MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC Review

Up Close

The Carbon range from MSI has quickly established itself as a great looking and great value range of products and the B450 version certainly gives a great first impression. The packaging is clear and crisp with a minimalist aesthetic that doesn’t quite lean fully towards something fresh from a designers portfolio it’s still bold. Freeing the Carbon from its cardboard confines carries on this creative composition with monochromatic colouring contrasting charmingly with the multi-hued Microstar Mystic Light.

  
  

Although the B450 is a step below the X470 that doesn’t mean that MSI have scrimped on the details, either in terms of the design or the hardware. There are plenty of fan headers including dedicated a pump header, whilst the power phases are well catered for in terms of both raw numbers and heatsink capacity to keep them cool.

  

Down the bottom end we find the two M.2 slots as well as a pair of full length PCI Express slots and three PCIe x1 slots. We’re not overly keen on the lines on the PCB itself. Although we can see what they were going for it reminds us too much of the old Windows 98 screensaver and doesn’t quite match up to the carbon looks elsewhere.

  

You can clearly see the trace that shields the audio components from the rest of the PCB in this picture. It still strikes us as incredible that you used to have to buy a sound card to get something other than simple beeps, then you had to buy one because onboard audio was atrocious in quality, and now onboard audio is so good – thanks to advances such as the aforementioned trace – that very few people run a dedicated sound card at all.

  

Although the B450 has reduced connectivity when compared to its bigger brother, there is still more than enough ports to ensure that only the most over-stocked user will get close to filling them up. Indeed if you have got enough peripherals and drives to utilise all the ports then we suspect you also have the funds to go with the X470 in the first place.