000 rumored to feature higher base and boost clocks than the Ryzen 3000 series, it’ll be interesting to see if overclockers are able to push Ryzen 5000 parts beyond 5 GHz with conventional cooling.
The Unify boards are both set to feature the latest version of AMD’s BIOS, meaning that Ryzen 5000 CPUs should run out of the box: users won’t need to jump hoops with BIOS upgrades. What interests us the most, though, is what the MSI B550 Unify and MSI B550 Unify-X represent for this generation of high-end motherboards.
We don’t have clear information on launch timeframes for the supposed X670 motherboard series and it appears that X570 will remain the flagship chipset for Ryzen 5000 parts for the time being. What will motherboard makers do to add value at the high end? And, importantly, if top-tier B550 boards are selling for US$299, where do X570 prices go from here?
