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BIOSTAR RACING B550M-Silver AM4 Motherboard Review

Motherboards/AMD AM4 by stefan @ 2021-05-31

The entry-level to mainstream B550M-Silver board is a solid offering from BIOSTAR, meant for more compact systems, but with interfaces available as on a fully-fledged ATX board. The color scheme is quite catchy and does not come with any RGB lighting, but the users can sync their own RGB hardware by using the included headers. We can accommodate quite a bit of RAM thanks to the total of four memory slots, while storage can be installed in the two M.2 PCIe slots but also via the six SATA III 6Gbps ports. The VRM cooling system allows installation of larger heatsinks, while the included wiring for WiFi allows an easy upgrade if a wireless card is installed in the designated area.

Packaging, A Closer Look Part I

BIOSTAR has launched quite recently new motherboards from the RACING series involving the B550/AM4 platform/socket, featuring an improved design over the GTQ/GTA models. With the Silver models we are seeing an improved cooling solution in the CPU VRM area with larger aluminum heatsinks, pre-installed WiFi antenna ports with support for WiFi AX cards but also a M.2 (E-key) socket for installing such WiFi and Bluetooth module.

The B550M-Silver is shipped inside a compact cardboard box, highlighting the silver color theme but also compatibility with 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen CPUs. The board is also compatible with 4th Gen Ryzen CPUs from the first BIOS release, but BIOSTAR is not mentioning this here. Also, after testing the latest BIOS featuring the AGESA Combov2PI 1.2.0.2 update, we have tried an older Ryzen 1300X on the board and the system has booted to Windows just fine!

On the back side we will learn of some of the product features but will also receive the full list of technical specifications. The I/O layout and explanations are also featured here:

After lifting the top cover, we will find the main board, wrapped inside an anti-static bag:

The hardware bundle is quite simple, containing a Quick Installation Guide, four SATA cables but also an I/O shield; we would have preferred to see the I/O shield as part of the motherboard construction, as we have seen with modern motherboards lately:

The manual comes with enough information to get you started, the fully-fledged version being available on the manufacturer’s website:

A driver disk with the user manual in electronic format is also included:

The Racing color theme/logo is also present on the shield:

The board features a combination of the RACING theme we have seen before with other BIOSTAR boards and the Silver-themed heatsinks which do look great!

In the top left corner, between the two VRM heatsinks we will find an 8-pin ATX power connector:

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