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As we near the launch of AMD's budget-friendly B450 chipset (expected this month), motherboard manufacturers are gradually starting to lift the curtain on their forthcoming motherboards. On this occasion, Gigabyte has publicly revealed its B450 offering on its website. In total, four models are coming to the market. The B450 Aorus Pro/WiFi and B450 Aorus M are from the Taiwanese brand's Aorus gaming line, while the B450M DS3H is the more mainstream product.
Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro/WiFi
The Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro is the highest-end model of the four motherboards. The motherboard is available with and without the Intel Dual Band 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2 module. The B450 Aorus Pro is a standard ATX motherboard that features a 8+3 phase hybrid digital PWM power delivery subsystem. It has four DDR4 memory slots capable of supporting up to 64GB of DDR4 memory with a maximum frequency of 3200 MHz. In terms of expansion slots, the motherboard has one PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots (one operating at x4 and the other at x1) and one PCIe 2.0 x1 slot. On the storage front, the B450 Aorus Pro is equipped with six conventional SATA III ports and two PCIe 3.0 M.2 ports (one maxed at x4 and the other at x2) with corresponding thermal heatsinks.
Shrunken down to the microATX format, the B450 Aorus M retains some of the Pro version's more notable attributes, such as 8+3 phase power delivery subsystem and four DDR4 memory slots. However, the motherboard does lack the flashiness of its larger sibling. Expansion options are reduced to one PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, one PCIe 2.0 x16 slot running at x4 and a PCIe 2.0 x1 slot. For storage purposes, the B450 Aorus M comes with six SATA III ports and a single PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot with Gigabyte's characteristic thermal heatsink.
Gigabyte B450M DS3H
The B450M DS3H is the stripped down version of the B450 Aorus M. The fancy heatsinks and RGB lighting are absent on this microATX model. The B450M DS3H possesses a modest 4+3 phase hybrid digital PWM power delivery subsystem. The four DDR4 memory slots and expansion slots remain intact. However, the SATA III ports are reduced to four instead of six, and the PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot lacks the thermal heatsink.
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
They added more heat sinks to the VRM's thank god. That was the main problem with the B350M models, the VRM overheated easily with the 8 core especially, forcing the Asus TUF micro atx as the only option.
@ AlistairAB
I've got the Asus TUF B350M-Plus mATX, and it needs a heatsink on the memory (mosfets) too, not just the CPU. I see Gigabyte too still leaves those off on all but the flagship board. My other B350 AM4 board the Asrock AB350M Pro4 at least has both. I wish that little item were more common.
