MSI B350 Tomahawk AM4 Motherboard Review

Up Close

It took us a while to spot the wings on the missile that lends the MSI Tomahawk its name. At first we thought it was either a close up of a headset microphone or a used cotton bud. Perhaps a little clearer logo would have helped. It’s what is inside the box that matters though. We have enough accessories to get you up and running, although those of you who enjoy some frippery will be left disappointed. At this pricing though you shouldn’t expect any more than a motherboard, a CD and manual and, perhaps, a few cables. It was barely a generation ago that for £110 you’d find an IO shield that had no colouring on it and was made from metal designed to cut your fingertips just by looking at it. With the Tomahawk though you get an IO shield which wouldn’t be out of place on a far more expensive offering. The board itself also has everything you need and nothing that you don’t. The main PCI Express slot has the armour which is included on nearly every motherboard these days, whilst just below it you find the M.2 slot for all our blazing fast OS drive needs. It’s only in the connectivity stakes that the Tomahawk shows its affordability. Two of the four SATA ports are vertically mounted, whilst round the back is a fairly slim selection of USB ports. There is USB 3.1 though, so like the rest of the Tomahawk you get enough to build a system that ticks all the boxes, whilst allowing for the fact that if you can afford triple GPUs and a RAID M.2 setup you probably aren’t looking for a £100 motherboard to put them in. It has everything that most people will need, and nothing that they don’t.