MSI B350M Mortar
$125 | AU.MSI.COM A larger PCB equals more options for your build.
It doesn’t get much cheaper than this micro-ATX, but the extra size offered by its form factor means it actually offers more options for a versatile configuration than boards twice the price. At 24.4 x 24.4cm, it’s considerably larger than the 17 x 17cm of mini-ITX boards, and thus, has many more expansion slots. The pay-off is you’ll obviously need a slightly larger case, though.
These expansion options focus mainly on the PCIe slots. There are two PCIe x16 physical lanes, though only one is 3.0 x16 speed, while the other is 2.0 x4. This means Nvidia SLI isn’t an option, as it requires x8 on both slots, but you can run twin AMD cards in CrossFire mode. There’s also two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots as well. Based on the B350 chipset, this motherboard supports both Ryzen and the upcoming A-Series APU, and includes DVI-D, HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort outputs. We wish it was HDMI 2.0, though, as that’s the most common connection on today’s 4K TVs, so if you’re connecting via HDMI at 4K, you’re limited to 24Hz.
The usual four SATA 3 ports and single M.2 port are included for storage, and there’s room for four memory slots, allowing a maximum of 64GB on the dual memory slot boards. It’s only rated to overclock up to 3,200MHz, though — a far cry from the 4,000MHz and above on other boards.
There are six USB 2.0 and four USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports on the rear panel (1 x Type C), a welcome inclusion at this price. If there’s one flaw, it’s the older Realtek ALC892 audio codec, which is inferior to the ALC1220 used on most of today’s boards.
Verdict
The slightly larger form factor has allowed MSI to include many more PCIe lanes than the smaller boards.