MSI B550-A PRO Motherboard ATX – Supports AMD Ryzen 3rd Gen
MSI B550-A PRO Motherboard ATX – Supports AMD Ryzen 3rd Gen Processors, AM4, DDR4 Boost (4400MHz/OC), 1 x PCIe 4.0/3.0 x16, 1 x PCIe 3.0/3.0 x16, 1 x M.2 Gen4 x4, 1 x M.2 Gen3 x4, HDMI, Gigabit LAN
PCB WITH 2OZ THICKENED COPPER
An enhanced PCB design with 2oz thickened copper increases conductivity, improving heat dissipation and performance reliability especially during overclocking.
EASY TO ARRANGE YOUR CABLES
Not clever at cable arrangement? MSI Atypical PCB design not only the identity of stylish but also makes SATA and USB cable routing easier. Arranges cable neatly even you are not familiar with system build.
STEEL ARMOR
Steel Armor has more solder points on the PCB for more strength and protects the PCI-Express signals against electromagnetic interference for a stutter-free user experience.
 |  |  |  |  |  | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Support for 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen processors and future AMD Ryzen processors with BIOS update | Support for 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen processors and future AMD Ryzen processors with BIOS update | Support for 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen processors and future AMD Ryzen processors with BIOS update | Support for 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen processors and future AMD Ryzen processors with BIOS update | Support for 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen processors and future AMD Ryzen processors with BIOS update | Support for 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen processors and future AMD Ryzen processors with BIOS update |
| Chipset | AMD B550 Chipset | AMD B550 Chipset | AMD B550 Chipset | AMD B550 Chipset | AMD B550 Chipset | AMD B550 Chipset |
| Memory | 4 x DIMM; Max. 128GB DDR4; 4866+ MHz | 4 x DIMM; Max. 128GB DDR4; 4400+ MHz | 4 x DIMM; 4 x DIMM; Max. 128GB DDR4; 4400+ MHzMax. 128GB DDR4; 4400+ MHz | 4 x DIMM; Max. 128GB DDR4; 4400+ MHz | 4 x DIMM; Max. 128GB DDR4; 4400+ MHz | |
| PCIe x16 Slots | 1x PCIe 4.0 x16 slots (@x16) 1x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (max.@x4) 2x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots | 1x PCIe 4.0 x16 slots (@x16) 1x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (max.@x4) 2x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots | 1x PCIe 4.0 x16 slots (@x16) 1x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (max.@x4) 2x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots | 1x PCIe 4.0 x16 slots (@x16) 2x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots | 1x PCIe 4.0 x16 slot (x16 / x4) 1x PCIe 3.0 x16 slot (max.@x4) 2x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots | 1x PCIe 4.0 x16 slots (@x16) 2x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots |
| Graphics | HDMI, DisplayPort | HDMI, DisplayPort | HDMI, DisplayPort | HDMI, DisplayPort | HDMI, DisplayPort | HDMI, DisplayPort, VGA |
| Audio | Audio Boost | Audio Boost | Audio Boost | Audio Boost | Audio Boost | Audio Boost |
| 32Gb/s M.2 | 1x 22110 (PCIe 4.0 x4 and SATA mode) 1x 2280 (PCIe 3.0 x4 mode) | 1x 2280 (PCIe 4.0 x4 and SATA mode) 1x 2280 (PCIe 3.0 x4 mode) | 1x 2280 (PCIe 4.0 x4 and SATA mode) 1x 2280 (PCIe 3.0 x4 mode) | 1x 2280 (PCIe 4.0 x4 and SATA mode) 1x 2280 (PCIe 3.0 x4 mode) | 1x 22110 (PCIe 4.0 x4 and SATA mode) 1x 2280 (PCIe 3.0 x4 mode) | 1x 2280 (PCIe 4.0 x4 and SATA mode) 1x 2280 (PCIe 3.0 x4 mode) |
| Wireless | – | 2×2 Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax | – | – | – | 1×1 Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac |
| Mystic Light | Yes | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Form Factor | ATX | Micro ATX | Micro ATX | Micro ATX | ATX | Micro ATX |
| Weight: | 1 g |
| Dimensions: | 22 x 24 x 3 cm; 1 Grams |
| Brand: | MSI |
| Model: | 7C56-002R |
| Colour: | Black |
| Batteries Included: | Yes |
| Manufacture: | MSI |
| Dimensions: | 22 x 24 x 3 cm; 1 Grams |
First motherboard was returned.. I won’t mention the company. But had to get Amazon involved to get a refund.. Fanx.. Second motherboard came better packaged.. First Boot worked then update bios.. A year out of date but I always have the latest bios whatever board I use..
