AMD's latest CPUs, the Ryzen 3 3100 and Ryzen 3 3300X, are well known and both are impressive in their own right. But the CPUs are only part of the story, and the new B550 motherboard, which supports all its features, is essential to evaluating the overall value proposition. That is why the B550's pricing is so important.

The good news is that Gigabyte and MSI announced pricing and upcoming motherboard features: Gigabyte posted details of 11 B550 motherboards on reddit, and MSI announced the same number of motherboards in a two-hour live stream.

The somewhat surprising news is that the prices of the top-end boards are higher than those expected for more affordable X570-based products: the X570 chipset has been the only PCIe 4.0 option on Ryzen 3000 boards so far, so most manufacturers have been unable to create affordable have created their own affordable versions, making the higher-priced B550 boards a bit of an oddity.

Gigabyte's top product, the B550 Aorus Master, has an MSRP of $279, while the MSI B550 Gaming Carbon Wifi is $219. Given that the X570 chipset is more PCIe 4.0 oriented than the B550, both motherboard manufacturers' decisions seem odd. The decision by both motherboard makers may seem odd, given that the X570 chipset is more PCIe 4.0 oriented than the B550. Even today, when motherboards are in short supply, you can still get a low-end X570 for $160. But can you get performance from a budget X570 over a high-spec B550? Probably not.

There were several B450 motherboards in the previous generation that were more expensive than X470 motherboards, but the high-end B450s were not yet widely available in the 400 series.

Whatever happens at the high end, I am more interested in what is happening at the other end of the price spectrum: the Gigabyte B550M DS3H is $94 and the MSI B550M Pro-Dash is the cheapest at $119.

A smaller form factor is not much of an issue, as it means losing some PCIe slots, but a smaller, more affordable case could be chosen. However, there is no information on either board at this time other than price, so it may be worth looking a little higher up.

Moving on to full ATX motherboards, the MSI B550-A Pro is MSI's most affordable option at $139, while the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro is $10 cheaper at $129. Both motherboards have information on the manufacturers' websites, so at least a comparison can be made.

Looking at the table above, one can see that there is not much difference between the two motherboards. Memory support appears to be different, but this is likely due to how MSI and Gigabyte have chosen to display their A-XMP support.

The only difference worth noting is Ethernet support, with the Gigabyte board supporting 2.5GbE and the MSI straight Gigabit; the MSI offers a DisplayPort connector as well as an HDMI port, while the Gigabyte has only the latter.

Of course, the MSI supports straight Gigabit.

Of course, as with other choices like the Asus ROG Strix B550-F Gaming, you should check the operation of these motherboards before recommending one over the other. On that note, there are a number of specs for the Asus B550 motherboard on this microsite, but no price has been announced yet; one would hope that Asus is aiming for a slightly lower price than MSI or Gigabyte, but one should not hold one's breath.