Gigabyte B550M Aorus Pro Review: Reasonably Priced, Capable Micro ATX

A reasonably priced Micro ATX board that’s flagship-CPU capable.

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Gigabyte B550M Aorus Pro
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(Image: © Gigabyte)

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Software

Gigabyte includes a few applications designed for various functions, including RGB lighting control, audio, system monitoring, and overclocking. Below, we’ve captured several screenshots of the App Center, @BIOS, SIV, RGB Fusion and Easy Tune.

Image 1 of 14
Gigabyte B550M Aorus Pro
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Firmware

To give you a sense of the Firmware, we’ve gathered screenshots showing most BIOS screens.

The BIOS on Gigabyte’s Z490 boards has worked well for me. The format of headings across the top, with most details on a single page or one level down, makes for easy navigation. We haven’t run into any issues so far with the BIOS.

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Gigabyte B550M Aorus Pro
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Test System / Comparison Products

As of late November 2020, we’ve updated our test system to Windows 10 64-bit OS (20H2) with all threat mitigations applied. We also upgraded our video card driver to 457.30 and reran all the game tests moving to the new 5000 series CPU. We use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public unless otherwise noted. The hardware used is as follows:

Swipe to scroll horizontally
CPUAMD Ryzen R9 5950X
MemoryGSkill Trident Z Neo 2x8GB DDR4 3600 (F4-3600C16Q-32GTZN)
GPUAsus ROG Strix RTX 2070
CPU CoolerCorsair H150i
PSUCorsair AX1200i
SoftwareWindows 10 64-bit 20H2
Graphics DriverNVIDIA Driver 457.30
SoundIntegrated HD audio
NetworkIntegrated Networking (GbE or 2.5 GbE)

Benchmark Settings

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Synthetic Benchmarks and SettingsRow 0 - Cell 1
PCMark 10Version 2.1.2177 64
Row 2 - Cell 0 Essentials, Productivity, Digital Content Creation, MS Office
3DMarkVersion 2.11.6866 64
Row 4 - Cell 0 Firestrike Extreme and Time Spy Default Presets
Cinebench R20Version RBBENCHMARK271150
Row 6 - Cell 0 Open GL Benchmark - Single and Multi-threaded
Application Tests and SettingsRow 7 - Cell 1
LAME MP3Version SSE2_2019
Row 9 - Cell 0 Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s)
HandBrake CLIVersion: 1.2.2
Row 11 - Cell 0 Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x264 (light AVX) and x265 (heavy AVX)
Corona 1.4Version 1.4
Row 13 - Cell 0 Custom benchmark
7-ZipVersion 19.00
Row 15 - Cell 0 Integrated benchmark
Game Tests and SettingsRow 16 - Cell 1
The Division 2Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080
Forza Horizon 4Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080

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Joe Shields
Joe Shields
Motherboard Reviewer

Joe Shields is a Freelance writer for Tom’s Hardware US. He reviews motherboards.

7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • kyuuketsuki
    Not sure why the author beats on the "no integrated wi-fi" drum. Desktop systems are largely stationary, and many certainly use ethernet for the network connection rather than wi-fi, as they should. Having the option to purchase a board without a wi-fi chipset, which would be a useless component (and therefore expense), is appreciated. For those do want wi-fi, they can use an add-in card (as noted) or find one of the multitude of boards that does have wi-fi.

    Also, having a smaller number of SATA and M.2 slots is par for the course for mATX and mITX boards, isn't it? Not sure that's really a legitimate knock against the board either.

    Should also note that there is an updated version of this board, denoted with a -P, that upgrades the ethernet to 2.5Gb and ups the supported RAM speed to DDR4-4400. The audio solution may or may not be different (different model numbers are shown in the Newegg listings). Otherwise it seems identical.
    Reply
  • JamesSneed
    kyuuketsuki said:
    Not sure why the author beats on the "no integrated wi-fi" drum. Desktop systems are largely stationary, and many certainly use ethernet for the network connection rather than wi-fi, as they should. Having the option to purchase a board without a wi-fi chipset, which would be a useless component (and therefore expense), is appreciated. For those do want wi-fi, they can use an add-in card (as noted) or find one of the multitude of boards that does have wi-fi.

    Also, having a smaller number of SATA and M.2 slots is par for the course for mATX and mITX boards, isn't it? Not sure that's really a legitimate knock against the board either.

    Should also note that there is an updated version of this board, denoted with a -P, that upgrades the ethernet to 2.5Gb and ups the supported RAM speed to DDR4-4400. The audio solution may or may not be different (different model numbers are shown in the Newegg listings). Otherwise it seems identical.

    This was a very lazy review. All of the cons really are not cons for 99% of the people building a mATX build.
    Reply
  • kaalus
    Why would you want more than 4 SATA ports? 4 is too many already, 2 would be perfectly fine. SATA is legacy anyway, and most people should have their harddrives in a server, not in their desktop. No WiFI? That's a plus. And who needs so many USB ports?
    The real minus is lack of 2.5GBps Ethernet - that's rules it out for me.
    Reply
  • agabriel
    kaalus said:
    Why would you want more than 4 SATA ports? 4 is too many already, 2 would be perfectly fine. SATA is legacy anyway, and most people should have their harddrives in a server, not in their desktop. No WiFI? That's a plus. And who needs so many USB ports?
    The real minus is lack of 2.5GBps Ethernet - that's rules it out for me.
    There's a new one with 2.5GBs B550M AORUS PRO-P
    Reply
  • Rookie_MIB
    kaalus said:
    Why would you want more than 4 SATA ports? 4 is too many already, 2 would be perfectly fine. SATA is legacy anyway, and most people should have their harddrives in a server, not in their desktop. No WiFI? That's a plus. And who needs so many USB ports?
    The real minus is lack of 2.5GBps Ethernet - that's rules it out for me.

    Well, with the amount of cores that these higher end builds may have, setting up a small VM for a server is a piece of cake. Why have the expense of a completely separate machine when you can take the one you have, allocate 2 out of 16 cores to it, some ram, and then just add 3 or 4 large HDDs for your server.

    Personally, 4 SATA ports is just about perfect. 1 NVME M.2 port for the boot drive, 1 SATA for large storage for the main machine and 3 SATA for the VM server. Or, just put all 4 SATAs to the VM and map the large storage for the main system to the server. It would almost be as fast as local storage.

    And yes, I do agree with the 2.5G ethernet. These days many people are looking for more than your typical 1Gb networking. Still, the board looks pretty solid otherwise.
    Reply
  • Late_Apex
    Admin said:
    The MicroATX B550M Aorus Pro performed well in our tests and even managed to overclock the Ryzen 9 5950X. The $129.99 board is a step up from the DS3H, including more robust power delivery, improved audio, a heatsink for an M.2 module, and more.

    Gigabyte B550M Aorus Pro Review: Reasonably Priced, Capable MicroATX : Read more

    why no comments about the b550 usb bug that is particularly bad with gigabyte b550 boards? Having your USB port drop out randomly is somewhat of a major con. Did gigabyte manage to fix that for this board? Last I looked yesterday they were still waiting for a fix from amd (for a similar board).
    Reply
  • neojack
    kyuuketsuki said:
    Not sure why the author beats on the "no integrated wi-fi" drum. Desktop systems are largely stationary, and many certainly use ethernet for the network connection rather than wi-fi, as they should.

    You are right, but integrated wifi comes with integrated bluetooth, Wich is needed for VR.
    Since VR already uses a lot of USB ports, and this motherboard has limited PCIe extentions, that make sense to mention it, but not the way it was in the article.
    Reply