MSI TOMAHAWK B350 Review

MSI present us with the TOMAHAWK B350, allowing users to take advantage of the Ryzen CPUs along with all the latest features they need for a high performance home or gaming PC.

Product on Review: TOMAHAWK B350
Manufacturer & Sponsor: MSI
Street Price: £105 GBP / $110 USD

MSI have carved out a following for their gaming orientated products and the TOMAHAWK B350 falls in place as part of the ‘Arsenal Gaming’ line, (as expected from a product named TOMAHAWK).

Making use of AMD’s B350 chipset, as opposed to the flagship X370, this motherboard is more for gamers and mainstream users looking to create a system that doesn’t quite need the additional extras found on the enthusiast platform. Ultimately what this means to the end user is that there are fewer Storage and USB options available. However, aside from the fancy plastic dresses that are now commonly found on high-end motherboards, the TOMAHAWK B350 still features new technologies and high grade components to fully utilise the latest AMD Ryzen CPUs. It includes an array of USB 3.1 Gen 1, including a Type C at the rear. The main 16x PCIe slot features a reinforced ‘Steel Armour’ housing, heavy duty heatsinks for effective cooling, and other electrical protective measures falling under the ever evolving ‘Military Class 4’ and ‘Guard-Pro’ collection of technologies.

Specifically for gamers, MSI has loaded the TOMAHAWK B350 with features such as high grade audio featuring dedicated PCB layers, de-pop protection, Nahimic 2 software with virtual 7.1 surround. The board itself features red LED lighting along with an RGB LED header which can be controlled via the Mystic Light Sync app which is compatible with many other RGB products from various gaming brands, ensuring that your system will have a uniform theme from chassis to desktop. Other technologies include low latency LAN with a network management app, 2x dedicated Gaming Device Port (low latency, low noise USB ports), Game Boost (1-second overclocking software), additional support for VR devices, and for the streamers they even throw in a voucher for a premium X-Split licence. Finally, should you want an alternative aesthetic, the TOMAHAWK B350 is available as an ‘Arctic‘ version, with white LEDs.

MSI in their own words

As a world leading gaming brand, MSI is the most trusted name in gaming and eSports. We’ve dedicated countless hours and committed numerous resources to the eSports community to support the world’s most aspiring and best gamers and use their knowledge and expertise in our products in return. MSI integrated all gamers’ aspirational functions in its gaming rigs, eliminating the tedious trial and error by themselves and pushing the performance beyond limits. The determination to surpass past achievements has made MSI a ‘True Gaming’ brand with gaming spirit throughout the industry!

Technical Specifications

CPU

• Supports AMD® RYZEN series processors and 7th Gen A-series/ Athlon™ processors for Socket AM4
* This function will be supported depend on the CPU.

Chipset

• AMD® B350 Chipset

Main Memory

• 4 x DDR4 memory slots, support up to 64GB
– Supports DDR4 1866/ 2133/ 2400/ 2667(OC)/ 2933(OC)/ 3200(OC)+ Mhz *
• Dual channel memory architecture
* 7th Gen A-series/ Athlon ™ processors support up to 2400 MHz. Please refer www.msi.com for more information on compatible memory.

Slots

• 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slot (PCI_E2)
– Supports x 16 speed with RYZEN Series Processors
– Supports x 8 speed with 7th Gen A-series/ Athlon™ processors
• 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (PCI_E4, supports x4 mode)*
• 2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 slots
• 2 x PCI slots
* PCI_E4 slot will become PCIe 2.0 x2 mode, when installing device in any PCIe x1 slot.

