MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk Review – Successful balancing act between costs and performance

1 - Introduction and technical data 2 - Teardown and components 3 - Power consumption in detail 4 - Thermal imaging - Voltage regulators and PCB 5 - Performance 6 - PCIe 4.0 vs. PCIe 3.0 - the big comparison 7 - Audio measured! 8 - Summary and conclusion

After all, everything that occurs as loss is ultimately thermal energy that has to be dissipated somehow. All in all, the board cuts a very good figure here, also thanks to the very functional components, and there are absolutely no malicious hotspots. On the contrary, the two separate heatsinks work better than the solution on the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master even without a heatpipe! 95 watt package power causes thermal saturation, e.g. only after 35 minutes, despite deliberately omitting air cooling (airflow).

I also made control measurements with sensors on the top of the board under the heat sinks. The values directly determined here are on average only up to 2 degrees above the highest value of the back side, which isn’t surprising, as the waste heat also goes mostly in the direction of the board in the power stages. The MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk can really shine at 95 watts, because you definitely can’t do much better with even more converter circuits or phases. What is astonishing is that actually only 4 phases with 8 converters really go full throttle.

Nothing much changes at 135 watts package power, everything remains at a maximum at a very pleasant 52°C. This is solved in an exemplary way and is fun to do more.

If everything stays cool, you can add a few more watts! 175 watts is surprisingly not much higher, it’s almost 54 °C. I didn’t want to believe it either, but the sensors attached to the cooler didn’t show any hot flushes either. Under the radiator I get to 65 to 57 °C at the peak.

It continues the very good picture that I already had at the power consumption. Forgotten is the heat on the MSI X570 Gaming Edge WiFi, so this must be solved and not otherwise.

MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk (7C91-001R)

	Zentrallager: 5 Stück lagernd, Lieferung 1-3 WerktageFiliale Wilhelmshaven: 5 Stück lagerndStand: 19.04.24 12:14	133,99 €*Stand: 19.04.24 12:15
	Auf Lager, 1-2 Werktage	134,00 €*Stand: 19.04.24 12:14
nullprozentshop.de	siehe Shop	136,92 €*Stand: 19.04.24 12:15

*Alle Preise inkl. gesetzl. MwSt zzgl. Versandkosten und ggf. Nachnahmegebühren, wenn nicht anders beschriebenmit freundlicher Unterstützung von geizhals.de

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, 12C/24T, 3.80-4.60GHz, boxed (100-100000023BOX)

Lieferzeit 4-6 Werktage

498,97 €*Stand: 19.04.24 08:49

*Alle Preise inkl. gesetzl. MwSt zzgl. Versandkosten und ggf. Nachnahmegebühren, wenn nicht anders beschriebenmit freundlicher Unterstützung von geizhals.de