ASRock is a staple name when it comes to top-quality boards. And today, we’re talking about one of their products in our ASRock B550 PG Velocita motherboard review.
The B550 PG Velocita is an ATX board that has a lot in store for you. It offers a notable VRM with the right cooling, plus it has RGB lights and a 2.5 Gbps LAN.
There are even a couple of USB 3.2 ports for fast connection.
To begin our ASRock B550 PG Velocita motherboard review, let’s check out its packaging and contents.
ASRock B550 PG Velocita Motherboard Packaging
The B550 PG Velocita comes in an eye-catching cardboard box that’s durable and tough enough to protect the board inside.
Its front displays PG Velocita at the centre, while ASRock is written on the top-left corner. On the lower-right portion, the product’s name is present, while the opposite corner displays the board’s key features.
The box’s rear displays additional information about the board to give you an idea of what it offers.
The board is packed in your usual ASRock dual compartment, which is a foam-reinforced package that’s exclusive to the company. Other than the motherboard, items present in the box include the quick installation guide and support CD. There are even four SATA data cables, three M.2 socket screws, and two M.2 socket standoffs.
Now, let’s discuss the functionality and design of the board in our ASRock B550 PG Velocita motherboard review.
ASRock B550 PG Velocita Motherboard Review – Design and Functionality
The appearance of this motherboard matches the other Phantom Gaming boards available. It comes with a black PCB with grey, silver, and black shrouds/heatsinks, plus red accent lines for added aesthetics.
It includes RGB LEDs beneath the IO shroud, and it brightens up the top-left VRM heatsink. The LEDs also light up the concealed Phantom Gaming symbol found on the chipset heatsink.
Overall, the B550 PG Velocita motherboard looks great, and it’ll surely fit most build themes.
The top half of the board better displays the VRM heatsinks, shrouds, and other vital bits. On the top-left corner, you’ll find an 8-pin, and 4-pin EPS plug to provide power to the CPU.
You’ll also find the heatpipe in this area which links the two heatsinks. The left heatsink features the board’s name on top and is lit by LEDs concealed under the shroud.
To the right of the socket, above the DIMM slots, you’ll see the first two of the seven fan headers. The CPU fan header supports regular 1A/12W, whereas the CPU Fan 2/WP_3A backs up to 3A/36W. Do note that all the fan headers can support voltage and PWM-controlled devices.
To the right of the headers, you’ll see the first two of the four RGB headers, plus the 4 and 3-pins. Below these, there are four DIMM slots present. These unreinforced slots back up to 128GB RAM with speeds of up to DDR4-4733.
The far-right edge features another 4-pin fan header together with a 24-pin ATX power connector. Below these, in silver, the front panel USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C header is set. In black, the front panel USB 3.2 Gen1 header can be found just south of the 4-pin fan header.
When it comes to the power delivery, ASRock focused heavily on phase count rather than amperage. This implements a 14-phase solution utilising Vishay Sic-654 50A MOSFETs.
Power is provided to the parts via the Renesas RAA-229004 controller, together with the Intersil ISL-6617A phase doublers. The setup totals 600A for the Vcore, which works efficiently with any current AMD Ryzen CPU that’s compatible.
Shifting to the board’s bottom-half portion, the ASRock B550 PG Velocita motherboard features a shielded audio portion. It even comes with M.2 sockets with heatsinks, as well as PCI slots. Generally, these are typical inclusions for boards in this class and price point.
Audio
The Realtek ALC-1220 premium audio codec is kept underneath the black plastic shroud. However, you’ll still get to see the yellow audio capacitors that are sticking out from part of the shroud.
Remember that the B550 PG Velocita doesn’t have any of the fancy DACs and OpAmps to keep the price low. But despite that, its implementation should suffice for most users.
PCIe Slots
The centre of the board displays two full-length PCI slots that utilise reinforcements to backup heavy graphics cards. Moreover, there are two x1 slots for including additional peripherals or bandwidth from the chipset.
