Review on MSI B450 GAMING PLUS Max ATX Motherboard: AMD Ryzen 2ND and 3rd Gen AM4 Support with M.2, USB 3.0, DDR4, DVI, HDMI, Crossfire by Rene Putman

I bought it to use with a Ryzen 5 3600. This board requires a BIOS update to recognize the 3600. This board has a great feature where you don't need an older processor to install the bios. You simply download the bios onto a USB stick and flash it with a simple push of a button on the back. Sweet. so i thought I also "saved" some money by buying this old board. I'm using Linux Mint 19.x and have tried Cinnamon and Mate and tried different versions. I also tried Ubuntu 18.x. I have an Nvidia GTX960 card from my old build that I was working with. I could get NO sound on the back. Nothing worked. I've tried everything. I must have spent 60 hours rebooting, rebooting, trying this and that. The built-in sound just wasn't recognized. Strangely, they worked fine when using my USB headphones. I just couldn't use the back panel. It seemed like the default audio on my GTX960 board was HD audio and I couldn't get it to see any audio on the board. I've tried all the "solutions" on the forum to no avail. . As far as I can remember, the rear panel worked at first, but then I heard a hum and hiss coming from the speakers. After that it just didn't work anymore. Then I should have given up. I can use the monitor out jack to hear sound but the quality just sucks. I even bought new speakers thinking my 20 year old speakers might be dead. Nope. I leave the speakers. paid only $20. I think the crappy sound is motherboard related and not the speakers. After bad experiences with the MSI board, I will not try any other MSI product. I feel that now. Sorry MSI. I've used Gigabyte and Asus in the past and have always had good results. I will be returning this MB and upgrading it to one of the x570 motherboards. More money but I think it's the right move. My intuition tells me that updating the BIOS might be my problem. At the moment I have ordered another board so I will not try to play it again. Update 1/22/2020: I have now bought an ASUS x570-P MB. Same setting for all other parts. and it works absolutely perfectly! BTW, the speaker sound I got from the old board is now blown away with this new board. Yes, I think the sound chip was just bad. Now I'm a happy tourist!