MSI MPG B550 GAMING PLUS Motherboard ATX – Supports AMD
MSI MPG B550 GAMING PLUS Motherboard ATX – Supports AMD Ryzen 3rd Gen Processors, AM4, DDR4 Boost (4400MHz/OC), 1x PCIe 4.0/3.0 x16, 1x PCIe 3.0 x16, 1x M.2 Gen4 x4,1x M.2 Gen3 x4, Gigabit LAN, Black
EXTENDED HEATSINK DESIGN
With more cores’ processors, thermal and power design is more important to make sure the temperature keeps lower. MSI extended PWM heatsink and enhanced circuit design ensures even high-end CPU to run in full speed with MSI motherboards.
PRE-INSTALLED IO SHIELDING
Featuring the pre-installed IO shielding, makes your installation process easier and safer. The patent design protect your IO ports also prevent electrostatic discharge damage, makes your motherboard a strong gaming foundation.
CUSTOMISE YOUR GAMING RIG
Personalise your PC with 16.8 million colours and 29 effects through Mystic Light RGB LED. Controlled in one click with the Mystic Light APP or a mobile device.
 |  |  |  |  |  | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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; 4866+ MHz | 4 x DIMM; Max. 128GB DDR4; 4400+ MHz | 4 x DIMM; Max. 128GB DDR4; 4866+ 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) 3x 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 slot (@x16) | 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 2.1 | 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 22110 (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) | 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 | 2×2 Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax | – | 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 | Yes | Yes | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Form Factor | ATX | ATX | ATX | ITX | ATX | Micro ATX |
| Weight: | 985 g |
| Dimensions: | 30.5 x 24.5 x 3 cm; 985 Grams |
| Brand: | MSI |
| Model: | MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus |
| Colour: | Black |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | MSI |
| Dimensions: | 30.5 x 24.5 x 3 cm; 985 Grams |
This motherboard is great for the price you pay and the build well its like a premium build dose everything you need it to do for half the price of a premium motherboard
Installed and setup no problems it has no output on the mobo so a cpu with integrated graphics would be limited to gpu output only and it would be nice if the LED would stay on when your in shutdown state just to know if I forgot to turn off my PC properly lol maybe it’s a setting I’m missing. The board is built really well it’s solid chunky
Good motherboard with plenty of slots for my use acse and seems to work fine. Only downside is there were no M.2 screws for SSDs included (according to the online manual there should be a pack of 3).
Edit: contacted support, and they mailed me the screws!
Got this to build a new rig and it’s a sweet motherboard with good features at a great price. It lacks wi-fi but I have no need for that and mention it because many may want it and will have to look elsewhere. The number of connection ports is impressive, plenty of SATA and USB2/3 for use and it even supports USB-C. There’s support for 2 GPU’s, plenty of fan headers for cooling and nice looking heatsinks to provide extra cooling. The LED lights are a nice touch too, though through the darkened glass panel of the case mine sits in I barely notice them. Overall a very good board with tons of functionality at a great price, so get one if you’re looking to upgrade or build a new rig.
A great motherboard for the price and offers alot of value, Great motherboard from msi, First time upgrading in years and this is a gem, Highly recommended, I was skeptic at first about any brand less than asus and intel platform, I used to be originally an amd user until i switched to intel. But using amd and msi motherboards truely is an experience, Amd ryzen 5000 processors work straight out of the box with this motherboard, So if your want a top end budget gaming pc, This is highly recommended !
fantastic motherboard with a great amount of features. easy for build with. had to do a bios update before installing a 5th generation cpu but this was easy with the bios flashback tool. bios is easy to navigate. i have trusted MSI for years and will continue to do so.
After flashing the bios before hand it had struggle to post for 1 hour or 2 had to resit everything and then it booted up fine and it can handle 5000 series of the Ryzen chips just make sure you update the bios !
After having this motherboard nearly over a year now and still couldn’t set up the bios to take my i9 chip. I’ve finally bit the bullet and handed all my stuff over to a professional to build me my pc. I was struggling with the USB bios update tryed over 8 usb sticks and in end it was the cheapest usb you can imagine worked first time.. my ssd usb wouldn’t work at all.. love it now. Seller fast delivery
Great board for those looking at AM4. Had the full feature set I was looking for and pretty easy to build on, even a little RGB built in for good measure. What more could you ask fo
Bought this board to update my son’s gaming machine, replacing an old MSI B450 Tomahawk board.
This product looks and feels quality, was easy to install and looks great.
Performance is a seamless transition from the previous set-up and I was so impressed that I replaced a faulty B550 Mortar board on his PC at his grandparents with one of these. Both systems run a Ryzen 5 5600 CPU and give great performance, even with both chips OC’d to 4800MHz.
Superb Motherboard with a plethora of features. Design is sleek and stylish with nice placement of ports throughout. Heatsinks are great and VRM is fantastic on this board also. Pre Installed IO Shield is a plus. Comes well packaged in a stylish box and is very easy to get up and running.
