At $190 it’s not what we’d call a cheap motherboard, but in a market where a good mid-range Z690 board can cost a lot more, the B660 Tomahawk definitely offers a lot of features while not losing sight of the value thats typically offered by B660 boards. Honestly, that’s probably 95% of the market, maybe higher. It would be a smart value purchase for a typical gamer who runs a single GPU, XMP memory, an SSD or two, and is happy to let a 12th Gen processor do its turbo boost thing without manual overclocking. Running memory in the DDR4-3200 to 3600 range or a little more while setting the board Gear 1 will deliver the best gaming performance.Īll told, the MSI B660 Tomahawk DDR4 is definitely a board worth considering for your Alder Lake setup. It’s possible to run well over DDR4-4000 but doing so requires you to set the board to Gear 2, which halves the memory controller speed and negates the latency advantage that DDR4 enjoys. However, Intel finally allowed memory overclocking on B560, and of course it's also unlocked on B660. Normally we’d give the board a workout with a bit of overclocking, but since you can’t with a B660 board, that’s moot. Finally there's HDMI 2.1 and DP 1.4 ports should you wish to use Intel’s Xe integrated graphics. A Realtek ALC1220 chip takes care of audio duties. There’s also a full set of audio ports with S/PDIF. It's good to see 20Gbps USB begin to filter down market, too. There are nine USB ports made up of four USB 2.0, four 3.2 Gen 2 ports and a 3.2 Gen 2x2 20Gbps Type-C port. You get Realtek 2.5G LAN and Intel WiFi 6 which will handle the networking needs of most typical users. The rear I/O is another definite highlight of the board. Though we use an open test bench, even if you add 30 degrees or more, that’s still well within range. This resulted in a VRM load temperature of just 47☌. For our review we used an Intel Core i5 12600K (opens in new tab), a chip more likely to be paired with the mid-range chipset. It’s all cooled by chunky black heatsinks. MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX II AM4 ATX - Motherboard Multi-GPU, Supports 2-Way AMD CrossFire Technology RAID. It won’t have any problem with that, we assure you. ram: g.skill ripjaws v 3200.No there is sth really fishy with the fan curves in the bios.first: the fan curve set by default (pic 1) isnt the same as the one which occurs, when. Bearing in mind that overclocking is not allowed on B660 boards, all it has to handle is the maximum turbo load of a 12900K. Hey,just set up my pc with a new MSI tomahawk b450 with a ryzen and my (old) bequiet shadow rock 2 cooler on top of it. It includes a 12+2 phase VRM powered by dual 8-pin power connectors. MSI’s Tomahawk motherboards have a reputation for their strong VRM solutions and the B660 entry continues this tradition. In short, this is no budget feature set, and that extends into the power components, too. There’s a USB Type-C case header and we count five fan headers plus two more for the CPU and AIO pump. SSDs there can get stupidly hot under a GPU. The area under the primary PCIe slot is refreshingly free of M.2 slots ripe to get roasted. Three slots will be sufficient for most users, but if you want four or more, you’ll have to go to Z690. The Tomahawk will accept up to three M.2 drives, all of which are cooled by a heatsink.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |