Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master Motherboard Review

For more details on Gigabyte's UEFI and OS software offering, check out our previous Gigabyte Aorus motherboard reviews HERE and HERE.

We will be outlining the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master motherboard’s performance with the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X CPU, 16GB of 3200MHz DDR4 memory, and an Aorus RTX 2080 Ti graphics card.

As we are running the M.2 OS SSD and M.2 test SSD, our graphics card is reduced to a PCIe x8 link. As we use an RTX 2080 Ti, which is PCIe 3.0 only, this represents one of the most demanding test cases for the x8 link as it is such a powerful card.

We would expect future, more powerful graphics card to run PCIe Gen 4, at which point the x8 link has double the bandwidth of the Gen 3 x8 link. It will be interesting to see if our gaming performance is reduced by the graphics card’s PCIe 3.0 x8 link.

AM4 Motherboard Test System:

• Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X.
• Memory: 16GB (2x8GB) G.SKILL 3200MHz CL14 DDR4 @ 1.35V.
• Graphics Card: Gigabyte Aorus RTX 2080 Ti XTREME (custom fan curve to minimise thermal throttling).
• System Drive: WD_Black SN750 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe M.2 SSD.
• Games and Test SSD: Crucial MX300 750GB & Aorus 2TB PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD.
• CPU Cooler: Fractal Celsius+ S28 Prisma 280mm AIO (full speed fans and pump to eliminate thermal throttling).
• Power Supply: Seasonic Prime TX-1000 1000W.
• Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit.

BIOS Version:

• Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master BIOS version F3 (AGESA ComboAM4v2 PI 1.0.0.1)

Comparison Motherboards:

• ASUS ROG STRIX B550-E Gaming (AGESA 1.0.0.1)
• ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F Gaming (WiFi) (AGESA 1.0.0.1)
• ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus (Wi-Fi) (AGESA Combo-AM4 1.0.0.4)

Tests:

• Cinebench R20 – All-core & single-core CPU benchmark (CPU)
• Blender 2.82a – All-core rendering of the BMW and Classroom benchmarks (CPU)
• SiSoft Sandra – Memory bandwidth (Memory)
• AIDA64 – Memory bandwidth, memory latency (Memory)
• 3DMark TimeSpy – Time Spy (1440p) test (Gaming)
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider – 1920 x 1080, Highest quality preset, no AA, DX12 version (Gaming)
• Tom Clancy's The Division 2 – 1920 x 1080, Ultra quality preset, no AA, DX12 version (Gaming)
• CrystalDiskMark– Storage transfer rates (Motherboard)
• Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.4.5 – Record and playback test using a line-in to line-out loopback with a 3.5mm audio cable (Motherboard)
• AIDA64 – Stress test (Temperatures & Power Consumption)
• HWiNFO – System sensor monitoring during stress test (Temperatures & Power Consumption)

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