Its top slot is fed via CPU that’s working up to PCIe 4.0 and x16 speed. For its second slot, it runs on PCIe 3.0 x4 and is fed via the chipset. The setup supports AMD 2-way CrossFire-X and Quad CrossFire-X.
M.2 Sockets
Located along the PCIe slots are the M.2 sockets that are designed for storage. There are three of these, and two of them feature heatsinks where one is found above the top slot. The other can be located underneath the bottom full-length slot.
Between these slots, you’ll see the Key-E M.2 socket for the Wi-Fi module. However, it isn’t included in the motherboard’s package.
The M2_1 slot supports drives that are 80mm long while the M2_2 supports drives that are 110mm. The M2_1 slot backs up to PCIe 4×4 modules, whereas the other is compatible with the PCIe and SATA-based modules.
The bottom slot (M2_2) runs at 16GB/s or PCIe 3×2. It means you’re losing a bit of bandwidth on this specific slot. It shares bandwidth with the SATA 5/6 ports, so if either are being used, one will be disabled.
SATA Ports
The far-right edge of the board features six SATA 6Gbps ports and an additional 4-pin fan header. The SATA supports RAID 0, 1, and 10. Below it is the 2-character debug LED, which is efficient for troubleshooting POST issues.
Headers and Buttons
This time, our ASRock B550 PG Velocita motherboard review will focus on the board’s headers and buttons. These can be seen across the B550 PG Velocita’s base, and it includes the RGB, USB, fan headers, and more.
To make it easier, here are the headers and buttons from left to right. The front panel audio, aRGB & RGB headers, two chassis fan/WP headers, and two USB 2.0 headers. There are also the power & reset buttons, 2-pin header (CMOS reset), the speaker header, and the front panel header.
Rear IO
Along the rear IO portion, we noticed that ASRock integrated a backplate. Aside from this, they also included eight USB ports and an HDMI video output. There’s even a 5-plug + SPDIF audio stack and the Realtek Dragon 2.5 GbE port.
There are two USB 3.2 Gen2, two USB 3.2 Gen1, and four USB 2.0 ports. If you look at these features, they’re adequate for most users today.
When you go for this motherboard and decide to purchase a WiFi card for its Key-E slot, don’t worry. That’s because there are cutouts ready for the antenna, so you’re all set.
Lastly, you’ll also find a PS/2 port for older mice or keyboards.
Key Features of the ASRock B550 PG Velocita Motherboard
Our ASRock B550 PG Velocita motherboard review will now focus on the key features of the product.
Reloaded Gaming Design
The ASRock B550 PG Velocita features an aluminium alloy heatsink top cover that allows for better heat dissipation. Underneath the strong cover are two M.2 key M sockets for SSDs with increased speed.
For the dual sockets, one of these is the Hyper M.2, which supports PCIe Gen4 x4. The other M.2 socket can run SATA3 mode and PCIe Gen3 x2.
Nahimic Audio
ASRock’s Nahimic Audio offers the best listening experience, no matter what audio peripheral device you use. It produces a rich, vibrant sound that is full of detail.
Integrated Power Stage Solution – Dr. MOS
Dr. MOS is the built-in power stage solution that is designed for synchronised buck-set down voltage apps. Unlike conventional discrete MOSFETs, it delivers higher current for each phase to provide better thermal results and superior performance.
60A Power Choke
ASRock utilises 60A power chokes that make the saturation current three times better than traditional chokes. These effectively enhance and improve the Vcore voltage to the motherboard.
Polychrome RGB Synchronisation
ASRock’s motherboards never compromise. They always come with impressive performance and stunning aesthetics. The B550 PG Velocita motherboard has integrated RGB LEDs that can be synchronised with other Polychrome RGB Sync-certified devices.
