MSI B550M PRO-VDH Wifi AM4 mATX Motherboard

Built a new P.C using this board w/a Ryzen 5600x, 16GB RAM, 5700XT GPU and a CM 750W Bronze PSU, at first I was able to install Windows 11 and thankfully Windows 11 was installed and set up properly. After a few mins of browsing for drivers for the board the first boot loop happened so I thought maybe its the bios since some of the B550 board needs bios update especially when using newer CPU for this board chipset. So I updated the board and still getting random boot loop twice every 10 mins, disabled XMP still it restarts randomly at a random intervals, at first I ignore other unlucky users whose experiencing same issue as me but I think I'm one of the unlucky people who got a defective board because when I used my other P.C components on my mates board (x570) and ... MoreBuilt a new P.C using this board w/a Ryzen 5600x, 16GB RAM, 5700XT GPU and a CM 750W Bronze PSU, at first I was able to install Windows 11 and thankfully Windows 11 was installed and set up properly. After a few mins of browsing for drivers for the board the first boot loop happened so I thought maybe its the bios since some of the B550 board needs bios update especially when using newer CPU for this board chipset. So I updated the board and still getting random boot loop twice every 10 mins, disabled XMP still it restarts randomly at a random intervals, at first I ignore other unlucky users whose experiencing same issue as me but I think I'm one of the unlucky people who got a defective board because when I used my other P.C components on my mates board (x570) and did a stress test I never had any issue during hours of testing. Board is really good for the price but If you are unlucky like me you might get a defective one. Just buy a different board to make sure you wont have any issue.

Annoying setup, decent budget board

So I got this board at a good sub-one-hundred-dollar price, which I think is a pretty good spot for it. Works solid after a bit of setup woahs. Overall as far as operations go, it's a good choice for the price for a B550M. The onboard BIOS LED's is really nice at this price, and the independent BIOS Flashback is EXTREMELY nice, and really is a lifesaver like I'll get into below-So why minus the two stars? The big thing that really grinded my gears was the first boot. It didn't boot. I got no graphics output at all. Tried it with a 1070TI that I knew was working, nothing. Then with an old R9 290 that was working last I used it; ZERO graphics output. Darn thing wouldn't post. What saved it? I downloaded the latest bios from the MSI site to a thumb drive and did the ... MoreSo I got this board at a good sub-one-hundred-dollar price, which I think is a pretty good spot for it. Works solid after a bit of setup woahs. Overall as far as operations go, it's a good choice for the price for a B550M. The onboard BIOS LED's is really nice at this price, and the independent BIOS Flashback is EXTREMELY nice, and really is a lifesaver like I'll get into below-So why minus the two stars? The big thing that really grinded my gears was the first boot. It didn't boot. I got no graphics output at all. Tried it with a 1070TI that I knew was working, nothing. Then with an old R9 290 that was working last I used it; ZERO graphics output. Darn thing wouldn't post. What saved it? I downloaded the latest bios from the MSI site to a thumb drive and did the independent flash with the flashback button to get it to update. THEN it worked. Honestly, I've built over a dozen computers and never built one before this that needed an update off the shelf to use previous components. If it was a B450 board and I was throwing a 3600 on there, I may have expected to update. But putting a 3600 with some DDR4 3200 RAM and a 3 year old video card on the current gen B550's, there's really no excuse to jump through hoops.But, however, like I said for a good sale price (Microcenter Black Friday deals are amazing!) it's a decent choice. After that huge pothole of a setup issue, it's been working extremely well for me as a multitasking Zoom/work machine.

Bad board, poor compatibility, abysmal documentation, unreachable support.

This product is effectively a brick, but not so much as to make me not try to debug it for many hours on end thinking that I've done something wrong. (I'm >10 years of professional experience with hundreds of computer systems built, rebuilt, diagnosed, and fixed.) I've rarely, if ever, come across such a poorly tested, documented, and supported product. (No from-factory testing, undocumented error LED codes, unreachable support website, no in-box manuals, etc.) It was my first MSI purchase. I will not likely buy an MSI product again. Additionally, as I'm not able to call tech support during normal business hours (I found their phone number and hours in other reviews here.) and I cannot find or use alternative contact information because their website is down 90% of ... MoreThis product is effectively a brick, but not so much as to make me not try to debug it for many hours on end thinking that I've done something wrong. (I'm >10 years of professional experience with hundreds of computer systems built, rebuilt, diagnosed, and fixed.) I've rarely, if ever, come across such a poorly tested, documented, and supported product. (No from-factory testing, undocumented error LED codes, unreachable support website, no in-box manuals, etc.) It was my first MSI purchase. I will not likely buy an MSI product again. Additionally, as I'm not able to call tech support during normal business hours (I found their phone number and hours in other reviews here.) and I cannot find or use alternative contact information because their website is down 90% of the time, I don't believe it is even feasible to RMA the board. Edited 2020.09.14: I forgot some basic build info and an brief update on a support call: - Ryzen 5 3600 NOTE: I'm noticing more and more reviews of this board have the same issue with this particular CPU - G.SKILL Flare X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Model F4-3200C14D-16GFX NOTE: A support call associate (tier 1) told me that the issue is likely the RAM since it is not their supported list. I find that "humorous", and here is why: "F4-3200C14Q-32GFX" *is* supported, but "F4-3200C14D-16GFX" is not. If you know anything about G.SKILL RAM and notice the only difference is the "Q-32" vs "D-16", it is Quad (4) sticks vs Dual (2) sticks and a total of 32GB vs 16GB. Everything else is the same. (Timings, etc.) The MSI website is actually labeling the entire package of RAM as the model number, but the "Size" column is RAM is per stick. Since the MSI website also says it should work with 1 or 2 or 4 DIMMs installed of this 8GB per/stick, I don't know where to head from here. I'm going to file an RMA, but, with cruel irony, "register [dot] msi [dot] com [slash] page [slash] repair_inquiry" times out with a server-side "Gateway Timeout" error. - Intel 665p Series M.2 2280 1TB PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 3D3, QLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPEKNW010T9X1 NOTE: I haven't even gotten to try this. - Antec High Current Gamer Series HCG750 Gold