Onboard Graphics

• 1 x VGA port, supports a maximum resolution of 2048×1280@60HZ (RB)*
• 1 x DVI-D port, supports a maximum resolution of 1920×1200@60Hz*
• 1 x HDMI™ port, supports a maximum resolution of 4096×2160@24Hz*
* Only support when using a 7th Gen A-series/ Athlon™ processor

Storage

• AMD® B350 Chipset
• 4 x SATA 6Gb/s ports*
– Support RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 10
• 1 x M.2 port (Key M)
– Supports PCIe 3.0 x4 (RYZEN Series Processors) or PCIe 3.0 x2 (7th Gen A-series/ Athlon™ processors ) and SATA 6Gb/s
– Supports 2242/ 2260 /2280/ 22110 storage devices

USB

• AMD® B350 Chipset
– 4 x USB 3.1 Gen1 (SuperSpeed USB) ports available through the internal USB 3.1 Gen1 connectors
– 6 x USB 2.0 (High-speed USB) ports (2 Type-A ports on the back panel, 4 ports available through the internal USB 2.0 connectors)

• AMD® RYZEN series processors/ 7th Gen A-series/ Athlon™ processors
– 4 x USB 3.1 Gen1 (SuperSpeed USB) ports (3 Type-A ports and 1 Type-C port on the back panel)

Audio

• Realtek® ALC892 Codec
– 7.1-Channel High Definition Audio

LAN

• 1 x Realtek® 8111H Gigabit LAN controller

Internal I/O Connectors

– 1 x 24-pin ATX main power connector
– 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connector
– 4 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
– 2 x USB 2.0 connectors (support additional 4 USB 2.0 ports)
– 2 x USB 3.1 Gen1 connectors (support additional 4 USB 3.1 Gen1 ports)
– 1 x 4-pin CPU fan connector
– 1 x 4-pin water-pump-fan connector
– 4 x 4-pin system fan connectors
– 1 x 4-pin RGB LED strip connector
– 1 x Serial port connector
– 1 x Parallel port connector
– 1 x TPM module connector
– 1 x Front panel audio connector
– 2 x System panel connectors
– 1 x Chassis Intrusion connector
– 1 x Clear CMOS jumper

Back Panel I/O Ports

– 1 x PS/2 keyboard/ mouse combo port
– 2 x USB 2.0 Type-A ports
– 1 x VGA port
– 1 x DVI-D port
– 1 x HDMI™ port
– 3 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports
– 1 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-C port
– 1 x LAN (RJ45) port
– 6 x OFC audio jacks

Dimension[b/]

• 12 in. x 9.6 in. (30.4 cm x 24.3 cm)
• ATX Form Factor

For more information about the B350 chipset, CLICK HERE

Packaging, Bundle & First Look

The packaging features various brandings from MSI Gaming, MSI, Arsenal Gaming, VR Ready, AMD Ryzen as well as the socket, chipset and product name, there is even a subtle image of the notorious deliverer of freedom itself, fortunately the payload is metaphorical.

The reverse side features an image of the product and a run down of its most notable features along with its specification and a map of its rear IO.

Inside the box, the motherboard is accompanied by: the rear IO plate, 2x SATA cables, the manual, driver disc, along with some warranty information, and the X-Split voucher code.

The motherboard itself features a black and grey patterned PCB with chunky metal heatsinks. The primary 16x slot features the steel armour, and there is a double space between the next physical 16x slot, ensuring enough space for those that may decide to use CrossFire.

Closer Look

Around the AM4 socket, we see that the TOMAHAWK B350 features a 4+2 power phase design. To the right there is a 4pin CPU fan header, with an additional 4pin system fan header on the left. Note, there is no dedicated RGB LED header for the Ryzen 7 coolers.

MSI have implemented DDR4 BOOST technology, allowing a memory frequency of up to 3200MHz OC. The PCB has clearly marked which DIMM lanes to prioritise, though this is likely done as there is no colour coding as they are all black. Along the edge there are two more 4pin fan headers, one of which can output 2a for waterpumps. Just to the right of the 24pin ATX power socket there is a row of 4 LEDs for the EZ Debug feature.

The TOMAHAWK features a right angle USB 3.1 Gen1 connector, allowing for more convenient cable routing of the front panel connectors. Of the 4x SATA 6Gb/s ports, only two are right angle, which seems to be a little counter intuitive. To the left of the SATA ports, there is another 4pin fan header.

