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 Joe Duncan

There were several reasons I picked this motherboard, but here's the most compelling one: the plethora of RGB headers and customization options. It has 2 of the 3-pin 5V addressable RGB connectors, one on the top and one on the bottom. This works well with most of today's popular addressable RGB fans, each individual LED can be manipulated. Near the bottom 5V is a 5-pin RGBW header for strips with an additional warm white LED. In addition, there is a 12V 4-pin RGB connector for standard 12V light strips and fans. I don't care about the location next to the PCI Express slots, but it's hard to argue with a lot of options. I challenge you to find a Micro-ATX board with this many lighting features. RGB jokes aside, this is a solid B450 motherboard. I found many of the 4-pin PWM fan headers to be conveniently located and accessible. You can actually run 2 graphics cards in Crossfire mode which is not available for most Micro-ATX boards. The included M.2 heatsink is solid, which is also something most micro-ATX MBs lack. At this price it will be hard to beat. I paired this with 16GB of Corsair Vengeance memory clocked at 3000MHz. I installed an Athlon 200GE processor for testing and was pleased with the results. With the latest F3 BIOS I was able to unlock the multiplier and then overclock the $55 chip to 3.6GHz with no additional voltage and it works reliably. Unfortunately, when I loaded the XMP profile, it only runs at 2666 MHz with 3000 MHz memory. This is a limitation of the Athlon processor as found out by other reviewers around the web. I don't see any reason for memory limitations on other 2nd Gen Ryzen processors. For me it was a tough choice between this and the rugged ASUS B450M. Ultimately, I was won over by the best features and customization options. I am now buying a second Aorus board as I am giving the first one to my mother.