MSI B450M MORTAR MAX
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One of MSI's affordable mid-range gaming motherboards based on the 2018 AMD B450 chipset. It features small overall dimensions (microATX format), support for high-frequency DDR4 RAM modules and proprietary Mystic Light Sync RGB LED backlight control technology. It is a compact and well-equipped board from the MSI Arsenal Gaming family, which fully supports three generations of AMD Ryzen 3/5/7/9 processors (based on Matisse/Pinnacle Ridge/Summit Ridge cores), APU with integrated Radeon Vega (Raven Ridge/ Picasso) and low-cost CPUs Athlon Zen (Raven Ridge).
Moreover, the processors of the Zen2 line (Ryzen Matisse) are guaranteed to be supported by the stock UEFI BIOS. MSI B450M MORTAR MAX motherboard belongs to the products of 2019, it is positioned as a reliable basis for building multifunctional home PCs, entry/mid-level gaming stations and low-cost workstations. Equipped with four DIMM slots. Supports configurations with 64 GB of RAM. In addition to two NVMe SSD drives, it is capable of working with four SATA3 drives. The Realtek RTL8111H-CG controller will help organize fast traffic transmission in a Gigabit Ethernet network. Audio output is provided by Realtek ALC892 8-channel HDA codec with optical output. There are 12 USB ports, including 2 high-speed USB 3.2 Gen2.
Support for 4133 MHz memory modules
The MSI B450M MORTAR MAX is a pretty interesting mini gaming board that costs a bit more than its competitors based on the B450 chip and has several distinctive features. The first is support for new Matisse processors right out of the box. That is, no fuss with flashing the BIOS. The second interesting feature is the ability to work with record-breaking fast DDR4 sticks at 4133 MHz. Of course, to work at such a speed, you need a combination of several factors (suitable brackets + a successful XMP profile + a processor based on the Zen 2 architecture), but in general the precedent is interesting. Usually, such supersonic speed is inherent in overclocker motherboards with a price tag of $250-300.
Middle class
In other aspects, this is far from the most advanced, but not a simple board based on the B450. On the one hand, it uses the usual network and audio controller (but with an optical output), and the power system is not as powerful as in devices of a higher class or even competitors in the face of the Gigabyte B450 AORUS M. On the other hand, the MSI B450M Mortar is equipped with a USB-C connector, RGB lighting with sync, Ez Debug LED and allows you to install two M.2 drives at once and a pair of video cards in CrossFire mode.
Confident overclocking 6 cores
In general, the MSI B450M Mortar is suitable for building a fairly powerful gaming PC in a relatively small package. Also, despite not the most powerful power subsystem, it will still provide some overclocking features if you want to experiment with your system. Especially with 4 and 6 core processors. For the money, this is a worthy variant of the board with the B450 chipset. Especially taking into account the fact that we did not manage to detect any serious shortcomings during the experiments.