To the left there is a PCIe to PCI lane converter as MSI have intentionally added 2x legacy PCI slots for compatibility with older devices, this will be a positive for some, a negative for others. Additional internal headers include: Front panel audio, RGB LED header, 1x 4pin fan header, serial port, parallel port, TPM module connector, 2x USB 2.0 headers, a second USB 3.1 Gen1 header, and the front panel headers.

The audio solution is based around audio-grade capacitors, the Realtek ALC892 and some dedicated circuitry.

There is a single dedicated M.2 port that is seated underneath the primary 16x PCIe slot.

The rear IO consists of a single universal PS/2 port, 2x Gaming Device USB 2.0 ports, VGA, DVI-D, HDMI 1.4, 3x USB 3.1 Gen 1 (type A). 1x USB 3.1 Gen1 (Type C), LAN port, and 6x Gold plated OFC audio jacks.

Test Setup & Overclocking

Test Setup

CPU AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
Cooling Noctua U12S
Motherboard TOMAHAWK B350
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz @ 2667MHz
Graphics AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB
Storage Corsair Force LE 480GB
PSU Corsair RM750X 80 Plus Gold Certified PSU

Benchmarks

Cinebench R15 – CPU/OpenGL Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA – CPU & Memory benchmarks
POV-RAY – CPU benchmarks
TrueCrypt – CPU benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks & Memory
PCMark 8 – Home Suite & Photoshop
3DMark FireStrike – 3D Benchmark
Games – Rise of the Tomb Raider & Total War: WARHAMMER

Other Software

Temperature Analysis: Aida64 & Ryzen Master
Stress Testing Software: AIDA64 Stability Test
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z
Performance Monitoring: MSI Afterburner

BIOS
On entering the BIOS, we are presented with the nicely laid out MSI Click BIOS 5. Our board was shipped with BIOS version .114, and we then updated to.115 (latest at time of writing is .130). The MSI BIOS is very user friendly and easy to navigate with a host of advanced features for overclocking and generally controlling your system.

Overclocking
The BIOS features A-XMP allowing you to set your memory to their rated specifications whether they have XMP or AMP memory profiles, however we weren’t able to get 3200MHz stable. Overlocking was as easy as expected, and our 1800X hits the wall at 4.05GHz with a nice 1.41V. Though something we did notice is that the Hardware Monitor was rather slow and laggy while we were testing for stability. This resulted in a rather slow reaction from the fans in regards to the temperature when using automatic or normal or default ‘Smart Fan’ mode. This resulted in some thermal based protective measures kicking in as it took a little while to discover what was going on. Using the AIDA64 stability tool, CPU temperatures were reported to hit 95°C before the fans even started to spin faster, resulting in an obvious black screen/restart with the fans then spinning up to 100% trying to catch up. These kind of temperatures could possibly damage your rather expensive CPU, so if you plan on overclocking pay attention to your thermals, and what cooler you are using. If you are overclocking it is good practice to set your cooler to 100% to find your coolers thermal limit anyway, but be wary. We would expect this to be fixed in a later BIOS update.

Benchmarks: Power Consumption

It’s interesting to note the power consumption across all motherboards. Although they are using the Z270 chipset, energy results can fluctuate between manufacturers due to the features and specifications that are integrated. First of all, for the idle tests the system is cold booted into Windows and no additional applications are executed – the watts are noted on the external energy monitor we use and then the system is loaded with 3DMark FireStrike – watts are again monitored for the duration of the test and the highest rated wattage result is then noted down. Below are the results of this energy test.

Benchmarks: Cinebench R15

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Life of Pi or Prometheus and many more.

Benchmarks: X264 HD

Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. I think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process, and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently.

Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA

SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but we believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU and memory tests.

Benchmarks: POV-RAY

Persistence of Vision Raytracer’s PovRay is a free and open source 3D animator application with versions for computers with different operating systems.

