Review on 💻 GIGABYTE B550I AORUS PRO AX Gaming Motherboard - AM4 AMD/B550/Mini-ITX/Dual M.2/SATA 6Gb/s/USB 3.2 Gen 1/WiFi 6/2.5 GbE LAN/PCIe 4.0/Realtek ALC1220-Vb/DisplayPort 1.4/2xHDMI 2.0B/RGB Fusion 2.0/DDR4 by Nicholas Serafini

The Gigabyte B550I Aorus Pro AX is one of the most affordable B550 ITX motherboards on the market at the time of this review , and yet it's extremely packed with the latest features that enthusiasts have come to expect from an ITX motherboard. Pros: My personal reasons for choosing this motherboard, or the B550 board in general, are the better/faster Ryzen 5000 series support, as well as things like PCIe 4.0, USB 3.2, and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet. This board also has the very handy Q-Flash feature for flashing the BIOS with nothing but a power supply and a USB drive, so you don't have to worry about having a Ryzen 3000 series chip to update the latest BIOS to flash. The board also has a backplate which really makes it feel like a quality and solid product. Compared to its X570 brother, this board is about $30 cheaper, but in my opinion it's nothing special, except for the M.2 slot on the back of the board, which is PCIe 3.0 while the X570 version is PCIe 4.0 on both M.2 slots. The B550 also doesn't have a chipset fan, which I find to be an advantage over the X570 as it eliminates a potential source of noise and premature failure. It is also worth noting that the chipset fan occupies one of the 3 places in the X570 version. Fan headers while all 3 headers can be used on this board. Also the X570 version only has USB 3.1 Gen 2 and 1.0 Gigabit Ethernet. connected to the motherboard. Officially, the B550 chipset only supports the Ryzen 3000 series by default, with Ryzen 5000 support enabled via a BIOS update. On the other hand, the X570 version will also support the Ryzen 2000 series, so the B550 board lacks flexibility in this regard. Additional Notes: I bought this motherboard with the intention of using it with a Ryzen 5000 series chip if I plan to buy one sometime next year. The reason to buy this board now is mainly because the availability of this board has been very patchy until recently, so I figured it would make sense to buy it while it's readily available. I'm currently running a Ryzen 2700X, which isn't officially supported by the B550 chipset, so my original intention was to keep this board on the shelf until I have a Ryzen 5000-series processor. I've seen several reports from people who 2000 series will get processors running on B550 boards, although there were few of them and they are far apart. However, I wanted to flash this board to BIOS version F10 to enable Ryzen 5000 support, so I figured it couldn't hurt to see if my 2700X would fit on this board while I'm at it. The board probably came preloaded with F1 or F2 BIOS and I got nothing but a black screen when trying to boot. However, after flashing the F10 BIOS, I was very surprised to see that it could be released and everything seemed to work normally in the BIOS. I went one step further and mounted my boot drive to see if it would boot into Windows and I couldn't believe my eyes when it hit the desktop with no apparent problems and no reinstalling Windows or any drivers. Quickly serviced today and I'm running the October 19th F11b BIOS with "additional optimizations" for the Ryzen 5000 series that actually enabled XMP for me, which was not working in the F10 BIOS. I have now reinstalled Windows and set up all the details with no problems. I'm very happy with this board, from its features and design to the unexpected support for older chips like mine. I would also like to add that the F10 BIOS that enabled Ryzen 5000 support was released on September 18th, before the Ryzen 5000 series was even announced. I don't see how Gigabyte could be ahead of the curve when it comes to product support and they've done a really great job with this board.