MSI vs. ASUS vs. Gigabyte - The Best Gaming Motherboards in 2021 Compared

All three motherboards are made of expensive and hard textolite. As a result, they do not walk during installation. The product from Gigabyte differs in that the buyer does not need to install the connector protection on his own - it is already in place. It should be noted the slot for the video card, which is reinforced here. As for the bundle, it includes a sticker, a pair of SATA cables, a disk with drivers, an adapter for the front panel of the case, and all kinds of paper documentation. Some buyers will be confused by the lack of a seal or seal on the antistatic bag - it is sealed with ordinary tape. Because of this, at first you may feel that you got a refund.

If we talk about the product from MSI, then this is the best choice for a gamer whose system unit has a transparent window. Yes, this motherboard also does not have RGB lighting, but it still attracts attention due to the red and black colors. Another device stands out due to the huge radiators that can come in handy during overclocking. The manufacturer also decided to equip the video card slot with a metal frame.Complete with this model, the buyer will receive clear instructions for installing the board itself and the processor, a driver disk, protection for connectors (painted black and has a corporate pattern), a sticker, a bolt for attaching an SSD M.2 and a pair of SATA wires.

The motherboard from Asus looks no less impressive. Unlike competitors, it boasts AURA Sync LED backlighting. In this case, the user can additionally connect a pair of LED strips - the manufacturer has not forgotten the appropriate pads (as is the case with the MSI product). There is also a massive protective casing above the interface panel. Another feature is the DIMM slots, which have latches on only one side, which makes it easy to install and replace RAM. It remains to be added that ASUS TUF B450-PRO Gaming comes with stickers, paper documentation, a driver disk, a set of mounting screws for SSD drives, an interface panel cover, and two SATA cables.

All boards support DDR4 RAM. All of them use four slots. At the same time, the minimum allowable frequency for MSI is different: it is 1866 MHz. But if you are building a computer for gaming, then the upper bar is important. In this regard, MSI also wins, since the product of this manufacturer officially supports memory operating at a frequency of 4133 MHz. The outsider is the board from Asus. However, many of our readers do not expect to get more from RAM than 3533 MHz.

Interestingly, the two boards are maximally capable of interacting with 64 GB of memory, while the Gigabyte B550 Aurus Elite V2 supports 128 GB. Whether you need such a volume is another question.

SATA connectors are used to connect hard drives. There are six of them, and only Gigabyte's board has only four slots. This immediately makes it the worst choice if you have a large number of drives that interact with just such a connector.

A gaming motherboard couldn't do without an M.2 SSD drive slot. Moreover, products from Gigabyte and Asus have two such connectors! In the case of the first board, one of the slots is even covered by a heatsink, which makes it possible to achieve stable performance even from a relatively inexpensive drive.

The motherboard from Gigabyte knowingly costs a little more than the rest. It is the only one that supports the PCI Express 4.0 standard.This means that this model has the best throughput. It will squeeze all the juice out of absolutely any video card, even if it is the GeForce RTX 3090. And this board also has three PCI-E x16 slots, and not two, as is the case with competitors. It is clear that with their simultaneous operation, the speed will be cut, but the very fact of their presence is important!

Of course, the manufacturer had to reduce the number of PCI-E x1 - Gigabyte uses only one such slot. In this regard, MSI greatly outperforms the competitor. But you need to understand that now such connectors are used less and less. Especially in gaming PCs, where high data transfer speeds are important.

It is unlikely that anyone will argue with the fact that any motherboard is used not only for games. Therefore, it is important to get a product that has the largest number of connectors on its rear panel. And that many of them turned out to be high-speed. In this regard, Gigabyte looks much more interesting. But in fact, even MSI's least expensive product should please the vast majority of our readers.

If we talk about the audio component, the boards use a different sound adapter chipset, but they all support 7.1. At the same time, connecting multichannel acoustics to the board from ASUS will be difficult, since it uses only three analog connectors, and it does not have a digital port at all. But on the other hand, the product from Gigabyte is endowed with an optical output. It also received five analog connectors. And one more is built into the board from MSI, but it lacks a digital port.

Another important difference between the more expensive Gigabyte B550 and its competitors is the LAN port. Its speed reaches 2.5 Gb / s, while when buying the other two boards, you will have to rely on the standard 1 Gb / s. The models we have chosen do not have wireless modules.

With the purchase of a gaming motherboard, you will have to rack your brains over which case to choose. The fact is that all three models support connecting a large number of external USB connectors, and many of them can be high-speed. The table above will tell you more about this.

All three boards allow for overclocking, but Gigabyte - to the least extent. This is evidenced by the power system chosen by the manufacturer, and the corresponding settings hidden too far in Bios.It is worth trying only if the installed processor consists of four or six cores. Another limitation of this model is not the largest number of connectors for case fans.

The MSI board uses a 7-phase power supply system. The Flash BIOS button should also please the buyer, thanks to which a quick update to the latest BIOS version is carried out (if only it was preloaded on a connected USB flash drive).

The product from ASUS also has good overclocking capabilities. But we have already mentioned all the main features of this board - otherwise it does not differ from competitors with the same price tag.

Least of all, sellers ask for a product from MSI. This is one of the most affordable gaming motherboards out there. This must be why she does not have the largest number of "chips" that would distinguish her from other top models. But sometimes price is everything.

ASUS products always have some markup. So the motherboard we reviewed costs a little more than it should. Especially when you consider that in the future its owner may also need a sound card (to connect multi-channel acoustics). Well, the most expensive on our list is the Gigabyte B550 AORUS Elite V2. This can be understood, because the board has a number of distinctive features. Perhaps, she lacks only Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules - for that kind of money I would like to get them too.

If you have a top-end graphics card and something else from ASUS, then your choice may seem obvious. The fact is that the motherboard from the same manufacturer has a proprietary RGB backlight that can be synchronized with other devices. But if you do not strive to assemble a system unit sparkling with all the colors of the rainbow, then you can think about it.

The product from Asus will definitely not suit you if you are going to connect multi-channel acoustics. If you plan to output digital sound somewhere, then in general you need to focus exclusively on the board from Gigabyte. In our comparison, it scored almost the same number of points as the MSI product. Of course, in some ways she surpassed him, but in some ways she lost. For example, the Gigabyte product is the only one of the trinity that has a USB Type-C connector and the fourth version of PCI-Express. A good start for the future! But on the other hand, MSI allows you to connect a larger number of hard drives that are relevant right now. And due to the lower price, this purchase is much more profitable.