This product allows users to build their custom 3D worlds with excellent quality despite their computer’s hardware. It has adjustable options for levels of radiance, refraction, and reflection. Calculation time may vary depending on the computer model, but PovRay can adapt to many computer builds, and is supported by the open source community.

Benchmarks: TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt is a discontinued source-available freeware utility used for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file or encrypt a partition or (under Microsoft Windows except Windows 8 with GPT) the entire storage device (pre-boot authentication).

Benchmarks: AIDA64

AIDA64 Product Page

This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example — with HyperThreading disabled — the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.

Benchmarks: PCMark 8

PCMark 8 combines performance benchmarking with battery life measurement and includes tests based on popular Adobe and Microsoft applications. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 8 will help you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs. It’s the complete PC performance benchmark for home and business.

Benchmarks: PCMark 8 Photoshop

The PCMark 8 Applications benchmark measures system performance using popular applications from the Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office. You can choose which tests to run based on the applications installed on your system. Each test automatically steps through a series of actions such as opening, editing and saving a file. The results are used to calculate the PCMark 8 Applications scores for the system.

Benchmarks: 3DMark

3DMark FireStrike Product Page

Fire Strike is our new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today. Fire Strike will only be available in the Windows editions of 3DMark initially.

VR Performance – VRMark

VRMark Product Page

VRMark includes two VR benchmark tests that run on your monitor, no headset required, or on a connected HMD. At the end of each test, you’ll see whether your PC is VR ready, and if not, how far it falls short.

Gaming Performance – Rise of the Tomb Raider & Total War: WARHAMMER

It’s important for us to perform a number of game benchmarks as well as the synthetic tests because gamers will want to know if there are any significant benefits. So here we have two recent gaming titles.

Conclusion

The MSI TOMAHAWK B350 gives the X370 chipsets a run for their money, delivering fantastic performance with a well rounded set of features at a reasonable price. The design is attractive and mostly neutral, allowing it to suit most setups, and if red isn’t your thing, you can easily disable (most of) the onboard LED lighting, and connect your own RGB LED strip which can then be controlled via the Mystic Light Sync App. Alternatively you could opt for the ‘Artic’ version with white LEDs.

The layout is mostly hassle free to work with and the addition of a right angle USB 3.1 Gen1 header is pleasing to see, though we were left scratching our heads over why they only gave uses 2x right angle SATA ports. It is here we feel we should get a little more objective about it. The TOMAHAWK B350 lacks the 2x native USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, negating them completely without even providing a 3.1 Gen2 front panel header, and the rear IO only affords 5x USB ports (Type A), and it seems MSI failed to realise that the addition of a Type C port is an added bonus, not an essential requirement, putting a serious restriction on your USB connectivity. Sure, we could argue that there are two internal USB 3.1 Gen1 headers and their usefulness will depend on your system chassis. The 4x SATA ports for storage is more of a limitation of the B350 chipset and for the modern PC, unless you are still rocking several optical drives this should be plenty. The SATA limitation seems geared to encourage users to take advantage of the high-speed M.2 port, and if you are looking to build a new system this is something you should consider.

Finally, there are some points to remember that almost intentionally place the B350 in the ‘mainstream’ category, making it the perfect partner for Ryzen 5 CPUs. Little things like missing out the RGB header for the Ryzen 7 coolers seems more punitive, while the slow-to-react Smart Fan feature could put a dampener on those eager to overclock, though this could also be/have been fixed with later BIOS updates.

In light of everything, MSI have made a well rounded motherboard that is equipped with enough for the majority of peoples needs, ensuring that they are able to get a high-performance experience at a significantly lower price than the X370 is currently available for.

Cruising in at an attractive price point, the MSI TOMAHAWK B350 is a solid motherboard that has everything you need for a contemporary mainstream gaming PC.

Pros
+ Attractive design
+ Solid performance
+ M.2 socket
+ Attractive, easy to use BIOS
+ Glowing Red LED lighting
+ Dedicated features for gamers and VR
+ EZ Debug LED

Cons
– Slow reacting ‘Smart Fan’
– Features no USB 3.1 Gen 2

Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.