Highly recommend.
I’ve paired this board with a 5950x I got a deal on. It works flawlessly, passed all stress tests. This is with PBO on. Consistent Cinebench multi score of around 28,000+ which is about in line and I don’t plan to overclock manually. Base system:
MSI B550 Gaming Plus
R9 5950x
32GB DDR4 3600 Ram
RTX 4070ti
Highly recommend this board. I’ve only knocked one star off for install due to it refusing to post initially. I assumed it was because of CPU incompatibility out of the box so attempted to use the bios flashback utility but couldn’t get it to work for some reason. It could well have been an error from me but fairly certain I followed all the instructions. As a last resort I re-seated the ram and it posted. No problems since then, not entirely sure why it wouldn’t post initially, everything was installed as it should, RAM in the optimised slots.
But hey ho. It is a capable and affordable board.
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.
It also has numerous fan headers which is perfect as I paired this with the MSI Gungnir 110R case that comes with 4 ARGB fans as standard!
The full user manual can be found on the MSI website as it only comes with a quick installation guide (pretty helpful in itself).
Overall, highly recommend this board.
My setup is:
Mobo – MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk Max WiFi
CPU – Ryzen 5 5600
GPU – MSI RTX 3060Ti Gaming X Trio
RAM – Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro (2x8GB) 3200mhz
PSU – EVGA Supernova 650 G6 (80 Gold)
A great motherboard for beginner’s or advanced users, very stable, low temps, lots of advanced features in bios, plenty of fan headers and RGB spread across the board, great compatibility, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 6E, so much more i cant list them all, switched on first time after fitting and works like a charm since, looks great in case with some led strips added as the heatsink and board colour scheme are in a lovely satin black finish, the main heatsinks are giant and absorb the temps very well, I’ve turned all my fans down in the bios because high speeds are not needed to cool this board so its nice and quiet too.
It’s a great board should you want to fit pieces together, be warned. If you wish to use the bottom NVME SSD slot which is only gen 3 also I believe, you will loose access to the 2nd PCIE slot (It’s only PCIE3 anyways I believe) Also if you have the rgb lights on the board you loose functionality of one of the front usb’s on your case. Other then that does all you expect, also noticed it has a less aggressive fan curve then my old MSI GAMING PLUS MAX X470. All round great board should you be taking advantage of price drops of “previous gen”
The only issue with this motherboard is that MSI have removed the Realtek audio controller, which means you are stuck with flat, quiet audio – you’ll be recommended an aftermarket program called Nahimic, but this program is not compatible with any motherboard made past 2010 and will not install. You need a seriously powerful speaker set up for this motherboard – a stack system with an amp would be ideal – Now I have to forego my PSU upgrade in favour of a speaker upgrade now as this is poor as furk.
Apart from this minor irritation, the board is brilliant.
Through this tomahawk costs three times as much as a traditional one, I knew instantly that I needed to buy this product and try it for myself.
Upon receiving the Tomahawk I took it down onto the local range for some throwing practice. Before I threw the Tomahawk I paid careful attention to all the fancy sci-fi techno gadgets on the giant throwing square, I noticed that there was some batteries and resistors on there that could definitely allow the Tomahawk to be a corrosive weapon, this I thought was an absolute technological innovation for the Tomahawk community.
My mates were dead impressed by the tomahawk, they thought it were well cool.
After throwing the Tomahawk at my portrait of Margaret Thatcher (on the range) it completely shattered into something like eight pieces. I wasn’t expecting this Tomahawk to be singular use, I was a bit disappointed at first, but after analysing the damage I soon realised that this was the Tomahawk equivalent of a shotgun pellet, if I threw this at a wild deer up in Nottingham, the odds on are that the deer would be taken down much easier than a traditional Tomahawk, this would get its legs & arms & ‘ead (Not even mentioning the corrosive properties and the potential electrical damage that could be caused to neutralise the wild deer threat)
I bought like five of them after that, did a bit of a dent in my financial pocket but I’d go out there and say it was worth it. Took me pop with me on a hunt, using these Tomahawks like bludde sci-fi Frisbees, we managed to get one, took a real nice photo of me dad after the hunt.
I highly recommend this product to everyone, it has amazing compatibility with 5rd Gen Ryzen processors and it has great RGB controls for the computer system.
I’m going to give this 8/10 for the sole reason that it is a costly component, if it were cheaper it would be a 10/10
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.
The heat sinks on the VRMs are very well designed – The highest mainboard temperature I managed to achieve under various loads was 58 C. And that in a roomy, but simple air cooled (2 fans) Tower case.
Also in this respect you buy top end performance for a mid range price.
+++
Push button BIOS upgrade worked fine – as this particular exemplar was not prepared for Zen 3 CPUs, initially my Ryzen 5600x was not recognized (“No CPU” LED on), but AFTER the BIOS upgrade everything was OK.