Only one minor detail.. Don’t remove board like I do to check cpu paste.. Cos I bent that big USB 3 socket… 4 pins.. Anyhoo… Its working.. And for 2023 I aim to stop adding RGB
as my son already had this board, I knew I was going to have a good board without all the stupid RGB lights,
Instillation was simple into the case and once all the cables were routed around the case fired up with no issues.
Nice easy build and no stupid RGB flashing like you are at a disco, never understood the point of the RGB you need the computer to function as it should do not look like a nightclub on a Saturday night.
This is a really great motherboard (I have a friend who I built a PC for still using this). Unfortunately, I did have issues with the USBs on the motherboard I purchased so please check that it may be a more common issue. (I noticed because of bad interference with a USB speaker that doesn’t happen on other computers/laptops.)
Went through a tons of reviews and YouTube videos before bought this motherboard.
I wasn’t really fond of MSI before but after seeing how much more stable the VRM on this board than a few others in the same category, I’ve been convinced.
If you have 5800x-5900x just simply don’t go for anything cheaper than this.
It’s a pretty decent motherboard IMO, however there are just several little things about it that just annoy me slightly:
– I had to fiddle with the boot settings in the BIOS to actually be able to boot my OS(Linux on an NVME M.2 drive).
– There is a delay of a second or two between pressing the power button and anything actually happening, and you question if you actually pressed the button hard enough.
– There appears to be some interference on the audio jack on the I/O panel, so I’ve had to adjust my audio setup to reduce this issue. If sound is a priority for you, you may need to factor in getting a sound card if you have this issue.
– It didn’t come with a paper manual which I generally prefer, also it was difficult to tell from the manual which RAM slots I should put my DIMMS in for 2/4 slots(the BIOS did warn me that I put them in the wrong slots at least).
Other than that, pretty solid.
Works well. Was a bit of an issue trying to enter the BIOS to change the boot device. Ended up creating a replica drive which it recognised and booted straight off.
he motherboard is really amazing with so many different features that many mobos don’t come with, sadly it didn’t work with my build but the motherboard it self is amazing
Placement of sata connections with large video cards bad but lot of features for price
A good board, and very accessible. A Micro ATX with bluetooth and wifi is just what I wanted – no thrills, just pop your parts in and you’re away. 2 gripes with this that others should be aware of: there is only 1 m2 guard – and secondly, when taking my Mobo out to fit a new CPU fan, the USB 3.0 connector on the bottom left was so stick in (I never force parts in and am quite a careful builder) that when taking it out, it completely took the plastic cover off and left exposed pins, that really cannot be used, so the front USB ports of my case do not function. Wondering whether that’s poor build quality, or the connection is just too tight. Nonetheless, it’s not a huge bother for me – but bear that in mind. A great motherboard overall.
i had lot mb.and what can i say,this is very easy to instal.msi did realy well.pins for coolers more than i need.thats verry good.all connectors for hdd.is on 1 place,that is good.then power sw etc those are on corner,that is very good .not like on others each card another place and always hard understand what is where.on anothers mb hdd conectors are on all card randomly dropped.next what is good,no need change bios,its ready to run ryzen 7 5800x.its first from msi,and i think now will be not last.
