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)

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've been a fan of MSI for a long time and have built many computers using their boards. This board did not disappoint.I've been using a laptop for a while and it has been unable to keep up very well and had started to freeze randomly, so it was time to build a new desktop. I wanted something small that would take up very little room and had on board Wifi + Bluetooth.I found this board from MSI and was confident it would be just fine. I was surprised at how small this board really is and how much stuff they've managed to stuff on it. Installing and plugging in everything was pretty painless, although you'll need to plug things in working outward on the board. Otherwise if you plug something in on the outer edge of the board first it will be difficult to plug in something behind it because the plugs are all so close together. My biggest challenge was cable management, but that isn't an issue with the motherboard it's just an inherent issue with making a computer this small in a small case.Another great feature of this board is that it has an M.2 connector so you can connect an NVMe SSD drive. Boy is this thing fast. Windows boots up super fast and starting programs is almost instantaneous (some may take a second to load).Booting up for the first time was hassle free and messing around in the BIOS was easy and was able to set all of my settings to my liking. System has been running smoothly ever since. WiFi and Bluetooth worked upon Windows installation. Another solid Motherboard from MSI.

Fits with the Goodisory A02 case with Cooler Master MasterAir G200P RBG Low-Profile.Mine did not come compatible with the Ryzen 5 3600. It would not get to the POST or BIOS. I tried resetting CMOS by unplugging the battery and such, but nothing. This was my first build and I was not aware that in order to update the BIOS you first need a compatible CPU - which I had none. So I grudgingly bought a Ryzen 3 3200G from BestBuy, and luckily my board worked with the Ryzen 3.Updating the BIOs was not a huge deal, there are many tutorials online. However, you should note that the most recent MSI BIOS is not the red-color one with the graphs and curves you will see online. It's black and white. You might think you still have an older BIOS, but that's actually the new one that's compatible with Ryzen 3rd gen. It's missing some nice features, but will get you by. It took a while to figure out what version of the BIOS was installed for me. Look for the last two letters from the downloads page. Mine was “AC”.When I first updated the BIOS, I just stared at a blank screen. It did not reboot after 20min. So I just hard rebooted and I finally saw a BIOS. I was able to get Windows going after that. I was doing some stress tests with game emulation and Windows crashed several times, not sure if that was due to Windows or something with the CPU/Motherboard though.I decided to try the Ryzen 5 again … and again no POST or BIOS. I was pissed. Apparently this is not uncommon. For me, I decided I would just use the Ryzen 3 for now and stuck with that for an afternoon. But after doing more research, this is the only board I could find that's mini-ITX and SHOULD support Ryzen 5. I swapped out the CPU one last time … and it randomly started working!!! So maybe the trick is you gotta swap out the 3 and 5 a couple times. Since I’ve switched to the Ryzen 5, Windows has stopped crashing.Still, I experienced some weirdness on boot ups with the Ryzen 5 for the first few times. I can’t remember exactly. But after a couple times it started booting up normally and quickly.So that was an ordeal for me, considering this was my first build. Overall, I gave this a good score because once I got it working, I’m quite pleased with it overall. Setting it up was a huge headache though.Hope this helps someone.