B250 motherboard first evaluation: this year's hottest Intel motherboard

Intel's Optane has already said before, but the product will be listed until mid-year, and the price may be higher after the listing, so if such a noble Optane will generally choose the Z170 motherboard, so the significance of Optane may be B250 Not great, after all, players who buy B250 are more value-conscious.

There is also a PCIe bus that adds four 3.0 channels. These four are used for the standard M.2 interface.

The last is that the memory frequency defaults to 2400MHz. The DDR4 gradually matures, and more and more UHF memories (2800, 3200, and 3600) are already on the shelf. The 2400MHz upgrade is not as big as the 2133MHz. There are also test comparisons before. After that, it is better than nothing, more psychologically cool.

● SATA-Express interface

Basically all of the B150s come with the SATA-Express interface. However, over a year later, there are not many devices that can plug in this interface. It can be said that it is also a generation failure, so many motherboards in this generation are not Again, with this interface, of course, nothing is a pity.

B250 upgrade summary:

In fact, the biggest changes are those above, the default memory frequency is upgraded from 2133 to 2400, PCIe 3.0 bus number is more than 4 so it can be equipped with an M.2 SSD interface, Optane disk is currently no product on the market ...

Therefore, in order to break through this flaw, manufacturers must start with the design of the motherboard, such as playing lights, custom design, etc., then we take the MSI M3 to test it.

● MSI B250 GAMING M3 motherboard measured:

MSI B250 GAMING M3 Reference Price: Loading... Image Reviews Quote Parameter Overview

We then compare his old brother, MSI B150 GAMING M3, because there is no physical in hand, the MSI official website cut a map.

MSI B150 GAMING M3

You can see the appearance of the change is still relatively large, the overall design of this generation of B250 M3 calm and calm a lot, the motherboard PCB is brown tone, South Bridge heat sink does not have a big red design, but the red circuit board design on the PCB is really It is full of science and technology.

Motherboard front

The whole body of the motherboard is designed with deep red circuit lines, full of sense of technology, and it is a pity that these lines do not light up when the motherboard is lit, otherwise it is certainly very good (like FAIZ).

South Bridge Heat Sink

It is still the design of the MSI Dragon. MSI spent a lot of effort to push its own dragons in recent years, and also extended a lot of lovely surroundings.

PCIe slot

Two long PCIe 3.0 slots are provided. The upper one is alloyed and has a good effect on the protection slot. There are also four PCIe 3.0 x 1 slots that can be expanded with many accessories such as SSDs, sound cards, network cards, and more.

M.2 SSD interface

Since the B250 has four more PCIe 3.0 channels, the MSI B250 M3 uses it on the M.2 SSD interface. The top is the 22110 full-size M.2 interface, the bottom is the most mainstream 2280 interface, and the interface is also The alloy curing design was mainly done in this way.

Technology-rich deep red circuit lines

SATA 3.0 Interface & USB 3.0 Interface

To this generation many motherboards have given up SATA-Express interface, 6 SATA 3.0 enough for most people, the pursuit of cost-effective users must be more inclined to use SATA 3.0 SSD, M.2 due to higher prices, suitable for the pursuit of extreme speed players .

Motherboard I/O interface

This part is not very different from the previous generation B150, but the popularity of USB 3.1 will be higher than the previous generation, so there will be more and more low-to-high-end B250 motherboards are equipped with USB 3.1 interface, MSI B250 GAMING M3 on A set of A&C USB 3.1 interfaces is configured.

LED light effect

When the motherboard is working, the LED split line of the audio location, RJ-45 network cable port, and USB interface will all be lit in red. Anyway, playing the lights is the main theme of this year's motherboard.

● MSI B250 work dismantling:

Motherboard back

Although it was definitely not visible behind the host after it was installed in the host, but after opening the box to see this design is still a little scared, the motherboard in this stage of homogenization is very difficult to play.

Power supply module

MSI B250 GAMING M3 power supply module is very luxurious, providing 6+4 phase digital power supply, which is a top level in this positioning of the motherboard, and the armor design above the cover is also very nice.

DDR4 BOOST

ATX board type B250, memory slots are certainly four, B250 motherboard default support DDR4 2400MHz frequency, higher than the B150 2133 lost. And equipped with MSI's DDR4 BOOST technology, of course, this technology is more for overclockable Z270 service.

AUDIO BOOST audio technology

MSI has used multiple generations of AUDIO BOOST technology. Underneath the electromagnetic shield is Reltek's top ALC1150 chip, coupled with Nichicon's high-end audio capacitors, giving you a superior audio experience.

Killer Network Card KILLER E2500

One of the main selling points of the motherboard, the onboard NIC is the killer E2500, which is also a relatively high-end network chip. It has strong ability to handle network data and can effectively reduce the delay when playing games.

Asmedia USB 3.1 solution

The USB 3.1 interface at the motherboard I/O interface is extended via the chipset PCIe 3.0x4 channel, which can provide the maximum USB bandwidth of 10Gb/s. Of course, there is not yet such a fast U disk to sell. But maybe soon enough?

Dismantling summary: In fact, all the way down you can see the difference with the B150 is not much, more from the design to find a breakthrough.

The motherboard JD is priced at 999 yuan, while the previous generation B150 GAMING M3 is 899 yuan, the difference between 100 yuan, I think that buying the B250 will fly a lot, after all, the upgrade is still a bit of use, and the new and old alternate no better than the previous generation Many are expensive and can be considered equivalent products.

● MSI B250 performance measurement: 7700K is slightly stronger than 6700K

Test instruction:

This test will use B250 motherboard equipped with i7-6700K contrast i7-7700K, memory for dual-channel DDR4, graphics card use NVIDIA GTX1080.

Test platform parameter screenshot

The maximum multiplier of the i7-7700K can be up to 45 times, that is, the highest frequency is 4500MHz, the memory frequency is also 2400MHz, and the BIOS version is AMI3.11.

Performance Test It can be seen that the performance gap between the i7-7700K and the i7-6700K is basically the difference between the two CPU frequencies (4.5GHz and 4.2GHz), but the formal channels will be completely delisted from the i7-6700K soon. , i7-7700K will replace i7-6700K at the same price, but Taobao will certainly have a little cheaper than the 7700K 6700K, so how to vote everyone has a few friends.

● Motherboard CPU power supply module temperature test:

In the temperature test section, we mainly examined the problems of the CPU power supply of the mainboard. This part of the temperature is the place where the main board generates a large amount of heat, and it is also the key to the stability of the mainboard. We used the Fluke Ti25 thermal imager to test and recorded two data when idle (CPU, video card is empty) and full load (CPU full, video card is empty). The test used the current CPU as the official i7-7700K.

Idle temperature (left), full load temperature (right)