Phantom Gaming 2.5 Gbps LAN
The smart Phantom Gaming 2.5 Gbps LAN platform is designed for the highest networking performance. It’s excellent for the most demanding requirements of content creation, home networking, high-quality streaming, and online gaming.
This LAN boosts your system’s networking performance by up to 2.5 times faster than standard gigabit Ethernet. With the B550 PG Velocita, you can enjoy faster, uncompromised connectivity whether you’re transferring and backing up files or gaming.
AMD’s Smart Access Memory
Conventional PC systems’ processors can only access a portion of the graphics memory, making it limit the system’s performance. AMD’s Smart Access Memory expands the data channel to exploit the GPU memory’s full potential.
As a result, it removes the bottleneck and boosts the system’s performance.
Enhanced Steel Slot for the ASRock B550 PG Velocita Motherboard
The enhanced steel slot comes with the next generation PCIe 4.0 standard. These come with additional anchor points, signal stability, stronger latch, and a well-installed heavy graphics card.
AMD StoreMI Technology
AMD’s StoreMI is a powerful technology that combines your SSD’s speed with the hard disk’s capacity in one drive. With these two types of storage combined, you get a drive that’s fast and easy to manage.
It automatically moves your most accessed SSD, so you can enjoy the benefits of both drives.
Full Spike Protection
Some digital components on the motherboard are sensitive and vulnerable to power surges. With excessive current, your system may malfunction immediately.
ASRock’s Full Spike Protection comes with different technologies to protect your motherboard’s components from damages caused by sudden voltage spikes.
Next, we’ll look into the different specifications of the board in our ASRock B550 PG Velocita motherboard review.
Specifications
The ASRock B550 PG Velocita motherboard uses an AM4 socket and a B550 chipset, hence its name. Its form factor is ATX and it has a 14-phase (12+2 50A MOSFETs) voltage regulator.
The board also utilises HDMI (v2.1) video ports while also having one 2.5 GbE network jack. You’ll also find five analogue +SPDIF audio jacks present on the B550 PG Velocita.
There are four DDR4-4733 + (OC) with a 128GB capacity for the DIMM slots. It comes with a Realtek Dragon (8125-B, 2.5 GbE) Ethernet controller and Realtek ALC-1220 HD Audio Codec.
Lastly, ASRock included a 3-year warranty with their B550 PG Velocita motherboard.
Hands-on with the ASRock B550 PG Velocita Motherboard
Of course, we didn’t skip checking the motherboard’s performance, so we’re sharing our experience with it to you. Let’s begin with the firmware interface.
There are a total of eight main menus here. And out of all of these, the OC Tweaker is considered the most vital for fine-tuning and overclocking purposes.
The company even provided an option to dabble with the Infinity Fabric/Architecture of AMD. You can access this from the menu, and it’s pretty much highly accessible.
Various chipset options and the CPU configuration can be seen in the UEFI’s Advanced menu. You can also find AMD’s overclocking and CBS in this section.
There weren’t any issues during the tests we made. Overlocking was top-notch, and we don’t have any complaints in this category.
To put it simply, the ASRock B550 PG Velocita motherboard performed well, and it’s something worth adding to your build.
ASRock B550 PG Velocita Motherboard Review Summary
Here’s a rundown of our ASRock B550 PG Velocita motherboard review.
The B550 PG Velocita motherboard is a great option if you’re planning to use a processor from AMD’s Ryzen series. This motherboard lets you take advantage of PCIe 4.0 for GPU configuration and NVMe storage. And that’s without the additional cash you’ll spend on an X570 motherboard.
Although X570 motherboards indeed offer greater bandwidth, the B550 chipset is more than enough for most users.
Overall, the ASRock B550 PG Velocita is a high-quality ATX motherboard for the AMD B550 platform. It has excellent features, a cool design, and performs notably.
If you’re interested and planning to add this board to your build, you can check out ASRock’s store locator. Here, you can find official retailers that offer this product in your area.
