The MSI B350I Pro AC is not a new motherboard but it is worth remembering for anyone looking to build a small system. However [H]ard|OCP is teasing you a bit; the board was in stock when they started the review but has been discontinued very recently with the B450I Gaming Plus AC replacing it. Why is it worth looking at, you may ask? The board is a solid base to build a SFF system off of and will be selling at a discount if you can find it; so keep your eyes open and you might get it for a song.
"While we might be late to the party with a B350 review, we were running tests with it and were so impressed we thought we would put it through the full review process. MSI’s B350I PRO AC might just have been worth the wait. How does this inexpensive powerhouse fair against more expensive offerings?"
Here are some more Motherboard articles from around the web:
Motherboards
- Gigabyte Aorus B450 I Pro Wifi
- ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming-ITX/ac @ Kitguru
- MSI B450i Gaming PLUS AC @ Guru of 3D
- Top 5 AMD B450 Motherboards @ Techspot
- Supermicro SuperO C9X299-PG300 @ Kitguru
Why is it worth looking at,
Why is it worth looking at, you may ask Buildzoid to chime in on that! Look at those crappy VRM heatsinks that are of lesser use than a door knob is for thermal dissipation workloads. Let’s stuff a sack full of some of those VRM heatsinks and pummel the marketing and design folks that came up with those VRM heatsinks’ design, that would be their proper usage scenario.
Yes let’s get Buildzoid’s analysis on thoes VRMs also.
where is the cmos battery on
where is the cmos battery on this thing
It’s glued to the back of the
It’s glued to the back of the USB ports on the IO header there. You can see it in the black wrapper with wires coming from it like on a laptop systemboard.
The problem with buying
The problem with buying discontinued motherboards is that they often stop getting timely BIOS and microcode updates. When Ryzen 2 (7 nm) launches, who knows if there will be a BIOS upgrade available to support that? I’d say it’s a bad bed.