MSI B550 Tomahawk upsides

The MSI TOMAHAWK motherboard family has long been praised for its value-for-money approach to gaming PCs. The MSI B550 TOMAHAWK isn't the cheapest motherboard on the market, but when you consider the components' quality and MSI's reputation, the price is hard to beat. 

To begin with, the board looks fine, and the RGB lighting isn't overdone, with only 3 or 4 RGB LEDs illuminating the bottom of the chipset heatsink. As a result, you get a quite subtle and functional-looking motherboard that's up to the task at hand.

As some reviews witnessed during their testing, the power delivery this board will be sufficient for at least an overclocked Ryzen 9 3900X. The Tomahawk is the only one of these boards having two Ethernet ports (1 and 2.5 GbE), but it, too, lacks Wi-Fi. The main difference between these boards is declared memory capability, however all should easily meet AMD's 3600/3733 MHz'sweet spot,' as previously stated.

The B550 Tomahawk from MSI competes in the congested $150-$200 B550 market. Here you'll discover various boards with little difference between them, making it tough to choose between them because it comes down to budget, aesthetics, and the small features you need and desire on your motherboard.

At stock circumstances, performance was superb. The overclocking results were likewise encouraging, and because to MSI's straightforward UEFI and clear LLC settings, we were able to easily push our 16-core processor to 4.25GHz.

Throughout our tests, MSI's implemented 10-stage CPU power supply system performed flawlessly. While not especially efficient in design, the huge VRM heatsinks performed an excellent job of cooling the high-quality power stages beneath.

It's also worth noting that both M.2 slots received metal heatsinks with thermal pads. Another plus was the inbuilt USB Type-C front panel header. MSI's emphasis on plenty of fan headers and efficient UEFI-based control is also a big plus.

Is it a buy?

The MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk has excellent heatsinks, a stylish design, and is well-suited for the future. We believe it is deserving of attention in the B550 market.

The downsides of the motherboard reviews

However, there are several obvious drawbacks to the B550 Tomahawk. Even at this pricing range, MSI's selected PCIe/M.2 lane distribution is inadequate and plainly inferior to competing options. In reality, you won't be able to use dual M.2 SSDs with a high-bandwidth add-in card, or triple M.2 SSDs. The addition of 'just' five Type-A USB ports on the back is a minor flaw. Instead of the (useless?) PS/2 combo connector, we believe it would have been wiser to have a couple more.

The HDMI connection is also a huge drawback. All of MSI's literature indicates that the HDMI port is version 1.4b, rather as the 2.0 or 2.1 seen on competitor motherboards. This is really upsetting since users of APUs with this motherboard will be unable to output 4K60 to their TV or HDMI monitor. I honestly have no idea why MSI thinks this is a good design decision. It demonstrates a level of carelessness not usually associated with the company's Tomahawk SKUs.

This is a great buy

That said, the MSI B550 Tomahawk is unquestionably powerful in terms of power delivery and VRM cooling. Furthermore, the existence of two NICs, one of which is 2.5Gb, will entice many potential purchasers.