Does not work with Ryzen 5 3600

I bought this along with a Ryzen 5 3600 processor as the motherboard claims they are compatible with most ryzen cpu's, however I happened to be an unlucky victim of this board not working with the cpu, as i get stuck in a boot loop trying to install or boot into windows.This is a known, albeit, rare issue. But if you are planning on building a ryzen 5 3600 system with this board i strongly recommend using a different board just because of the possibility of it not working. And i hate to say all this because it really does seem like a great board, I especially like the built in wifi and bluetooth. But just because this issue exists and there are no official warnings about it. I cannot recommend it.

Great Motherboard With One Fatal Design Flaw...

I got this motherboard for my first actual PC build. 1 thing I gotta say about it it looks great. The design of the motherboard is nice and discreet and doesn't ever give itself too much attention. The wifi on this board is also pretty good, it never slowed me down. But there is just one problem with it. Where you plug in the USB type C is really awkward and it caused me to bend the connector. The connection point is facing up, which bends the cable at a really weird angle, while SATA connectors are facing sideways. For anyone that buys this motherboard, make sure to be extra careful when plugging in the USB-C cord.

Prepare to be fustrated

Paired this with an ryzen 7 3700x. First, it wouldnt boot. So I flashed the bios with the nice flash feature where you don't need a cpu or ram to update. With a newly flashed bios, it recognized the processor but would Immediately enter a restart loop before it loaded the os. I tried several bios versions, including the latest stable version and the beta version. But nothing helped. This board had to be returned. This was disappointing. I've used MSI motherboards in all my builds and have never seen a product this bad. Reading the other reviews, this seems to be a common problem for this board. I wish I listened to the reviews and skipped this board all together. I ended up getting anASUS TUF B550m which worked perfectly out of the box.

Randomly Reboots, No error. Random Diagnostic LEDs light up

I have Reviewed this board 3x now, and all my reviews vanish in a few days. **Update : New Mobo From Different Manufacturer works fine with all the same parts.Same Ram, Same processor, drives, power supply, and GPU. This is not my first rodeo with desktops as some users are stating about those of us having issues. I hail from the days when the Moto 68k dominated the home market, I recall the rise (and quick fail) that was Slot A. In short it was great for a few months But has been increasingly unstable with random reboots at idle, in bios, under load, off load, after a load, etc CPU light often stays on after boot. Other times the DRAM light stays on. Others still the boot error light is on...even after getting to windows. Sometimes it blinks all the diagnostic ... MoreI have Reviewed this board 3x now, and all my reviews vanish in a few days. **Update : New Mobo From Different Manufacturer works fine with all the same parts.Same Ram, Same processor, drives, power supply, and GPU. This is not my first rodeo with desktops as some users are stating about those of us having issues. I hail from the days when the Moto 68k dominated the home market, I recall the rise (and quick fail) that was Slot A. In short it was great for a few months But has been increasingly unstable with random reboots at idle, in bios, under load, off load, after a load, etc CPU light often stays on after boot. Other times the DRAM light stays on. Others still the boot error light is on...even after getting to windows. Sometimes it blinks all the diagnostic Lights when it crashes...sometimes it takes it 20 seconds of flashing the VGA light before boot. Sometimes the VGA and CPU light come on together. there is no real way to predict which is the cause. It now is so unstable I cannot even try to flash a bios update. Nothing In my system has changed since purchase of this board. It was installed, and sat on my desk about 4-5 months. 2nd Dimm Slot from CPU has died (not the ram, the slot) Any memory in this slot and the PC will randomly reboot in under 1 minute. Does not matter what memory stick. Closest slot however works, meaning the memory controller on the Zen2 Chip should be fine as they are the same bank. Randomly will fail small FFT in seconds, or will run it for hours. It can run small FFT for 2 hours, and fail large FFT instantly... and vise versa no matter what memory is used. Any load on any card in a PCIe slot instantly crashes the machine (start a render on GPU, instant crash) Plug a USB cable into a PCIe USB card ? instant crash. Tried 3 GPUS thinking I had a GPU issue, but the all work fine in other systems, and work using the same power supply in those systems including one that runs dual xeons and dual cards, pulling 100 watts more. r5 3600 without PBO, and without Core Boost. (3600mhz 65watt 1.08v limit) 2x8 LPX 3200Mhz Memory (tried both stock, and XMP settings) 2070 Super Blower card (also Tried Quadro FX4600, and Quadro 4000 from other working desktops, and tried the 2070s card in those desktops where it caused no issues. Seems fine) 650 watt 80+ gold PSU Plenty of case ventilation Ordered a new Motherboard from a different board maker, Hoping that this one did not nuke my CPU on the way out. Will Update with results. **Update : New Mobo From Different Manufacturer works fine with all the same parts.Same Ram, Same processor, drives, power supply, and GPU.

