GIGABYTE B450 AORUS M (AMD Ryzen AM4/Micro ATX/M.2 Thermal Guard/HDMI/DVI/USB 3.1 Gen 2/DDR4/Motherboard)

i honestly didnt intend to get a Micro ATX board.. i prefer full size, for space and upgradeability later on.but, i procrastinated, bought this.. then awhile later, got my AMD Ryzen 7 CPU.. then memory,.. then new SSD.. then realized what i got.. i just didnt read it.. ( insert homer simpson DOH!! right here ).that aside.. it seems to perform well.. not the gaming ability MB you will want for really REALLY hardcore gaming,, but,, will do.my graphics card is technically ancient, so i cant say i have "pushed" this MB combo very hard.but, it seems stable, and runs what games i do run on it, without issue. no overheating, and i only run the upgraded "Stock" heatsink that comes with the Ryzen 7.. those fancy schmancy water cooled units are a bit on the overkill side, even if you run hardcore.. but hey,, if it makes u sleep better at night.. lol.. jus' kidding.. i think the water cooled heat sinks, have gotten to the point finally of being worth the hassle and money, from years ago when they didnt really do any better, than a quality air cooled heat sink.. so just some "What the heck" stuff.if you are "space limited".. yea.. this will fill the bill nicely.if NOT, i would go Full sized ATX MB-- and would get an Aorus brand one for sure..

A lot of negative reviews seems to be that their boards came dead on arrival which is understandable but it can happen to tech that is this delicate during shipping. You can always get an exchange or a return for it.I would recommend this board if you're looking for something on the cheaper end and planning on keeping your current rig for the next 3+ years.PROS--IO selection is great for this board, it has multiple 3.0 and two 3.1 USB slots which is one of the more attractive features of this board. The slots aren't all scrunch together in one area which makes it look better when cables are plugged in. Some boards I've had in the past will leave a lot of dead room and have ports that can conflict with the actual cable. This board is great if you plan on having multiple devices plugged in the back.-the BIOS for this motherboard is very easy to navigate-supports m.2-supports several RGB components like LED strips and the RGB on some cpu heatsinks.CONS-the location of the m.2 drive would be under the graphics card which creates a couple of problems, If the drive fails then replacing it would require removing the graphics card. If you run a particularly hot card then this could affect the temps of the drive. I don't use m.2 drives so this isn't an issue but if you plan on installing one just know that its very close to the graphics card. I'm not sure how well the "thermal guard" work for this but nevertheless the location could be in a better place.-this is a microatx so if you plan on using a large graphics card then there is virtually no room to use the PCIe 2.0 expansion.

The previous motherboard I owned was the Gigabyte B450M DS3H, and honestly, I wish I had bought this motherboard instead.This motherboard is amazing. My biggest complaint about the DS3H was that the GPU slot was too close to the end of the motherboard, and even a gpu like the RX 580 blocked usage for one of the sata slots. The Aorus M solves this by pushing the gpu slot a bit higher up while also having the sata slots pointing out to the side rather than upward.These two changes meant everything to my build. I upgraded from the RX 580 to an RTX 3070, and it was the worst GPU for the old B450M. It covered three out of the four slots it had while also touching up on the only sata slot available. However, the Aorus M allowed me to use the three sata slots I needed while also giving the 3070 some room to breathe.This motherboard also has a whopping EIGHT USB ports: two 3.1 generation 2 USB slots, four 3.1 generation 1 USB slots, and two regular ol' USB slots. This was more than enough for what I needed, and it's been a life saver. The IO shield is black, so just a head's up for people who care about the color of their computer parts.One last thing I want to talk about is the motherboards M.2 slot. When in use, it disables three of the six sata slots available (four SATA, two ASATA). SATA slots 3, 4, and 5 become unusable, while SATA slots 0, 1, 2 still are (check the user manual to see which slots are which). This is a perfectly fine compromise that I'm ok with, but I don't speak for everyone. The cherry on top: the motherboard comes with a heat sink, so for any M.2 SSDs that do not come with a heat sink, this motherboard's got your back.Overall, this is an amazing micro ATX motherboard that I would 100% recommend to anyone. Hope this review helped!