GS Group Holding and Philax have started manufacturing Russia's first domestically-produced B450 motherboard. Philax plans to release at least 40,000 motherboards to the Russian market.
Philax specifically chose the B450M Pro4 because of the possibility to add a TPM module, which is important for government agencies. GS Group Holding and Philax's partnership doesn't just stop with motherboards, though. The duo also has plans to produce up to 50,000 monitors. There's also an 18-month project to develop and produce motherboards for Russia's homemade Elbrus and Baikal processors.
Avid enthusiasts will probably find Philax's B450 motherboard very familiar. That's because the design is based on ASRock's B450M Pro4. Philax and ASRock probably reached an agreement for the latter to use the design, probably under a licensing agreement of some sort. Obviously, Philax's rendition doesn't carry the ASRock brand. In fact, it doesn't even sport the model name.
Although the B450 chipset is a bit outdated, it's compatible with a wide range of Ryzen processors and APUs, including the latest Ryzen 5000 (Vermeer) and Ryzen 4000 (Renoir) lineups. Adhering to the micro-ATX form factor, the motherboard comes with four DDR4 memory slots. It supports DDR4-3200 and above memory modules.
While not generous, the AM4 motherboard does come with the necessities. It provides four SATA III ports for standard hard drives and SSDs and up to two M.2 slots for high-speed drives. The expansion options on the B450 motherboard consist of two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and one PCIe 2.0 x1 slot. The speed varies depending on the processor choice.
Ryzen APUs will be able to take advantage of the motherboard's D-Sub, DVI-D, or HDMI port. Connectivity-wise, the B450 motherboard offers a PS/2 combo port, two USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.1 Gen1 ports, and even USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A and Type-C ports.