Unstable. Reboots or freezes with minimal load.

I've used this motherboard for 2 months. I have tried every possible solution to stop my system from constantly rebooting or freezing. Current specs: Ryzen 5700g 4x Team Force 16Gb 3200 Corsair RM750x M2 2280 storage I have replaced CPU, DIMMs, and Power supply, updated the BIOS, ran extensive MEMTESTs on all DIMMs in pairs and together. I have ran it with Windows 10, 11, Ubuntu 20.04, 21.10, Mint (latest) and Manjaro (latest). No matter what I tried the reboots kept happening. The most plausible conclusion I came to is that the motherboard is unstable when all 4 DIMMs are installed despite support for 4x32 Gb DIMMs. MEMTEST repeatedly failed with 4 DIMMs installed, despite all DIMMs passing when only 2 were used (I tried all possible permutations of 2 DIMMs to make ... MoreI've used this motherboard for 2 months. I have tried every possible solution to stop my system from constantly rebooting or freezing. Current specs: Ryzen 5700g 4x Team Force 16Gb 3200 Corsair RM750x M2 2280 storage I have replaced CPU, DIMMs, and Power supply, updated the BIOS, ran extensive MEMTESTs on all DIMMs in pairs and together. I have ran it with Windows 10, 11, Ubuntu 20.04, 21.10, Mint (latest) and Manjaro (latest). No matter what I tried the reboots kept happening. The most plausible conclusion I came to is that the motherboard is unstable when all 4 DIMMs are installed despite support for 4x32 Gb DIMMs. MEMTEST repeatedly failed with 4 DIMMs installed, despite all DIMMs passing when only 2 were used (I tried all possible permutations of 2 DIMMs to make sure.) I eventually concluded the Motherboard is at fault and have replaced it with a better one that works. Very disappointed with this one despite its desirable specs.

a couple weeks in and working great

I bought two of these one for myself and my wife. She's using the wireless NIC and its working great for gaming. I've tested the bluetooth functions with a custom bluetooth keyboard and it worked as expected.Primary purpose for buying this board was to get the flash bios button since I bought a ryzen 5 5600g which is only supported by the board after an update. worked fine following the instructions from random youtuber and confirmed by msi documentation.I also really appreciate that it has a built in display port in addition to hdmi. if you are buying an APU ryzen chip (the ones with graphics integrated) the display port feature is really nice to make full use of the power you are getting.the layout of the plugs on the board also works really nicely. my wifes ... MoreI bought two of these one for myself and my wife. She's using the wireless NIC and its working great for gaming. I've tested the bluetooth functions with a custom bluetooth keyboard and it worked as expected.Primary purpose for buying this board was to get the flash bios button since I bought a ryzen 5 5600g which is only supported by the board after an update. worked fine following the instructions from random youtuber and confirmed by msi documentation.I also really appreciate that it has a built in display port in addition to hdmi. if you are buying an APU ryzen chip (the ones with graphics integrated) the display port feature is really nice to make full use of the power you are getting.the layout of the plugs on the board also works really nicely. my wifes case is a full gaming rig size with intense cable management and it looks spiffy in there. my case is for mini-ATX boards and doesn't have a lot of room by design, I was still able to get amazing airflow even with a huge graphics card and filling every sata port with power connections.uefi/bios menu is as expected with the usual stuff, boots fast, runs silent.great board so far. thanks MSI! and thanks B&H!

solid build with minor issues

for the price this board is very hard to beat. 4 ram slots 2 m.2 slot obe that comes with a beefy headshield. also this board has wifi,overclocking mechanics and seems very solid. giving it 3 stars for a few reasons. upon receiving it iv noticed it must of been sitting in the warehouse for awhile as had to flash the bios via usb. another major issue i faced was not drivers at all for things like wifi so you must go to the msi pahe and dl all drivers for all features to work.all in all a solid build but with a few agitating drawbacks.