MSI PRO B650M-A WiFi ProSeries Motherboard (AMD Ryzen 9000/8000/7000 Series Processors, AM5, DDR5, PCIe 4.0, M.2, SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.2 Gen 2, HDMI/DP, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, 2.5Gbps LAN, mATX)

I ordered this because I received a DOA motherboard from Newegg. It wasn't MSI, but a cheaper Gigabyte one. This one came the day after with prime and it seemed way more solid and better-designed. You really get what you pay for. Tested it out of the case first just to make sure I could get a display and everything worked & it worked flawlessly. Put everything in my new case and has been great ever since. The BIOS is very easy to navigate with a lot of options. MSI is now one of my favorite brands.

My last PC was a Core i7-4790S/RTX A2000/16GB DDR3. A dinosaur that I dragged along from 2015-2024 by upgrading graphics cards every other year (whatever the best low profile option is at least, due to the size of my case). When planning its successor last month, I wanted to go AM5. I was debating between this B650M-A and the cheaper B650M-P, but here's why I chose the Pro B650M-A WiFi:1. I re-used my old case, an InWin CE685, so right off the bat I am limited to Micro ATX.2. For me, the more front I/O, the better, and I really wanted front panel USB-C this time around, so I needed support for that.3. My last pc, which lasted me for basically a decade as stated previously, also had an MSI motherboard (the H81M-E34 to be exact). That left a good impression on me, so I preferred to stick with MSI.4. Up until now, both the B650M-P AND B650M-A satisfy these requirements, but here's what gave me the push to go for the latter. My case is small, and so naturally my PC will run warmer on average than a full size build. To help combat this even a little bit, I wanted some beefed-up VRM cooling, and that's what gives the M-A the edge over the M-P. Of course, the M-P is obviously fine in a larger case with more airflow, and it may have been just fine in my case too, but I didn't want to spend the money to be wrong. The M-A felt like the safer bet.Moving on to more "what," and less "why," it's got basically everything your average gamer would care about. Plenty of fast USB on the back, and the motherboard has headers for more: Two USB 2.0 headers, one for USB 3, and another for USB C. Five fan headers too, which is great for me as I have used ALL of them to place additional fans in this case. 2.5G ethernet is a nice touch as well. I don't have a need for WiFi but there's built-in Bluetooth, so I don't have to use a USB dongle for that anymore.Upon completing the assembly of my PC, it booted up successfully on the first try. At the end, in here is a Ryzen 7 7700 (undervolted a bit), 32GB of DDR5 Expo'd to 6000MHz, and a low-profile RTX 4060. All works well and achieves the expected benchmark scores. I probably force it to go for 9 years like my last PC, but I still want about 3-5 years of never having to touch or worry about this thing (aside from GPU upgrades of course, whenever we get a low-profile successor to the 4060). Glad I bought it.

I was attracted to this motherboard's cost-benefit and features: two M.2 slots, good VRM temperatures, plenty of SATA ports, WiFi and Bluetooth, all at a good price.But problems started after I assembled everything: I couldn't access BIOS settings, nor I could install Windows from the scratch. I tried everything: BIOS update, booting with only one RAM stick, changing from another RAM slot, resetting CMOS, changing battery, removing the video card and using the internal graphics card of my Ryzen 8600G, and so on, and on... They say disabling UEFI can help, but ¿how am I going to disable it?When you look up at the internet lots of these MSI motherboards, call it a Mortar, a Tomahawk or whatever, they all suffer the same problems, some people have luck they can access BIOS settings to change things. I insist, it's not only BIOS settings, but any "low quality video" what my PC won't show me.The only thing I can do is to boot up from another used Windows install. Gaming experience? Bad. Internet surfing? Worse than my old PC (Asus Tuf B450, Ryzen 3600, 16 GB RAM). It only works doing a Word file and few other more things.The PC I was getting ready was: Ryzen 8600G, 2x16 GB KingBank 6400 DDR5, GeForce 3080, Thermaltake Toughpower GF1 850W, Kingston A2000. (Just the processor, RAM and motherboard are new, the other components I already had them working propertly, so they cannot be blamed about this malfunction)

Good motherboard, boots in about 18-20 seconds, if your boot time is taking a while turn these settings to enabled on your bios (click del key as it starts up) Memory Context Restore, Power Down enable and High Efficiency Mode, then your boot up time will speed up, WiFi and Bluetooth isn’t bad I use them a lot and has enough ports for a lot of storage and looks nice in my case, the io shield was a pain but other then that I’d recommend

Easy installation, fast, 100% satisfied with this motherboard

I am building a workstation computer from scratch to primarily run Solidworks 3D CAD (computer aided design) and wanted it to be as powerful as possible for the lowest reasonable cost. I try and go for products that represent the “knee” in the price-performance curve. For example, you are generally far better off getting something that at half the price that might only perform at 90% of the device costing twice as much. Frequently the difference is only in milliseconds, which you will never notice. I also look for products that are from reputable manufactures and have received decent reviews. This MSI Pro B650M-A motherboard was part of my build and meets the above criteria.