Analyzing B450 for AMD Ryzen: A Quick Look at 25+ Motherboards
by Gavin Bonshor on July 31, 2018 8:00 AM ESTASRock B450 Gaming K4
Both the B450 Gaming K4 and B450 Gaming ITX/ac feature similar designs with gunmetal grey heatsinks which feature fins to help direct airflow through the channels, which in turn should help dissipate any excess heat. The boards both feature support for ASRock’s Polychrome RGB technology, with the B450 Gaming K4 having customizable LEDs under the chipset heatsink and additional expansion through a single addressable LED header and standard RGB LED header.
From a quick glance, it looks as though the B450 Gaming K4 has a 9-phase power delivery which appears to be operating in a 6+3 configuration - the Gaming K4 has a heatsink covering the entirety of the MOSFETs, compared to the smaller Gaming-ITX model which only covers the CPU section of the power delivery.
The rear panel of the Fatal1ty B450 Gaming K4 consists of a two USB 3.1 10 Gbps ports (Type-A and Type-C), four USB 3.1 5 Gbps ports, two USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI output, a DisplayPort 1.2 output, a D-sub output and a combo keyboard/mouse PS/2 port. The single LAN port is controlled by a Realtek RTL8111H Gigabit networking chip with the three 3.5mm audio jacks being powered by a Realtek ALC892 audio codec.
The ATX sized B450 Gaming K4 has a host of gaming-themed features, AMD 2-way CrossFire multi-graphics card support (x16 + x4) and integrated RGB. The new ASRock B450 models directly replace the currently available B350 offerings and as it stands currently, the B450 Gaming K4 sits at $99.99.
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T1beriu - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Gavin, you made a table that shows B350 and A320 don't support PB2 and XFR2. This is incorrect. Raven Ridge (2400G, 2200G, 2X00U) work without a problem on these boards. Yes, Raven Ridge has PB2 and XFR2 from day one. AMD advertised it when they launched RR last year.https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/sense-mi
Ian Cutress - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
It's not natively enabled from launch - it requires a BIOS update which not all vendors on all boards have provided. The CPUs work sure, but not all features of the CPUs will work in all products.T1beriu - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
PB2 and XFR work on A320 as well.MrbigN - Wednesday, January 23, 2019 - link
If you buy the boards directly from there amazon store or on there website they should be Stock updated.As of, Jan,23 2019
bull2760 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Please fix your charts. PCIe should be 3.0 not 2.0Ian Cutress - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
The Chipset supports PCIe 2.0 lanes. PCIe 3.0 lanes come from the CPU.chrcoluk - Monday, August 30, 2021 - link
yeah but the 2nd x16 slot is also from the cpu and thus 3.0, you can even choose to make it a 8x slot in the bios by downgrading the first slot to 8x.The review incorrectly states the second full length slot is only 2.0.
T1beriu - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
StoreMI can work on 300-series motherboards but comes with an additional fee (I don't think it's BIOS dependent).https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/store-mi
Ian Cutress - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
The systems support 10 GbE, if you buy the cards. Yes it's picking hairs, but we're speaking native support.jtd871 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
What does 10GbE have to do with StoreMI?!