The GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX Motherboard Review: All The Small Things

Board Features

The GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX is a mini-ITX motherboard with a premium feature set and takes full advantage of its size regarding PCIe 4.0 support from the Ryzen 3000 and 5000 series processors. It has a single full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot from the CPU, with one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot mounted onto the front of the PCB with a heatsink that doubles up to keep the B550 chipset cool. The second M.2 slot operates at PCIe 3.0 x4 and supports SATA drives, although this slot doesn't include a heatsink. There are four straight angled SATA slots for other storage devices and peripherals, which include support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. The board features two memory slots with support for up to DDR4-5100 memory and a maximum capacity of up to 64 GB. 

Focusing on the premium controller set, the B550I Aorus Pro AX features a Realtek RTL8125 2.5 GbE controller, with wireless connectivity coming via an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 interface which also includes support for BT 5.0 devices. The audio is handled by a Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec which adds three 3.5 mm audio jacks to the rear panel, while USB support is limited due to the board's size. This includes one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, one USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, and four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports. Also on the rear panel is a pair of HDMI 2.1 video outputs, as well as a single DisplayPort 1.4 output, with a Q-flash button designed to allow users to update the board's firmware without the need for a CPU or memory installed. Other connectivity includes three 4-pin fan headers, including one for a CPU and an addressable RGB and standard RGB LED header pairing.

Test Bed

As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard released during the socket’s initial launch and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS. Most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users and industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.

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