XMP – once switched on in the BIOS – also gives me the 3600 MHz of the RAM I bought.
Only snag so far: A bug in the BIOS: If I set the USB-DVD as 1st boot option, the NVMe as 2nd and the HD as 3rd, then booting with an empty DVD-drive in a USB-port results in a boot from the (3rd boot option) Hard Drive instead of the (2nd boot option) NVMe.
A pretty harmless bug – the simple work-around is of course to boot with the USB-DVD unplugged, or alternatively demote it in the boot order.
+++
The MSI product registration procedure is too bureaucratic – it requires opening the case and finding a 3-digit code on the MB, and uploading a copy of the invoice.
I gave it a miss.
The serial number on the box really should do.
+++
With its excellent heat management this board should also offer good overclocking potential – a lot of parameters can be manipulated in the BIOS and from the (Windows 10) custom software coming on the DVD. I am however perfectly happy with the performance I’ve got and forgo the overclocking for the sake of our environment and my electricity bill.
I got it from an amazon Warehouse Deal – ONE OF THE BEST PURCHASES I EVER MADE.
Easy installation into most modern ATX cases as no having to mess around the I/O shield as it’s pre-applied to the board as part of the heat sink… long gone are the days of messing around with those unless you go for a cheaper board.
There’s enough space between the PCIE x16 4.0 slot for your GPU to the lower down PCIE x16 3.0 slot for another peripheral with a modern graphics card installed… although I’m not sure about the width/bulk of RTX 3090, a RTX 3070 fits here fine with enough space inside a Corsair 4000d Airflow.
Lots of system fan headers for a good case to have everything connected individually for monitored RPM usage on most, if not all your fans (depending on how many you have!) without having to connect multiple fans to the same header. The CPU PUMP header can be used as a CPU OPT header also (optional CPU fan) if you say, want to monitor both fans of a cooler like the very popular Noctua NH-D15.
The only cons here I’d say are as follows:
Two PCIE x1 ports… really? Just make them X4’s or X16’s are PCIE 3.0 – so many modern peripherals don’t fit an X1 slot and need the wider variant.
if the PCIE x16 3.0 slot is in use, I believe the lower M.2 slot also become nulled… I’ve not treid this myself, but the manual mentions it. Please look up the manual and read about this yourself for more information if having two NVME M.2 drives is a necesscity for you… (the lower M.2. slot is also 3.0, not 4.0) for me, it isn’t, and the one NVME 4.0 slot is enough.
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.
Everything you need to know about this board has been written already but at a high-level, this comes well-packaged, is easy to install and is great quality. Little touches like including a high-quality M.2 heatsink reassure you that a lot of thought has gone into this.
Other than that, it runs like a dream with my Ryzen 7, DDR4 RAM, Sapphire Nitro card and M.2 SSD*.
Whilst, even at the time of buying, this has already been superseded with boards for newer CPUs, Memory etc This is an extremely capable and stable foundation for a system that you can throw anything at.
——-
* One thing I read that may be of interest is that both M.2 slots share the same bus, or, the 2nd slot shares the same bus as something else on the system; I can’t remember which so you best look it up. This means that if you populate the 2nd slot, you may throttle the bandwidth of something somewhere else. If you only use the main M.2 slot then this isn’t an issue.
Overall this is an excellent AMD B550 Motherboard with loads of features. Only cost me 130!!!
Nice and east too. Just grab the latest NON-BETA release, pop it on a formatted (Fat32) flash drive and make sure you set the extension to .ROM on the downloaded bios file (See YouTube for a guide) Then plug the stick in the highlighted USB port on the rear IO and press the button above it (It’s recessed, so us a pencil or something)
It took about 5 mins, but you might want to wait another 5 mins after it stops flashing, just to be sure it’s complete. I then powered down, added my hardware and that was that. It took about 15 mins from getting the file to being ready, and that’s factoring in extra waiting times to be sure.
The board is built well and weighs a fair bit, thanks to it’s chunky heatsinks. I’ve overclocked a 5800 to 5Ghz with no issues apart from temps, which are a little higher on the 5800X anyway, due to how they are made. I’m not running it at that though, I’ve decided to keep it at 4.8 and get the voltages down as much as possible.
I’m really pleased with everything! Motherboards have come a long way over the years and this one is very capable. If you get it on offer then go for it. You’re likely looking at x570s too, so keep those in mind when comparing prices. The MSI x570 is another good choice if it fits your budget too and you want the extra bells and whistles.
This board has 1x Gen 4 NMVe slot and a single PCI-E 4.0 slot for the GPU. So you’re still getting good specs. Check out the specs in full vs some of the others out there as they do differ… some by a fair way too.
I’d buy MSI again for sure (Coming from a long time Gigabyte customer) It just fits perfect and has been trouble free. The bios is awesome to work with too.