GIGABYTE B850

If you have no need for the extras that X870 or X870E provide, but still want a great-performing board, Gigabyte continues its run of impressive B850 motherboard offerings. For less than $250 this board offers a well executed PCIe Gen 5 M.2 and GPU package with no major downsides.

Gigabyte setzt in der neuen Iteration der AMD-Chipsätze auf mehr Vielfalt und bringt mit den ICE-Modellen einige schicke Boards für die immer beliebter werdende Farbe Weiß. Das Design spielt dabei geschickt mit schwarzen Kontrastelementen auf dem Mainboard, was zu einer durchaus gefälligen Optik führt und sich damit gut in die meisten Gehäuse optisch integrieren lässt. Das erspart teure Zubehörkabel für das Netzteil und ein allzu fokussiertes Umstellen auf Weiß bei den restlichen Komponenten. Das B850 EAGLE ICE in der WIFI7 Variante, bietet auf den ersten Blick eine überzeugende Ausstattung und ist preislich mit unter 200€ eher im Einsteigersegment angesiedelt. Der verbaute B850 – der weitestgehend dem B650 der Vorserie entspricht – stellt eine solide Grundlage für einen Großteil der Anwender dar und dürfte in den meisten Fällen die Ansprüche in Form von Anschlussvielfalt und Anbindungen erfüllen. Das Board platziert sich mit dem recht aggressiven Preis – im Vergleich zu Konkurrenz – als preiswerte Alternative und bringt neben dem recht schicken Design, aufgeräumten Layout und WIFI7 auch einige Komfortfunktionen mit sich.

The B850 Eagle WiFi7 Ice is not without its limitations, and it's definitely not well suited to handling multithreaded workloads with high-end CPUs on a regular basis, nor does it have the cooling required to avoid PCIe Gen 5 SSDs throttling fairly quickly. However, if you must have a sub $200 motherboard that will look better than most others in a white PC case, and is more than capable of sitting at the heart of a mid-range PC—so long as you're aware of its limitations, and there are a few—there isn't anything that ticks as many boxes aesthetically for the same price. But while we commend Gigabyte's aesthetic attention to detail, this board has a few too many drawbacks to find its way into award territory.

Overall, once you rip off the M.2 heatsink fascia and tweak the fan speed, there's not much wrong here other than some slightly toasty VRMs if you end up pushing a 16-core CPU to its limits for a good 20 to 30 minutes. For Gigabyte fans, though, this feels like a backward step compared to it's compelling B650 predecessor, while MSI has a slightly better current-gen package in the MPG B850I Edge TI Wi-Fi, and ASRock has something much cheaper but lower-specced.

Rear connector motherboards still account for a tiny fraction of current manufacturers' product ranges and even fewer are found in sub ATX form factors. Case compatibility is growing, though, with several models we've looked at in the least few weeks offering the necessary motherboard tray cut-outs for models such as the Gigabyte B850M Aorus Stealth Ice we're looking at today. As its name suggests, though, the latest Project Stealth Socket AM5 motherboard (Gigabyte's name for rear connector, like ASUS is BTF) is microATX, offering the company's rear-connector design in a smaller form factor. If you're new to rear connector motherboards, cases that offer rear connector support are compatible with all rear connector motherboard models, but manufacturers, such as Gigabyte, have decided to call rear connector ranges by different names