I installed Windows 11, and used the integrated Wifi from the beginning with the provided antennas making sure they were properly screwed in place.
After a few days of use, and all drivers up to date, the WiFi module seems quite unstable and is really annoying as it loses the signal very frequently. I get a lot of hanging pages, or ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT errors, etc. Using the internet really gives me headaches because the WiFi is so unusable, it just disconnects every couple minutes or so.
In comparison, my laptop which was standing in the same spot has never suffered such WiFi issues, but with this mobo I don’t know how to keep a stable signal.
I even used the “WifiInfoView” software to check the signal strength, and the “Signal Quality” row ranges between 60 to 80 and the “Average Signal Quality” is around 75 . Theoretically, the strength should be good enough.
So I got this motherboard to save the hassle of adding an extra WiFi card, but right now I am forced to use it with ethernet (which of course is better), but in my setup, using the ethernet is not really practical and wanted to have the freedom of moving the case away from any ethernet cable.
In conclusion, the wifi works, but very poorly. My 6 year old laptop’s wifi works flawlessly in comparison in the same spot. Maybe it would be better if the router would be nearby but I don’t have this option, so for a mobo advertised as “built it wifi”, it is a disappoitment.
Apart from the headline all works as expected. Good support from MSI if you need it . BIOS not the most intuitive but it does the job. Does not come with a printer manual which irritates me. Returned to AMD after years of Intel and not disappointed. All the IOs you might want and then some although I would have liked an esata on the backplate. I liked the heat sink for the M2 1 nvme SSD and I appreciate the 6 sata ports as I tend to add stuff over time. No interest in gaming so can’t comment about the inbuilt graphics although the Ryzen 5600G gives me the same display, or better, as an old NVIDEA 1030 I used to use on an Intel board. All in all, apart from the bad bits above, for price its well worth it.
This motherboard is very good value for money. For starters, its a delight to build in, and secondly looks really sleek. I love the amount of connections on the board so you aren’t really restricted with what you connect to it. Cables satisfyingly snap in so you know when a good connection has been made. The one issue I had which wasn’t the motherboards fault, is that the ‘All RGB’ button was switched to ‘Off’ by default and it took me a while trying to figure out why my aRGB fan wouldn’t light up. Overall an amazing product which I will likely use again.
Tinkering with the BIOS settings is very easy. There are one-click buttons to overlock the CPU and to enable XMP (XMP enables RAM to run at maximum speed; factory defaults for 3200Mhz RAM is only about 2200Mhz without XMP enabled, for example). Excel-style graphs you can click also make it very easy to use the mouse to configure and set fan speeds. I’ve also used the “M-Flash” button to flash (update) the BIOS twice with no problems.
The MSI website provides all the latest BIOS updates and board drivers needed. MSI were also responsive and helpful when I contacted them about problems getting one of the system fans to work. Turns out one of my cable connections was loose (i.e. nothing wrong with the board or BIOS settings). Very happy with this board.
After a month of building my PC this B550 motherboard is very good especially because of the price.
If you have a 1000-1200 PC budget i highly recommend this
Pros: Lots of fan headers and RGB ones
Bios is very easy to navigate
Looks very good in my case
Cons: The only worry I had when building this is I had to troubleshoot my ram which was the corsair 16GB rgb vengeance ones where both stick of ram worked but the motherboard didn’t boot when I wanted to do dual channel. However if you have the same situation don’t panic i have a solution:
First boot with any of the one stick of ram into A2
Then go into the bios
If XMP is disabled enable it but if it already is, disable and enable.
Once enabled turn off the PC and put the 2nd 8GB in and BOOM it should work 🙂
Hope it helps with any inconveniences
The board itself is good for the price paid with everything you’d normally expect. The board’s BIOS can be flashed without anything installed on the board. I did this and it went flawlessly. Once built (5600x, 32GB RAM, 1TB nvme) and installed in the case everything worked as expected. Don’t forget to set the BIOS XMP profile for your memory though – otherwise it’ll be slower than you expected.
