BEST B350 MOTHERBOARD FOR OVERCLOCKING

The B350 motherboards are premium boards designed specifically for overclocking and CrossfireX compatibility. Someone with a Ryzen processor will buy either an X370 chipset motherboard or a B350 chipset motherboard as these are the only two chipsets that support Ryzen overclocking.

The reason for the launch of the B350 chipset motherboards is clear. They are made for overclocking for budget builders. As the price difference between an X370 chipset motherboard and a B350 motherboard is significant, there are some limitations to overclocking on the latter.

But each board is manufactured differently, even among vendors. Some have more phases, and some have fewer. Some have good CrossfireX compatibility, and some don’t. Other features, such as cooling and storage support, take second place after overclocking and multi-GPU support.

The B350 is essentially AMD’s downsized version of the X370 chipset and provides add-ons for those looking to upgrade something like the A320 or build a new budget PC.

We will discuss the best B350 motherboards for you and the pros and cons of each article. If you’re new to building PCs, we also have a detailed buying guide to help you decide which AM4 B350 motherboard would be the best for your needs.

ASUS Prime B350 Plus

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ASUS meets all the requirements that define B350 motherboards with its Prime B350 Plus. It comes with an AM4 socket, allowing you to use the latest AMD processors and take advantage of its overclocking potential.

On the GPU side, the motherboard supports AMD Crossfire, which opens the door to the simultaneous use of up to four GPUs. This means that upgrading your graphics card doesn’t necessarily require you to ditch your old one, as the two can work well together and give you even better graphics performance.

It is not all; ASUS uses its innovative SafeSlot technology to reinforce the card’s PCIe slots to accommodate heavier GPUs without encountering any problems. Another area where the Prime B350 Plus really shines is compatibility.

The cheapest motherboards are not always compatible with the new processing standards; However, ASUS implements an advanced BIOS on its Prime B350 Plus cards that do not require installing factory updates.

Finally, FanXpert 2+ technology is an integral part of the card’s robust thermal architecture. Such a module enables advanced fan controls, giving you the best optimization for different CPU and GPU-intensive tasks.

MSI B350 Gaming Pro Carbon

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In a market full of flashy names, MSI is getting its B350 Gaming Pro Carbon label. The motherboard strikes the right balance between features and price, giving gamers an affordable option to run the latest games without breaking a sweat.

For example, the card offers four memory slots that can take advantage of the increased DDR4 RAM. This means that unbuffered memories can maintain high clock speeds whenever necessary, reducing the chances of games crashing.

Audio is a key pillar of your gaming experience, and MSI implements Audio Boost 4 technology directly on its motherboard. Plugin your favorite headphones, and you’ll instantly notice clear sounds without noise or distortion, plus spatial audio support. You can spot enemies crawling from behind and react faster than ever in shooting games.

Following the ASUS Prime B350 Plus footsteps, the Gaming Pro Carbon comes with a three-way Crossfire mount. Three GPUs can do wonders for your gaming experience, letting features like ray tracing and realistic lighting shine through.

It is also worth mentioning that all the PCIe slots are soldered in various places on the card. In addition to allowing heavy graphics cards to stay in place steadily, Steel Armor avoids electromagnetic interference for uncompromising performance at higher clock speeds.

ASRock AB350 Pro4

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At this price, most B350 motherboards choose to include a single M.2 slot. Fortunately, that’s not the case here with the ASRock AB350 Pro4, which comes with two slots that you can work with. You might ask why this is so important.

The answer lies in how the M.2 design enables a cleaner interface with fewer cables. This makes accessing your PC components much easier with less risk of damaging internal components. Additionally, NVMe M.2 SSDs offer more storage at faster speeds compared to their SATA counterparts.

In addition to storage, the full-size ATX form factor can accommodate Ryzen 3 or 5 processors without a problem. With an emphasis on overclocking, you can achieve impressive performance with this inexpensive card.

When it comes to memory configuration, the ASRock AB350 Pro4 left us asking for more. Although all four DIMM slots support DDR4 memory, they only allow a standard clock speed of 2667 MHz. If your memory supports unbuffered performance, you can overclock it for better results, but the difference was not as dramatic as we expected in our tests.

Also, you can get a maximum memory capacity of 64GB, which is slim compared to other B350 motherboards. For example, the MSI B350 Gaming Pro Carbon offers double the capacity with 128GB ready to tackle heavy multitasking projects.

