Review on 💻 GIGABYTE B450 AORUS M Motherboard - Enhanced Performance with AMD Ryzen AM4, Micro ATX Design, M.2 Thermal Guard, HDMI/DVI, USB 3.1 Gen 2, DDR4 by John Munajj

Pros: I like the Gigabyte BiosDual BiosM.2 heatsink which isn't junk. 16 threads multitasking with LOW loading (e.g. without adding direct airflow through the worst VRM I've ever had, had the misfortune to expect lots of blue screens, hard locks and black screens that you can't get out of by typing hold down the power button to turn it off) When I say "low stress" I mean that if you only have Excel and Photoshop open at the same time, or you're just editing photos in Photoshop, there's a good chance the board will be laughing at you before then closes. VRM is bad. They really should have spent the extra $2 on the board and used better components or at least a decent heatsink with the right fins. I've been using budget midrange gigabyte boards since Ivy Bridge, and this board is unforgivable, even at $75-$100. You're not really saving any money if you have to spend another $40 on cooling while sacrificing features. It's better than the "Pro" Wi-Fi version, but all it says is "well it's not the worst b450 out there," which isn't really saying much. This is something support can't help with because unfortunately for the first time in a decade they won't send you a proper heatsink unless you want to overclock bclk (which Gigabyte does very well by keeping the cores working fine and only speed up when needed instead of running at full capacity 24/7) or already planning to cool the VRM directly, choose MSI as ANY board manufacturer, Gigabyte and Asus are the worst offenders, more than unhappy with their budget lines. At this price, expect a loss of functionality, especially with the mATX. However, we expect the board to work under typical conditions (again, the room the build is in is 20C most of the time, it's blowing air through the VRM, and it can't handle basic office tasks. That's funny . Damned). , Microsoft 3d Paint overheated the VRM, which is unforgivable. This is way better than a game session crashing, but come on Paint?Excel?I will never buy a Gigabyte board again without seeing/reading numerous reviews in the future. Unfortunately for Gigabyte, this means I'll be watching them against all of their competitors. I hope it cost Gigabyte $2. It's there with the 6-pin connectors on your rx480s that literally melted away for hundreds if not thousands of consumers. They made probably the best 580s and their Aorus 1080ti was amazing, exceeding Nvidia's max power draw and making it the fastest 1080 ti out of the box and overclocked (no exotic cooling) but after the mining craze they undersold other bras . nds because of the reputation they earned from their 6 pin debacle. Seriously gigabyye, even on the budget market, $2 isn't the deciding factor. In the short or long term, saving that little money is NEVER worth it if you risk having a negative experience that leads to a more negative perception. Please cut it out instead of cutting corners. We're paying $81.99 instead of $79.99 for the basic functionality expected of such boards. I can't even imagine the returns on people who bought this for budget work or home office. You expect game crashes and get them in Photoshop or after watching YouTube videos with Discord open too long. I'm literally stumped as I said above, I've never had an issue with Gb boards (which is why I didn't bother researching this outside of the specs page), but it's on par with Biostar in 2001. Oh, and don't advertise like phase 8 when you really only have 4. Just don't do it, it's another thing that tarnishes your reputation for no reason. We can say that the delivery system is 4 x 2 or 4 + 4 pw. If I could still return this and exchange it for an MSI I'd happily pay the $5-20 difference but unfortunately I've waited too long and can only exchange at the moment, it's the same which doesn't mean much. Again, unless you're directly cooling the VRM or running 4 cores/8 threads, avoid this board. Check out Hardware Unboxed or Gamer's Nexus for the budget b450 motherboards, which I should have gotten before I trusted Gigabyte with my money.