The one quality issue was with the RJ45 LAN connector on the I/O back panel. I had problems inserting the LAN cable – it felt stiff and resisting and the cable did not click into place. Visually I could see nothing wrong. I managed to get the cable in and surprisingly the LAN worked fine – so it must be electrically correct. Still not sure exactly what’s wrong, but it’s the sort of thing I’d return the motherboard for if I’d noticed it before I’d completed the physical build. I’ll live with this now as I can’t be bothered to dismantle everything and it all works (and it wont need to be unplugged on a regular basis) – worst case I may have to buy a cheap LAN card if the RJ45 socket ever becomes unusable. Lesson of the day – check EVERYTHING *BEFORE* you do a build.
The BIOS is easy to use. One minor surprise was that I couldn’t find the AMD-V setting (to enable running virtual machines). In the BIOS it’s called ‘Secure Virtual Machine (SVM)’ and is located (of all places) under the overclocking section (OC->Advanced->CPU Config->SVM).
The sound chip in this motherboard is fairly old and when running Virtualbox (running a Linux VM under the Linux host) using default sound settings for the VM (i.e. PulseAudio), the sound on both the host and VM was distorted. Setting the VM to use the ‘ALSA Audio Driver’ fixed this.
Overall this is an excellent AMD B550 Motherboard with loads of features. Only cost me 130!!!
I was hesitant about this product considering the reviews, but i needed a wifi working motherboard so I bit the bullet and purchased.
Built this out of the box with a Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB DDR4 RAM and GTX 1660 Super graphics card. installed windows within the one hour. Been running benchmarks and stress testing the product for the last three days and all has been fine!
…except…don’t turn on XMP profile for your RAM, then it becomes quite buggy. I experienced failed boots every now and then, and when you action a restart, it would switch off…attempt to reboot…and doesnt. Switched off the XMP profile and now absolutely fine again. This might be what’s been effecting the other users on these reviews.
Not a priority for me anyway. Apart from that. All really good.
Once the new Ryzen CPUs are out, I will do a bios update and upgrade to one of those CPUs.
I have temporarily installed a Ryzen 3 3100 until the new CPUs arrive. Along with 2x 8GB sticks of Corsair DDR4 3200mhz ram. (Edit Feb2021: Have put Ryzen 5 5600X in it now after updating bios to latest)
Definitely liking the build quality and look of the board.
It has 6 SATAIII ports which I need as I have a lot of storage drives, and still use my PCs Blu-ray drive. Also 2x M.2 slots, my boot drive is on a PCIe 4.0 nvme SSD in the top slot.
6x 4-pin system fan connectors, which is a good amount for my 5 case fans.
Has a Flash BIOS Button, always good to have.
EDIT Feb 2021:
I put the Ryzen 5 5600X in the motherboard last week, I needed to update the bios to the latest version first as I still had the first version that the board came with when I got it in September 2020. Updated fine and CPU is working as intended. The motherboard itself is still going great, had no problems at all with it.
The only negatives with this board are the I/O panel which is flimsy and does not fit correctly around the USB2 ports, and it’s a shame that MSI support has no online chat or ability to answer calls for motherboard issues, it’s a 3 day wait if you need them…hence 4 stars.
There are plenty of headers and rear IO is decent. However, ethernet is 1G lan, not the 2.5G pictured. The only other small gripes are with the cheap IO shield – but minor considering it’s out of sight, and the MSI bios mouse being a pain.
Overall, this is a well priced motherboard with a good lifespan ahead of it. I suspect it’ll hold up well when paired with a future zen3 release. Thus, it comes down to whether you think the 20 or so extra over the b450 tomahawk or mortar – for added vrm capability (better support for next am4 release) and b550 chipset updates (pcie gen4 m.2 and gpu) – are worth it.