The quality of Intel motherboards with B-series chipsets has made genuine strides since the introduction of the previous generation B560. Many motherboards, such as the MSI MAG B660 Tomahawk WIFI DDR4 we are reviewing, offer features that just a few years ago would have been limited to high-end boards.

Simple economics may have more to do with this than anything else. Of course, there are still inexpensive, basic B660 boards that one would not think to pair with the Intel Core i9 12900K, but given the high cost of the high-end Z690 boards, the premium B660 boards and the low-cost Z690 boards now occupy The gap in the lower mid-range is widening.

These days, it is quite possible to get a good quality B660 board with a powerful VRM, fast networking, comprehensive connectivity options, and cooling that is fine even for high-end processors. In addition, the all-important high-speed memory is supported, and aside from CPU overclocking support, it has almost everything a gamer needs. No one will need it, though.

Unless you absolutely need more than four M.2 slots or run multiple add-in cards, the B660 chipset is worth serious consideration.

At about $190 (£186, A$349), the B660 Tomahawk DDR4 is not what one would call a cheap motherboard, but it is certainly much more affordable than the few higher-priced Z690 options. But is the B660 Tomahawk DDR4 a board to consider for running a 2022 gaming rig?

The B660 Tomahawk clearly draws aesthetic inspiration from MSI's Unify series. Both have a black, RGB-less design that blends easily into most systems; there are four RGB headers, two of which are addressable, so RGB can be used if desired; the Tomahawk has three PCIe slots. The primary slot is a x16 slot supporting PCIe 4.0, the second is a x16 slot supporting PCIe 3.0 (x4 electrical), and the last is a PCIe 3.0 x1 slot.

PCIe 5.0 support in the primary slot would have been nice, but is unlikely to provide any tangible benefit to GPUs in the foreseeable future.

Tomahawk can accommodate up to three M.2 drives, all of which are heatsink cooled. Two of the slots support PCIe 4.0 x4; the third slot supports PCIe 4.0 x2. Three slots are sufficient for most users, but if you need more than four slots, you will need to go with the Z690 Don't forget the six SATA ports.

The overall layout appears solid. There are no M.2 slots below the primary PCIe slot, the SSD gets ridiculously hot under the GPU, there are USB Type-C case headers, five fan headers, and two more for the CPU and AIO pumps. In short, this is not a cheap feature set; it extends to the power components as well.

MSI's Tomahawk motherboards are renowned for their powerful VRM solutions, and the B660 entry continues this tradition. It features a 12+2 phase VRM driven by dual 8-pin power connectors; since overclocking is prohibited on the B660 motherboard, it must be able to handle a maximum turbo load of 12900K. There is nothing wrong with this. All cooling is provided by a sturdy black heat sink. For our review, we used an Intel Core i5 12600K. This chip is likely to be paired with a mid-range chipset. The resulting VRM load temperature was only 47°C. Even using an open test bench, this is still well within the range of more than 30°C above.

Rear I/O is another clear highlight of the board, with Realtek 2.5G LAN and Intel WiFi 6 to handle the networking needs of the average user. 9 USB ports, 4 USB 2.0, 4 3.2 Gen 2 ports, and a 3.2 Gen 2x2 20Gbps Type-C port; it is good to see 20Gbps USB starting to penetrate the market. there is also a good selection of audio ports with S/PDIF. a Realtek ALC1220 chip handles the audio, and a 3.2 Gen 2x2 20Gbps Type-C port is available for the USB 2.0 port. Finally, there is HDMI 2. 1 port and DP 1.4 port when using Intel's Xe integrated graphics.

Gaming Performance

System Performance

As for overall performance, the MSI B660 Tomahawk performed mostly as expected. Gaming performance is in line with other DDR4 boards. Some of the system benchmarks lagged just a bit, but these were mostly within the margin of error and may be due to some different memory sub-timings.

As an aside, we had the opportunity to retest the 12600K with a faster set of DDR5-6000s, and performance was definitely improved compared to the earlier BIOS. But if you have a proper set of DDR4 from the last build, you can save a few hundred dollars and redirect it to a better GPU; you'll notice the performance difference between DDR4-3600 and DDR5-6000 more than the difference of a few percent.

Normally, you would overclock the board to work out, but that's moot with the B660 board because you can't do that. However, Intel finally allowed memory overclocking on the B560, and of course it is unlocked on the B660; it is possible to run significantly above DDR4-4000, but to do so requires setting the board to Gear 2, which cuts the speed of the memory controller in half and the DDR4 The best gaming performance is achieved when running memory in the DDR4-3200 to 3600 range, or even higher, with the board set to Gear 1.

All of the above makes the MSI B660 Tomahawk DDR4 definitely a board worth considering for Alder Lake setups. With a single GPU, XMP memory, and an SSD or two, it is a smart buy for the average gamer who is content to turbo boost a 12th generation processor without having to manually overclock it.

Frankly, this is probably 95% of the market and could be higher; the B660Tomahawk offers a lot of features without losing sight of the value that B660 boards typically offer.