Sometimes less is more, and when it comes to motherboards the mini-ITX form factor has some of the most enthusiastic fan club members. Small form factor systems are becoming more widely used as we're ushered into a single graphics card setup dominated landscape. and in terms of features to price, the B550 chipset has some of the most cost-effective of any current desktop platform. One such board is the GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX which combines a wave of premium features combined with AMD's B550 chipset. It includes compatibility for PCIe 4.0 devices with supported processors, dual PCIe M.2 slots, and 2.5 gigabit Ethernet. It's time to give our verdict on it and see if it can cut it in a very competitive small is more market.

GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX Overview

One of GIGABYTE's most scalable ranges is its Aorus series, which typically aims its feature set and aesthetics at gamers. Often clad in RGB enabled heatsinks and componentry, the Aorus series is now GIGABYTE's most widely recognizable range, which stretches from the larger E-ATX to small-sized mini-ITX offerings in motherboards, but also covers graphics cards, laptops, and all manner of other components.

Focusing on the mini-ITX form factor, the range on offer is considerably more competitive than the ATX market for a couple of reasons. The first is that there are much fewer small form factor models available, meaning manufacturers are limited in what they can do and need to strive to get the right solution, sometimes at the first time of asking. The second is that with less to choose from, it's key in getting a model that fits the desired feature set and for the rest of the hardware to fit the whole aspect of a system build.

Less is more in some cases, but fewer PCIe slots available means less room for the addition of controllers such as networking, storage, and other devices. Focusing primarily on what the GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX has to offer, it blends subtle black and grey tones for an elegant look, with the board's integrated RGB located along the right-hand side of the board for a rainbow infused under glow effect. While having a look that should fit into most systems in terms of aesthetics, the mini-ITX Aorus Pro AX has plenty of features. This includes a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot located on the front and a PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA M.2 slot on the rear, with four SATA ports, and two memory slots capable of support up to DDR4-5100 memory, with a total capacity of 64 GB. Looking at networking, it uses a premium 2.5 GbE controller with a Wi-Fi 6 interface pairing. Simultaneously, the onboard audio solution is also good, which one expects from a mid-range model.

Putting the GIGABYTE through our testing suite, the B550I Aorus Pro AX performed well in the majority of our system tests, with good showings in all three power tests, as well as in our POST time testing. DPC latency performance was average at best, and it performed competitively when compared to other AM4 based models tested with our Ryzen 7 3700X processor in our CPU and gaming tests. 


The GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX undergoing thermal VRM testing

In our overclock testing, the Aorus Pro AX performed as expected, with its premium 8-phase power delivery consisting of six 90 A power stages for the CPU VCore, and two 90 A power stages for the SoC. We saw good VDroop control under load, with consistent performance increases in our testing as we ran each frequency. Even under full-load with lots of CPU VCore to stress the power delivery, it performed very well for a mini-ITX sized model, with competitive temperatures when compared to other AM4 models.

 

The GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX plays to the strengths of the X570 chipset, as a B550 mini-ITX board can only include so much, so it benefits from the small form factor with full PCIe 4.0 support as opposed to an ATX sized variant. At present, the B550I Aorus Pro AX is available at Amazon for $179, which is a little cheaper than MSI's MPG B550I Gaming Edge WiFi model at $185, and ASRock's B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/AX at $200. All three of these models, including similar feature sets, including premium integrated audio, 2.5 GbE networking, and Wi-Fi 6 capabilities. The end decision could come down to performance, memory compatibility, and other aspects such as power delivery, rear panel I/O connectivity, which all three models include respectable offerings, but for GIGABYTE's model, it's time to see how it stacks up against other model's we've tested.

Read on for our extended analysis and comparison tests.

Visual Inspection
Comments Locked

76 Comments

View All Comments

  • Gigaplex - Wednesday, December 9, 2020 - link

    I'm not sure how that would be a B550 issue, as the Bluetooth module is an add-in card.
  • Questor - Wednesday, December 9, 2020 - link

    "The end decision could come down to performance, memory compatibility, and other aspects such as power delivery, rear panel I/O connectivity, which all three models include respectable offerings..."

    Not so much. There is only so much one can expect (as the article states) with mini-ITX boards. The one thing they had to do? A USB C front panel header. They failed. H

    Had this board in cart and was about to hit the, "send it to me yesterday" button when something made me pause. A quick doublecheck and sure enough, no front panel USB C connection. Less bling and more substance please. Fan headers and accessory connections = good. Flashing lights = police stop. No thanks.
  • jeremyshaw - Wednesday, December 9, 2020 - link

    Yeah, every B550 ITX board has one problem or another. MSI has their custom backplate. ASRock has never heard of SPDIF and are allergic to including enough USB ports on their AMD boards. ASUS has serious hate for USB ports (4 USB-A!?) along with nixing the SPDIF port. Gigabyte still pretends USB-C headers are an exclusive Intel feature.

    Most of these problems magically disappear when these vendors make Intel ITX boards.
  • Questor - Thursday, December 10, 2020 - link

    Amazing how that just magically happens.

    I was reminded by another here there are USB A to C connectors one can buy. So that is less of a deal breaker to me now. It still depends on the position of the USB A connection since it was not purposely placed as a front connection. Cable length matters.
  • mkarwin - Tuesday, December 15, 2020 - link

    Or when they do AMD ATX ones ;)
  • Silver5urfer - Thursday, December 10, 2020 - link

    AT even 6900XT Is out Where are your Architecture reviews ? FFS. We got that stupid M1 BGA trash review deep dive and saying x86 is fucking dead. But where are the reviews of the Nvidia and AMD graphics cards this time AMD got Nvidia in Raster technology but we need the technical details.

    Really horrible.
  • Gigaplex - Thursday, December 10, 2020 - link

    Calling the M1 "trash" is flat out fanboy bias. It's an interesting chip and performs well. AnandTech covers all areas of tech, not just gaming on Windows.
  • Silver5urfer - Thursday, December 10, 2020 - link

    BGA Trash son. Its called BGA trash for a reason, if you love soldered HW enjoy that irreparable garbage, and forget even upgrading RAM, SSD, everything soldered and gated by "custom blackbox security chip". M1 is first product on the translation and ARM based Mac it is garbage and will be garbage, so unless they can catch up and beat Intel and AMD at SMT it's of no use.

    AT HW is majority for Linux and Windows. Macs ? Do AT review macbooks ? Nope. This is their first. Because of that obsession of showing Apple in glowing light.

    10% marketshare product is Mac OS, same sales value for Apple as well, so yeah trash.
  • Gigaplex - Thursday, December 10, 2020 - link

    Pretty much every single Intel laptop is soldered on, too. The M1 architecture doesn't mandate BGA soldering. It's the portable form factor that does. You can't call the architecture garbage just because of a form factor you're not interested in.

    And yes, AT does feature Apple products. There's plenty of Macbook articles and reviews. Now you're just being ignorant. There's a whole section for Apple.

    https://www.anandtech.com/tag/apple
  • Avalon - Friday, December 11, 2020 - link

    I've got the non-ITX version of this board, and it's fantastic.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now