ASRock B450M Pro4 Review. FutureUniverseTV shows you the power of this motherboard for gaming.
While the primary difference between the B450 Pro4 and B450M Pro4 is the form factor, the larger B450 Pro4 has a full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, a secondary full-length PCIe 2.0 x4 slot, and four PCIe 2.0 x1 slots. In addition to the microATX standard, the B450M Pro4 offers two full-length PCIe slots, the top one at PCIe 3.0 x16 and the bottom one at PCIe 2.0 x4; there’s also a PCIe 2.0 x1 slot. The similarities don’t just stretch to design, but they share the same power delivery with a 9-phase offering running in a 6+3 configuration; even the heatsinks for power delivery are identical, with the chipset heatsink being smaller on the B450M Pro4 because of space constraints.
Being someone who spends more time with high-end motherboards, I was really impressed by what the ASRock B450M Pro4 had to offer. It was basically on par with a much more expensive system after setting it up, running benchmarks, and just gaming on it as I would if it were my own system. There’s nothing premium about the ASRock B450M Pro4, but there’s nothing cheap and nasty either. It finds an ‘honest’ middle ground with a well-balanced feature set.
Unlike the gaming series, the ASRock Professional series features a black PCB with a gray contrasting pattern. With Pro4 models, you can build a system without sacrificing quality, but without wasting money on unnecessary parts.
The ASRock B450M Pro4, a format I thought was dead a while back, is making a comeback. At a great price, this board has great features with excellent component compatibility (no PCI, yay!).
After we published the Meshify C Mini case review, some readers asked about fitting a 140mm cooler, so I showed how the Noctua NH-D15S fits. Due to the budget nature of this board and the fact that potential owners may want to avoid the cost of a water cooling setup, I went with the best air cooler on the market. The NH-D15S fits on the B450 Pro4 without a problem, and you can even access the NVMe slot with the cooler installed. It’s also no problem to access the graphics card with NH-D15S installed. This configuration seems like it was made for this.
I’d probably use something similar to our practical build specs if I was building a system on a budget. Meshify-C Mini is a well-priced functional case that looks good and supports bigger components like air coolers and longer graphics cards. StoreMI is also supported by the B450 chipset, so I’d recommend a 250GB SSD and a 2TB mechanical HDD with AMD’s tiered storage to make things easier. We used the HyperX Predator RGB, but I’d consider DDR4 2400MHz if it meant we could cram a Ryzen 5 2600 and a mid-range graphics card in. The B350M Pro4 can be overclocked if the CPU and cooling are up to it, so a system built on this platform can punch above its weight.
I couldn’t find anything wrong with the board at the end of the test. Plus it has RGB functionality so I can personalise it a bit, and it overclocked well. AsRock designers did a good job with the layout, particularly with the M.2 slots and onboard connectors/headers positioned away from the warmer parts of the board.
I think this is a solid board that has enough features for people who don’t need flash. With an NVME drive in the Ultra M2 slot and a USB type C port, it boots up pretty fast. As far as my budget build goes, I have no complaints.
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