Biostar Announces B550T-Silver Mini-ITX Motherboard For AMD's Ryzen 5000 Family
by Gavin Bonshor on April 16, 2021 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- Biostar
- Mini ITX
- PCIe 4.0
- Zen 3
- B550
- Ryzen 5000
- B550T-Silver
Biostar has unveiled its latest mini-ITX motherboard for the AMD B550 chipset, the B550T-Silver, which is designed for use with AMD's Ryzen 5000 and Ryzen 3000 processors. The small-sized board combines a simple silver and black aesthetic with decent features including PCIe 4.0 support, Wi-Fi 6, 2.5 GbE networking, and one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot.
With both NVIDIA and AMD moving quickly away from multi-graphics card setups to single card powerhouses, the mini-ITX form factor has become as potent as as it's ever been for gaming systems. Biostar's latest board, in turn, ticks a lot of boxes for users looking for a reasonably priced mini-ITX motherboard that can harness the power of AMD's Zen 3 processors to create a potent and pocket-sized gaming system/media center with the AMD's cheaper Ryzen chips.
From what we've seen, no X570 or B550 boards currently list support for the latest Ryzen 5000G APUs, which we expect to change once AMD rolls them out onto the wider market.
The Biostar B550T-Silver combines a basic and elegant black and silver color scheme, with plenty of features to be benefited from. There's one full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, with a single PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot and four straight-angled SATA ports, including support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. On the right-hand side of the board are two memory slots, which can support 64 GB of RAM at speeds up to DDR4-4933. Biostar isn't openly advertising the power delivery system, but we can see it uses one 8-pin 12 V ATX input to provide power to the CPU.
Biostar includes one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, one USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, and four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports on the rear panel. There's an unspecified Wi-Fi 6 interface for wireless networking, and a Realtek RTL8125B 2.5 GbE controller. The board's integrated audio consists of three 3.5 mm audio jacks powered by a Realtek ALC897 HD audio codec. Users looking to build a mini-ITX media system can benefit from the integrated graphics on the Ryzen 4000 APUs through one HDMI 2.1 and a single DisplayPort video output pairing. Finishing off the rear panel is a PS/2 combo keyboard and mouse port.
At the time of writing, we don't currently have a price for the Biostar B550T-Silver mini-ITX motherboard or when it is expected to hit retail. However, we do expect it to be reasonably priced compared directly to some of the other mini-ITX B550 models.
Source: Biostar
Related Reading
- The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others
- AMD Ryzen 5000G APUs: OEM Only, For Now, Full Release Later This Year
- First AMD B550 With Thunderbolt 4: The ASUS ProArt B550-Creator
- The ASRock Rack B550D4-4L, a B550 Motherboard with BMC
- AMD Zen 3 Ryzen Deep Dive Review: 5950X, 5900X, 5800X, and 5600X Tested
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Lucky Stripes 99 - Saturday, April 17, 2021 - link
I see two 4-pin LED headers just right of the diagnostic LEDs.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, April 19, 2021 - link
Headeres are fine, the board itself doesnt have any. I can ignore headers.meacupla - Saturday, April 17, 2021 - link
IDK if this is 8 phase.To me it looks like there are 8x thingamajigs under the heatsink and 10x 470 J07.
And since this has to handle APUs, I am thinking it is 6 phase VRM for CPU and 2 phase VRM with doubling for the GPU.
So a 6+2x2 VRM design.
Which should be good enough for an 8 core, if the power stages are of higher amperage.
Samus - Sunday, April 18, 2021 - link
I believe you are correct with the 6+2, the power stage is very similar to other B550 ITX boards with a 6+2 (though most of them cover it up with ridiculous cooling which for a 6+2 is mostly unnecessary.)Based on the target market for this board, the vast majority of users will likely run a 65W chip anyway, and if they were actually retail available this would be ideal for an APU.
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, April 19, 2021 - link
True, but thena gain 6 phase is plenty, even the 5950x only peaks at 147 watts. 6-8 cores wont come close to straining it.Gigaplex - Sunday, April 18, 2021 - link
RGB can be disabled easily. Most of the B550 ITX boards cooling designs look fine, and you're not really going to see them anyway with the CPU cooler and GPU obscuring the board. The VRM design looks pretty weak compared to the other boards.Rudde - Saturday, April 17, 2021 - link
Is the m.2 slot under one of the heatsinks? Because I can't find it.Tomatotech - Saturday, April 17, 2021 - link
I think it's under the silver module that has 'Silver' written on it.Oxford Guy - Saturday, April 17, 2021 - link
'With both NVIDIA and AMD moving quickly away from multi-graphics card setups to single card powerhouses, the mini-ITX form factor has become as potent as as it's ever been for gaming systems.'Oh, so the newish trend away from multi-GPU hasn't resulted in an increase in the perceived value of mini-ITX.
meacupla - Saturday, April 17, 2021 - link
Well, yeah.There are many market overlaps that mITX has to compete with, and, IMO, the cost premium of mITX parts is a bit much.
The case is not as much of a problem, as the NR200 exists, but the cost of decent SFX PSUs and mITX mobos was enough to buy a higher performance GPU or CPU.
I say "was", only because of the current silicon shortage.
And if you don't need a powerful gaming GPU, there are currently plenty of NUC, and ryzen 4000/5000 mini PCs on the market right now. These have surprisingly good APU performance, as well as price/performance ratio, and, most importantly, you can actually buy them.