MSI MAG B550M Mortar Review

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MSI are definitely going for a military theme with their latest motherboards. We saw the Tomahawk used on the Z490, and here the B550M Mortar uses, well, a mortar. We hope that one day this pointless macho military iconography will be dispensed with and we can stick to names that appeal to all. Sure Call of Duty is popular, but so is Animal Crossing.

  
  

As you might expect from an mATX motherboard the MAG B550M Mortar has a slender selection of accessories, with just a couple of SATA cables, m.2 screws, case badge, manual and driver CD. If you buy the WiFi variant you’ll get an antenna too. It is, like the Mortar itself, all you need and nothing you don’t. Hands up all those of you with a motherboard box that still has a lot of unused packets of strange pin blocks and cables in it? Exactly.

  

When we see ITX motherboards it’s clear that they are much smaller than what we’re used to. Everything looks a little cramped. With mATX boards the lack of the extra PCI Express slot isn’t so obvious and it takes your brain a moment to even realise it’s a little shorter than what we normally see. Kudos to the MSI designers for fitting a combined heatsink/IO shield onto the Mortar. Normally such aesthetic touches are the first to be lost in the transfer to the smaller footprint.

  

Squeezed into the top left corner is the 8pin 12V CPU power input that helps feed the 8+2+1 Duet Rail Power to your system and push your clock speeds hard and heavy.

  

Moving around the PCB we have the CPU fan, Pump fan and System fan headers we highlighted on the previous page. There is even a Rainbow RGB header for the MSI RGB system. The DIMM slots might not be braced but it’s hardly a deal breaker. Armoured ones look the part but are less of a necessity than they are on PCI Express slots with their heavier graphics cards.