The B450 range of motherboards is aimed towards those aiming to save money while attaining all of the essential features. It seems MSI didn’t get that memo when coming up with the B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC and just decided to throw the feature set at it, starting with a large heatsink for the power delivery components. MSI have also opted for an 8+4 CPU power socket design, allowing extra current for the CPU when overclocking.
The full-length M.2 heatsink can be used for any M.2 drive, including NVMe SSDs, providing they don’t arrive with their own heatsink or if it can be removed. Any drive conforming to the 22/42, 22/60, 22/80 or 22/110 standard can be installed. The heatsink is designed to help dissipate heat from hot NVMe drives, helping to improve performance by reducing the risk of thermal throttling.
Four DDR4 DIMM slots are used for the memory, capable of supporting up to 64GB of DDR4 3466MHz memory. Underneath the DIMM slots is the 24-pin motherboard power connection, as well as a trio of 4-pin PWM fan connections. There’s also a 4th PWM fan connection above the RAM slots.
We get two full x16 PCI-E 3.0 slots for graphics cards, though please beware that the board will only support AMD CrossFire and not the NVIDIA SLI technology, and they won’t run at x16 each when configured with multiple cards. You’ll see there’s also three x1 ports for network cards or storage controllers.
The top x16 PCI-E ports features MSI’s Steel Armour, helping to prevent large graphics cards from bending the port or shearing off if the case is dropped.
Along the bottom row is a wide array of different connections, including USB 2.0 and 3.0, RGB lighting connections, front audio and PWM fan ports.
SATA storage is handled via 6 right-angled SATA 3.0 ports, all capable of the 6Gbps standard. Perfect for those with a few hard drives and a couple of SATA SSDs.
The full-length M.2 heatsink can be used for any M.2 drive, including NVMe SSDs, providing they don’t arrive with their own heatsink or if it can be removed. Any drive conforming to the 22/42, 22/60, 22/80 or 22/110 standard can be installed. The heatsink is designed to help dissipate heat from hot NVMe drives, helping to improve performance by reducing the risk of thermal throttling.
Four DDR4 DIMM slots are used for the memory, capable of supporting up to 64GB of DDR4 3466MHz memory. Underneath the DIMM slots is the 24-pin motherboard power connection, as well as a trio of 4-pin PWM fan connections. There’s also a 4th PWM fan connection above the RAM slots.
We get two full x16 PCI-E 3.0 slots for graphics cards, though please beware that the board will only support AMD CrossFire and not the NVIDIA SLI technology, and they won’t run at x16 each when configured with multiple cards. You’ll see there’s also three x1 ports for network cards or storage controllers.
The top x16 PCI-E ports features MSI’s Steel Armour, helping to prevent large graphics cards from bending the port or shearing off if the case is dropped.
Along the bottom row is a wide array of different connections, including USB 2.0 and 3.0, RGB lighting connections, front audio and PWM fan ports.
SATA storage is handled via 6 right-angled SATA 3.0 ports, all capable of the 6Gbps standard. Perfect for those with a few hard drives and a couple of SATA SSDs.