MSI B350 Arctic Tomahawk

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While not the most powerful gaming motherboard on the market, the B350 Tomahawk Arctic has a few tricks up its sleeve to help it make it onto our list, for starters, the budget game supports fast SSD storage thanks to its Turbo M.2 slot that enables data transfer at speeds of up to 32GB / s, virtually eliminating loading time on your games.

Like the MSI Gaming Pro Carbon, the Tomahawk Arctic is designed for virtual reality. Immersive audio is another feature shared between the two boards, increasing the immersion as you explore virtual reality worlds, and is among the best motherboards for virtual reality.

In terms of memory, you get DDR4-3200 RAM support with room for overclocking. Speaking of high clock speeds, the card offers a Game Boost mode to optimize your GPU and CPU performance without overheating.

Unfortunately, this does not always work as expected. Many users report thermal issues with the Tomahawk Arctic because the board doesn’t offer enough fan headers to keep up with the heat produced while tackling demanding tasks.

We also hoped that the BIOS would have been more intuitive and reliable. We experienced slow navigation through the various diagnostic screens during our tests, requesting a software update to fix these pesky errors.

MSI B350 PC Companion

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You don’t have to be tech-savvy to assemble a PC, as the MSI B350 PC Mate comes with a simple interface and easily accessible locations. Such an easy-to-use motherboard is compatible with high-end processors from AMD, including the Ryzen 7 line, to deliver excellent performance.

Unlike the Tomahawk Arctic, the PC Mate offers intuitive BIOS controls that make the initial setup process easy. In addition, the card has a system ready to take advantage of overclockable processors, GPUs and RAM. This makes improving your PC’s performance so much easier as you don’t have to deal with each component separately.

Our only complaint is the build quality. The board is relatively fragile and requires great care when handling. Whenever connecting or disconnecting components, be sure not to use too much force, as you can easily end up damaging the board.

The PC Mate offers the same versatility we’ve seen on other B350 motherboards when it comes to ports. It also has one PCIe x1 port and two PCIe x16 ports to accommodate the GPU of your choice.

ASUS Prime B350M-A / CSM

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Our biggest problem with the PC Mate is that the card can feel brittle when handled, so when we stumbled upon the ASUS Prime B350M-A / CSM, we were impressed with its rugged construction.

You get a compact, reliable package that doesn’t wobble when adding or removing components from their various locations. Speaking of ports, the B350M-A / CSM features robust I / O, prompting you to experiment with different parts without fear of tampering with your board.

Since the B350M-A / CSM is another ASUS prime line iteration, it shares many basic design features. The card comes with reinforced PCIe slots that benefit from additional protection by implementing the same SafeSlot technology.

This removes size and weight factors from your consideration when choosing a new GPU, as your motherboard can handle anything you throw at it. Since the B350M-A / CSM leans toward the smaller end of the spectrum, components can feel a bit cluttered on the board.

This leads to overheating issues, as the compact form factor causes cooling issues. This shouldn’t be a problem for average users, as the card can maintain decent thermal performance if you don’t try too hard and aim for high clock speeds for the processor and graphics card.

MSI B350M Mortar

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We’ll finish our list with another compact motherboard. This time, the MSI B350M Mortar manages to circumvent many of the thermal limitations that Micro-ATX cards face by including more onboard fan headers.

Still, overclocking isn’t one of the B350M’s greatest strengths. However, the card easily fits into smaller PC towers, giving you some degree of portability. If you move your PC between different rooms more often, you will appreciate the smaller build.

In addition, the motherboard uses double-layer mounting holes to ensure that all of its components are firmly in place. This security aspect is arguably more important here as the premise is that you will move your PC around, and you don’t want any part to slip off the card and get damaged.

It is worth mentioning that MSI managed to keep the Turbo M.2 slot even in this most compact form factor and was happy to achieve data transfer speeds of 32 Gbps. This can be a game-changer for some workflows, like video editing (like other better motherboards for video editing).

Copying large 4k footage only takes a few minutes, so you can go straight to editing without waiting too long. Finally, MSI Mortar shares many of the gaming features we have seen on other MSI B350 motherboards. You get support for multiple GPUs, a fast Gigabit Internet connection, and immersive audio.

