Review: MSI B350M Mortar

Conclusion

MSI carefully pitches the B350M Mortar at about 10 per cent higher than the cheapest micro-ATX boards based on AMD's second-rung chipset. Priced at around £80, that extra tenner or so offers up four DIMM slots and a second physical x16 slot run off the chipset.

This is still very much a budget board, probably aimed more towards the user looking at the cheaper end of the AMD chip market, notably the Ryzen 3 2200G, and it misses out on some of the features we expect to see. USB 3.1 Gen 2 and the Realtek ALC1220 audio codec are replaced by lower-specification options, while there's no cooling on some of the power-delivery components and the lighting is limited to red LEDs alone.

That said, there is also enough good present, as well. A decent number of fan headers, clean layout, that x4 PCIe slot at the bottom, and solid stability count for it. One is never going to get all the advanced features for an £80 outlay, but if you plan to run a low-end Ryzen chip, preferably the APU variant and export video out over the 4K60-capable DisplayPort connector, the MSI B350M Mortar ought to be at least worthy of attention.

MSI B350M Mortar

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The MSI B350M Mortar motherboard is available to purchase from Scan Computers.*

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