GIGABYTE B550I AORUS PRO AX Motherboard

If you a high quality ITX board that works well with your Ryzen 5000 CPU and offers good value for your money, this is it. The WIFI and BT connections are a bonus.

The ram slots are crunchy like they have sand in them. It’s probably why I’ve had a lot of trouble getting the ram to seat properly.

Trying to reset the bios is like pulling teeth. It doesn’t work. It takes me literally hours and the only reason it works sometimes is because I’ll make a hardware change like changing the ram or something. Right now I’m trying to reset the bios because I did an unstable CPU overclock and it freezes on the motherboard logo screen (just after post). I’ve tried everything, flipping the PSU switch and unplugging the power cord (just to be extra sure) and waiting a few minutes, and I’ve tried holding the pins jumped for varying amount time between 5 seconds and 1 minute. I’ll be damned if I have to completely disassemble my PC just to get to the cmos battery. If I can get the bios reset I’m just going to enable XMP and set my custom fan curve. I have zero confidence in overclocking on this board because I can’t reset the bios. On all my previous systems, there was no fuss. You just turn it off, disconnect power, jump the pins for about 10 seconds and boom, you can start tinkering again. Not on this board.

The drivers for the wifi and bluetooth don’t install very well. Windows pops up a prompt asking if they installed properly and I don’t know until I restart my system. Luckily they work.

I regret buying this board. It’s got a few cool features but the bad outweighs the good for me.

Very solid the only complaint I have is the bluetooth issue. I literally had to buy a separate dongle to make it work. After updates installed and BIOS update as well it will simply no work properly have this in mind if planning on buying it

The Gigabyte B550I Aorus Pro AX is one of the most affordable B550 ITX motherboards on the market at the time of this review, yet it is also extremely solid with all the latest features that an enthusiast may want in an ITX motherboard.

Pros:
For myself personally, the reasons for choosing this motherboard or a B550 board in general, is to have better/sooner support for the Ryzen 5000 series, along with things like PCIe 4.0, USB 3.2, and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet. This board also features a very handy Q-Flash feature for flashing the BIOS without having anything aside from a power supply and a USB stick, so no need to worry about having a Ryzen 3000 series chip on-hand to flash the latest BIOS. The board also features a backplate that really makes it feel like a properly premium and sturdy product. Compared to its X570 sibling, this board is around $30 less expensive but does not lack anything notable in my opinion, aside from the M.2 slot on the back of the board being PCIe 3.0 whereas the X570 version has PCIe 4.0 on both M.2 slots. The B550 also does not have a chipset cooling fan, which to me is an advantage over the X570 because it eliminates a potential source of noise and premature failure.

It’s also worth noting that the chipset fan on the X570 version takes up one of the 3 fan headers, whereas all 3 headers on this board are usable. The X570 version also appears to only have USB 3.1 Gen 2 and 1.0 Gigabit Ethernet.

Cons:
This board does not have any provisions for front panel USB-C ports, so beware if your case features any USB-C ports that will need to be connected to the motherboard. Officially, the B550 chipset only supports Ryzen 3000 series out of the box, with Ryzen 5000 support enabled via a BIOS update. On the other hand, the X570 version will support Ryzen 2000 series as well, so in that regard the B550 board does lack a bit of flexibility.

Additional Notes:
I picked up this motherboard with the intention of using it with a Ryzen 5000 series chip when I get around to buying one sometime next year. The reason for buying this board now is mainly because availability for this board has been very inconsistent until recently, so I figured it would be wise to buy one while it’s readily available. I’m currently using a Ryzen 2700X which isn’t officially supported by the B550 chipset, so I was originally going to leave this board on the shelf until I got a Ryzen 5000 series CPU.

I saw a few reports of people getting 2000 series CPUs to work in B550 boards, though they were few and far in between. However, I was going to go ahead and flash this board to BIOS version F10 to enable Ryzen 5000 support, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to check if my 2700X will post in this board while I’m at it. The board was probably preloaded with the F1 or F2 BIOS out of the box, and I got nothing but a black screen when I tried to boot. However, after flashing to the F10 BIOS, I was massively surprised to see that it was able to post, and everything seemed to function normally in the BIOS. I proceeded to go a step further and installed my boot drive to see if it will boot into Windows, and I couldn’t quite believe my eyes when it reached desktop without any noticeable issues, and without reinstalling Windows or any of the drivers.

Fast forward to today, and I’m running the F11b BIOS from October 19 with “additional optimizations” for Ryzen 5000 series, which actually enabled XMP for me, something that wasn’t working on the F10 BIOS. I have now reinstalled Windows and have been fine-tuning all the details without any problems whatsoever. I couldn’t be any happier with this board, everything from its features and construction to the unexpected support for older chips like mine. I would also like to add that the F10 BIOS which enabled Ryzen 5000 support was released on September 18, before the Ryzen 5000 series was even announced. I don’t see how Gigabyte could possibly have been further ahead of the curve when it comes to product support, and they have done a truly excellent job with this board.

The goods:
1. Back panel shield is integrated to the board! Handy!
2. Backside (the other side that CPU and RAM mounts) has protective plate! Even better!
3. RAM slot is 2 latch model. Much easier to install than ASUS B550I!
4. ITX board! Yet has 2 chassis fan controllers there.

Bads:
1. Accessories are a bit lacking. But who installs multiple SATA drives these days? Especially on ITX builds?
2. VRM Heat sinks are too thick. Be Quiet! Shadow Rock LP does not fit unless your memory module has low height. Gigabyte B450I was able to accept the cooler with VRM covering orientation.
–> Some cases may have problem if you wish to install 240 AIO radiator on the top ventilation set up.
3. Outer chunk of the front side M.2 SSD heat sink is not really functional. Additional thermal tape would be needed for it to be actually functional. This is very nice chunky metal piece.
4. No front side USB-C type connector. Not a problem if your case do not have USB-C port anyway. But it could be a bummer for some cases.
5. No dedicated PWM port for AIO cooler pump control.
6. No AURA 5V RGB sync header… but this isn’t an ASUS board.

Remarks
1. Mine came with 2022 BIOS. But Gigabyte have most recent 2023 bios on their product web site.
2. Board title appears perfectly on Linux! Did not expect this!
3. No WiFi/Bluetooth instability yet. Pop! OS 22.04. Kernel 6.2
4. One of the chassis PWM connector is rather very small JST type small pin socket rather than typical 4 pin connector. You have to use the converter cable that comes with the board.