Things To Consider Before Buying The Best B350 Motherboard For Overclocking

For professionals and obsessed gamers, buying a new motherboard to build an updated gaming system takes a lot of time and money combined. Before you buy the best budget B350 motherboard, ITX, or ATX versions depending on your gaming needs, get your hands on the pros and cons of your new gaming motherboard.

Check off your list of the most important functions needed within your new B350 motherboard that can support the needs of intense gaming and overclocking. Here are some things to consider before buying the best B350 motherboard:

Form factor:

Choosing a form factor can be tricky. Before buying the motherboard, check if your system is large enough to accommodate the ATX version of your motherboard. The standard ATX version is designed to install and integrate more features, almost 40% more than the Micro ATX versions.

It is better in terms of specifications and compatibility than the micro versions. The micro versions are 25% smaller than the standard versions, have fewer compatibility and expansion slots, some room for additional free space and fans, and only 2 DIMM slots.

In comparison, motherboards in the standard ATX form factor have 4 DIMM slots and more options for adding and changing system expansion.

Memory Slots & Free Space:

Memory slots are essential in a game processor. A gaming-spec motherboard typically has 4 RAM storage slots. The more expansion it offers, the better it will be for professional gamers to expand their gaming assault in multiplayer and ultra-high-resolution game modes.

On the B350 motherboards, the ATX versions have more free space and, in turn, more memory slots available. DIMM slots vary by the motherboard. Micro-ATX versions have 4 DIMM slots, ATX versions have up to 8 DIMM slots, while mini-ATX only have 2 DIMM slots.

It is best to buy the system with more DIMM slots for long-lasting performance and upgradeability. The ATX versions are better at all RAM and storage capacities with more free space than normal, and they are recommended for heavy gamers and overclocking modes.

LED Backlight Modes & Accessibility:

Today, all gaming motherboards come with built-in LED strips with programmable lighting profiles and modes. Of all of them, the best have their integration of software and applications for LED modes, temperature and voltage sensing devices displayed digitally, and using light modes.

To choose from the best B350 motherboards, make sure the one you buy has 16.8 million full-backlit LED colors, preset or programmable color and brightness modes, and sync modes for uniform lighting across all boards, motherboards, and components—system when playing.

Connection Suupport & Protection:

SafeSlot technology allows any slot on the motherboard to become overloaded and overheated. The slots are gold-plated at their connection points to ensure maximum speed by transferring data faster than ever before and to prevent unwanted surges from ports and slots when connected to an external device.

Most Safe slot compatible motherboards are twice the size of normal motherboards. They have dedicated hooks and a robust PCB design with a metal base, a layered structure to resist impact, and a waterproof coating to prevent unwanted accidental splashes.

Conclusion:

So here we are for the best B350 motherboard guide, and we look forward to answering all of your questions. There are dozens of B350 motherboards on the market right now, but they offer the best balance of performance and value for money, and you can’t go wrong with any of them.

Make sure to identify your needs first, and then look at the price, size, and built-in features of the B350 motherboard to make a smart purchase.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

How can the number of PCIe slots affect my purchase decision?

To get started, you only need a PCIe x16 for your graphics card. If you are a designer, animator, video editor, or gamer, you can use additional graphics power by connecting multiple GPUs if your card comes with more PCIe x16 ports that support Crossfire.

On the other hand, the PCIe x1 slots connect accessories such as video and sound capture cards. The main point to remember is that the number of PCIe ports impacts the accessories you can connect to your motherboard, so choose accordingly.

Consider X series motherboards like the best X399 motherboards, the best X570 motherboards, the best X470 motherboards, and the best X370 motherboards.

What does the form factor of the B350 motherboards mean?

The shape factor determines the overall size of the array. For example, standard ATX motherboards are larger, offer more functionality and I / O, and are generally priced higher. On the other hand, Micro-ATX cards maintain the same architecture but in a smaller space.

Do I have to pay attention to the type of plug?

Yes, this dictates the type of processor that can be connected to your motherboard. Since the B350 is a chipset adopted by AMD motherboards, you’ll notice that they all share the same AM4 socket, supporting the latest addition to the Ryzen processor lineup.

To reiterate, as long as you choose an AMD motherboard for your AMD processor, the two should work fine with each other, so you don’t have to worry about compatibility.