Biostar B650M Motherboard Review – All The Basic AM5 Features In A Sub-$100 Design

Conclusion - As Basic At It Gets

The Biostar B650MT is a basic AM5 motherboard based on the B650 chipset. It's fine for those who want the most basic functionality while sticking with the more mainstream CPUs on the platform.

In our tests, the B650MT didn't live up to the mark using the high-end Ryzen 9 7950X which has a TDP rating of 170W and goes over 200W (MTP) with PBO enabled. The lowly 6-phase VRM wasn't able to get us the reference performance for the high-end CPUs but if you are planning to go with more mainstream options such as the 65W and 105W SKUs, then the motherboard will be fine as shown in our CPU tests which are on par with the other high-end motherboards we tested the Hawk Point APU with.

As for memory support, while Biostar claims to have support for up to 6000 MT/s DDR5 modules, we had a hard time running DDR5 over 5600 MT/s. Once again, the large majority of users won't be running anything above 6000 MT/s but for APUs, 6000-6400 MT/s seems to be the best option since they have a RDNA 2 iGPU that loves raw system bandwidth.

I/O on the Biostar B650MT is basic too with a single PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, a single PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, and four SATA ports. Most budget gamers stick with 1 M.2 SSD primarily for the OS while using HDDs for their storage directory since they offer the most value per GB. The VRM temps are also something to keep in mind as the motherboard has a single VRM heatsink which doesn't do much. Overall, for its $85 US price, the motherboard is a very simple option which is decent enough for budget builders but besides that, there isn't much to talk about. So if you are really low on cash and want a B650 motherboard, the B650MT is worth considering.

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