MSI Performance Gaming AMD Ryzen 1st and 2nd Gen AM4 M.2 USB 3 DDR4 HDMI Display Port Mini-ITX Motherboard (B450I Gaming Plus AC)

Good motherboard but seller ship old stock. Without updated bios.

The m/b needs a bios update before it can be used with Ryzen 3000 CPU. There is no onboard bios flashback so it requires an earlier generation AMD processor to complete the update. It is my first non-Intel build so I needed to take it to a local computer shop (or find a friend who will loan you one) for update. $20 charge, not an issue. Works perfectly after that. Had to enable X-AMP in the bios to have 3200 cl16 memory recognized (started at 2133) but no issues after that.

After ordering this I saw a lot of reviews and many people noted that it did not work with Ryzen 3. So I was worried that would be the case with my purchase as well. Fortunately it did work out of the box with my Ryzen 3600 with motherboard Bios 7A40vAA. However, there was nothing stating that it would work and I didn't know until I powered it up for the first time. On the box it stated "AMD Ryzen desktop 2000 ready" and nothing more. Why couldn't they put a sticker on the box or motherboard stating that the BIOS had been upgraded and that it would work with Ryzen 3?

This a board meant for those who are on a budget or looking to build a low to mid end build. It has good power delivery phase for mild overclocking, great quality components on board, and a good amount of port selections being an ITX board at a reasonable price!! Although many are having issues with using AMD’s Stealth coolers due to clearance issues, luckily I didn’t go through that since I decided to go for an AIO in my build. As the title says it works with my Ryzen 5 5600x!! And I’m serious, although before you think of getting one with this board I suggest you get a cheap 1000 series CPU or ask a friend to borrow a 1000 to 2000 series CPU to update the bios to a beta version from MSI, but if you’re lucky you might get a new stock that already has this updated BIOS unlike my case I didn’t so I had to update it. Before the cpu upgrade I had a R5 2600, while it’s still good it just wasn’t enough for my 3070TI (no brag here), so yeah it was time for an upgrade. I then got the 5600x put it in my system (with the updated bios installed already) and hey it worked perfectly, well with a few reboots what not but after that functioned normally. Checked task manager, CPU-Z, and even of course my bios to make sure that it’s reading everything correctly and it sure is. I even did a stress test with Prime-95 for about an hour, while I won’t showcase my temps and all it did not crash or freeze at all. As for gaming, it’s a major improvement for me, GPU now is being more utilized compared to 30-50 percent before. Although the major issue with this board has to do with ram, since Ryzen CPUS like faster ram I can only stay at 3200mhz at 18 16 16 38, even with A-XMP trying at 3333mhz it wouldn’t boot at all. Some of you guys might get lucky or it’s the fact that I need to configure my timings more, mind you I have the Corsair Vengance RGB PRO 16gb 3200mhz ram so yeah stock speeds and it works fine. With all that being said this is a great board especially if you have a current gen Ryzen CPU you don't have to worry about upgrading this board for a b550 for example just to support Ryzen 5000 series as it will work just fine with this board.

I will start off by saying that I think I've tried just about every Mini ITX board out there with the 350 chipset. Seemed to be ok running my Ryzen 2600X. But then I decided to jump into the 450 chipset and see what the difference was if any. I decide to go with this MSI board just because im becoming a fan of the Dragon. Once I got this board, I could tell it was pretty good quality, maybe not the top of the line, but pretty darn close. I love this board. I'm a small form factor Gamer and this thing is a beast and my games haven't run better. There are only 2 things that I can live with, but would liked to see more is it only has 2 fan headers. One more would've helped out alot. And the other thing is that I can't get my ram to 3200 mhz, just stuck at 3066 mhz which isn't a game breaker. But MSI is really good at updating its bios and software, so that last one isn't much of an issue. Other than that, I would highly recommend this board to any Ryzen 2 owners wanting to do anything including gaming.

It's a very good solid motherboard for AMD CPUs. It works with AMD 3000 series if you update the motherboard to the newer BIOS versions. Ideally sellers should update the BIOS to the latest version before shipping it out but I guess they didn't do that to keep the cost low. Even if you get one with old BIOS, you can borrow a bootkit from AMD Singapore so that you can upgrade the board to the latest BIOS or just get that $50 (SGD79) AMD Athlon 200GE CPU.