Gigabyte's B550 Vision D is a Fancy & Functional Jacket For Your AMD Ryzen CPU
For once, a board with very minimalistic styling
Now that the majority of the B550 motherboard slew has come through the pipeline, Gigabyte is back again but this time not with a gaming board. Rather, the company is outing the B550 Vision D, which is aimed at creators and designers, packing the features and looks to match.
And boy, does it look good. Gone is the shouty "GAMER" styling, as the B550 Vision D features a rather calming, chic look with plain white accents all over the board. There is also no RGB -- because which designer needs that?
To meet the needs of creators running Photoshop and Premiere all day long, Gigabyte equipped the board with a hefty 14-phase VRM power delivery system, which is very impressive for a board based on a mid-tier B-series AMD chipset. Up to 128 GB of memory is supported, and storage can be handled by two M.2 slots and a handful of SATA ports.
Of course, as creators often keep their data off-system, the B550 Vision D also comes with dual Gigabit Ethernet and a pair of USB Type-C ports driven by Intel's Titan Ridge controller, which makes them capable of Thunderbolt 3 for wicked-fast external storage. DisplayPort alt-mode is supported too, along with power delivery. Just note that the board is not officially Thunderbolt certified.
You might wonder why a creator would work on the B550 platform, but the truth is that at the end of the day, the chipset just dictates the I/O of a system, and the B550 chipset is more than adequate for many creators who don't need to bump to AMD's Threadripper chips.
No word on pricing, but expect the Gigabyte B550 Vision D to be one of the pricier B550 boards around.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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g-unit1111 Only 4 SATA ports though? I would think that would be a deal breaker for content creators, since most require multiple HDs and SSDs for storing and accessing large files. And the price of high end M2 drives would almost certainly be a turn off as well.Reply
Interesting design though. I can see a lot of offices not wanting flashy RGB for their rigs. -
ezst036 Maybe Tom's Hardware should include a test on motherboards (this motherboard included) to see if they are a contributor to the new Ryzen Burnout issue.Reply -
spentshells depending on the price this is a fine board for people like me who are not interested in a windowed case. Even if you did want that, I appreciate how clean it is.Reply -
watzupken
Likewise. The clean and minimalist look is certainly welcoming amidst a sea of boards that are black, grey and red with a whole bunch of bling on it.spentshells said:depending on the price this is a fine board for people like me who are not interested in a windowed case. Even if you did want that, I appreciate how clean it is. -
Olle P
You find four SATA ports? I can only spot two...g-unit1111 said:Only 4 SATA ports though? I would think that would be a deal breaker for content creators, since most require multiple HDs and SSDs ...
I don't think that's a problem though:
Use of external storage such as NAS and/or portable drives.
Use of internal M.2 drives. Two on the mobo and if that's not enough more can be added using an expansion card in the lower PCIe slot.
For those that absolutely want a ton of HDDs inside their computer case there are other motherboards that fit their bill. -
g-unit1111 Olle P said:You find four SATA ports? I can only spot two...
I don't think that's a problem though:
Use of external storage such as NAS and/or portable drives.
Use of internal M.2 drives. Two on the mobo and if that's not enough more can be added using an expansion card in the lower PCIe slot.For those that absolutely want a ton of HDDs inside their computer case there are other motherboards that fit their bill.
There's two in the bottom right hand corner. It's a Gigabyte design thing. My Designare has the same thing, the SATA 0 and 1 ports are the ones in the bottom right hand corner. -
MichelleLogan I have seen this board and it is very nice. As far as the comment about only 4 sata ports...I create content and I would never use a slow SATA connection to extract or save work to. We have a 200tb nas / 10gb network.Reply
Michelle