Before we get into the actual review, I have to put in a small “disclaimer” first. A few weeks ago (more like five, less than twelve) I received a GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming OC 24G graphics card for review. Outside of reviewing the card itself, I’ve been testing a lot of CPUs with this card to update gaming CPU tests.
The older GeForce RTX 2080 Ti was no longer an obstacle for modern processors, and I wanted to change the tested games to some newer and more demanding ones. Unfortunately, I was slightly trolled during testing, those who remember may remember the version driver 531.18, there was a bug in the drivers that caused an extra processor load of 10-15% after closing the 3D application. I ran into this exact bug, but only after testing the Ryzen 9 7950X and today’s Ryzen 7 7700. Unfortunately, I only found out about it after testing and I didn’t have time to test everything again, then I tested other processors with a newer driver where this bug is repaired.
However, I have arranged for another RTX 4090 loan, so you can look forward to the review of the card itself in the future, as well as tests with other processors.
Now back to the motherboard, the MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFI is after some time a motherboard whose price will not bring tears to your eyes. It is still high-end, but at a more acceptable 5,800 CZK including VAT.
We also find some accessories in the package of the board. Specifically, there are two extra posts for attaching an M.2 SSD, a WiFi antenna and one SATA 6Gb/s cable. There is also a manual and stickers for marking the cables.
MSI boasts of supporting up to 6600 MT/s memory throughput when overclocking, however, this does not make much sense for AMD and a reasonable ceiling is somewhere around 6000-6200 MT/s max. MSI also supports the following RAM speeds depending on the configuration and type:
• 1DPC 1R Max. speed up to 6400+ MHz
• 1DPC 2R Max. speed up to 5800+ MHz
• 2DPC 1R Max. speed up to 6000+ MHz
• 2DPC 2R Max. speed up to 4000+ MH
However, these values supposedly require manual or automatic overclocking, when four slots are equipped with dual-rank modules, a speed of up to 4800 MT/s is supported without overclocking.
The board has a standard FullATX format, while we don’t find anything very interesting on the back. MSI has a small plus for me for using screws that hold the coolers, I’m glad that the plastic beaks are gradually disappearing.
On the more interesting side of the board we find everything else. The rear panel’s port equipment is quite reasonable, we can find the BIOS flash button, HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4. We also find an RJ45 port connected to a 2.5 GbE chipset Realtek RTL 8125B and a total of ten USB ports. Three USB-A ports provide 10Gb/s connectivity, two are USB 2.0. Next to the WiFi antennas (connected to the AMD RZ616E chipset), we find four USB-A 5Gb/s ports and one USB-C port, which even provides 20Gb/s connectivity. Audio equipment in the form of five jacks and an optical output is handled by the Realtek ALC4080 codec.
The ports are covered by a metal part of the cooler, which continues to the power cascade. I like this solution as it increases the surface area of the heatsink, it’s nice that we don’t find some plastic cover with RGB LEDs that reduces the useful value of the VRM heatsink. MSI boasts 14+2+1 phases here, each providing up to 80A for the CPU. The cascade is thus oversized for any AM5 processor.
As for PCIe slots, the board has the lowest currently available chipset for socket AM5, i.e. B650. It only supports fourth-generation PCIe, and no slot on the board provides fifth-generation PCIe, which I personally don’t consider to be a major problem, we’ll have to wait for real PCIe 5.0 devices some Friday.
The first M.2 slot is connected to the processor and provides four PCIe lines of the fourth generation, we can fit an SSD up to 80 mm long, and a simple cooler for the SSD is also available on the board. I put a Kingston KC3000 1TB SSD in this slot.
The board also has two M.2 slots, both of which support 60 and 80mm long M.2 SSDs, and both of which provide four PCIe lanes of the fourth generation. One slot is said to provide lines from the CPU and the other from the AMD B650 chipset. The third slot shares PCIe lines with the x4 large PCIe slot, if we occupy both connectors, both M.2 and PCIe will run in x2 mode.
We also find some normal PCIe slots on the board, the primary x16 slot provides sixteen PCIe Gen4 lines directly from the CPU, which is not surprising.
The second x16 slot provides only two fourth-generation PCIe lines from the AMD B650 chipset. The third PCIe slot offers only one line of the third generation, again from the chipset.
The board also has a pile of pin locations and connectors around, in the lower left part we can find pins for the front audio panel of the cabinet, a four-pin for RGB LEDs, pins for an additional ThunderBolt card and two PWM four-pins for connecting fans.
In the lower right corner there are two pin locations providing a total of four USB 2.0 ports, rather strangely there are two SATA 6 Gb/s ports and a pin location for connecting the buttons, LEDs of the front panel of the cabinet.
Continuing upwards, we can see one PWM four-pin for fans, a 19-pin connector providing two USB 5Gb/s ports and four SATA 6Gb/s ports.
Further on the board we find a connector for connecting the front USB-C port, this connector only provides 10Gb/s USB connectivity. There is also a classic 24-pin ATX connector, another 4-pin PWM connector for the fan and a very useful set of diagnostic LEDs, which MSI refers to as EZ Debug LEDs.
In the upper corner of the board we find a total of three four-pins for connecting fans and a pinout for RGB LEDs. There are also two additional eight-pins for powering the processor, but they seem a bit unnecessary to me, one would be enough without problems.
BIOS a software
The BIOS has a classic MSI look and can be easily controlled with just the keyboard. I updated to the latest version before the tests. Of course, I turned on technologies like Resizeable-BAR, as well as the EXPO profile for memory. You can see how the UEFI interface looks in the screenshots below.
The MSI Driver Utility Installer utility is also worth mentioning, its primary use is for downloading drivers and other utilities, while the utility did not forget to offer the Norton 360 antivirus program.
As for the tested processor, I did not adjust the power limit in any way, the AMD Ryzen 7 7700 consumes a maximum of 88 Watts, the memory then ran with the EXPO profile with a throughput of 6000 MT/s. This setup was completely stable and without any problems, for which MSI again has a small plus. I used the Arctic Freezer eSports DUO 34 cooler to cool the processor.
The previously mentioned GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming OC 24G was used as a graphics card, which was unfortunately tested with version 531.18 drivers, which contained that unpleasant bug. For other builds, I used the newer version 531.29 driver, which contains a fix for this bug.
I used the good old Windows 10 version 22H2 as the operating system and turned on the hardware acceleration of GPU scheduling in the system itself. This option is specific to NVIDIA graphics cards, Radeons support this natively for some time now.
