Gigabyte B650 Gaming X AX V2

Is the Gigabyte B650 Gaming X AX V2 worth buying?

Yes, the Gigabyte B650 Gaming X AX V2 is worth buying at £129.99 if you are building an AM5 gaming PC around a Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 and want a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot while staying under £130. It takes Ryzen 7000 and 8000 processors on Socket AM5 with DDR5 memory, and 544 owners rate it 4.3.

Skip it if the processor is a 16-core Ryzen 9, because only eight of its twelve power stages feed the cores, the thinnest CPU margin of the AM5 boards on this page. Buyers who want more headroom should look at the £127.99 ASUS TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi, which costs £2.00 less and carries 14 stages.

What do the 8+2+2 power stages mean in practice?

The Gigabyte B650 Gaming X AX V2 divides its voltage delivery into 8+2+2 phases, twelve in total, and at £129.99 that works out to £10.83 a stage. Eight of those sit under the CPU cores and the remaining four cover the memory controller and integrated graphics, so the number that decides how far you can push a processor is the eight.

In practice that is comfortable for a six or eight core Ryzen and tight for anything bigger. A 12-stage board at £10.83 a stage sits in the middle of what AM5 costs, and the £127.99 ASUS TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi shows what the top of that range looks like at £9.14 a stage across 14 stages.

What does the Gigabyte B650 Gaming X AX V2 give you on the board?

You get four DDR5 SMD DIMM slots, three M.2 connectors (one running PCIe 5.0 x4 and two at PCIe 4.0 x4) and four SATA ports for older drives. The board carries 17 ports in total, with eight USB ports including three USB 2.0, a rear USB-C at 10 Gb/s and a front-panel USB-C header at 20 Gb/s.

Living with it is straightforward. The PCIe x16 slot uses EZ-Latch, so the graphics card comes out with a press rather than a screwdriver, and the M.2 Thermal Guard covers drives up to 25110 size so a Gen5 SSD does not throttle. Video comes out over one HDMI and one DisplayPort, and audio runs to an optical S/PDIF connector.

Where does the Gigabyte B650 Gaming X AX V2 fall short?

Eight CPU phases is the real ceiling here. A 12-phase board at £129.99 asks £1.69 more per stage than the £127.99 ASUS TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi, which spreads the same job across 14 stages and still undercuts it.

The second limit is the graphics link. The Gen5 wiring stops at the M.2 slot, and the x16 slot runs PCIe 4.0, so a PCIe 5.0 card operates at the older rate. Wireless is Wi-Fi 6E 802.11ax with a 2.5 GbE LAN port, which is a step behind the £144.98 MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi and its Wi-Fi 7 with 5 Gbps Ethernet.

How does it compare with the ASUS TUF B650-Plus WiFi and the MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi?

Against the £127.99 ASUS TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi, this board costs £2.00 more and trades six CPU stages for Wi-Fi 6E and a third M.2 connector. Take the Gigabyte if you plan to fill three SSD slots and want the newer wireless standard; take the ASUS if the processor is the part you intend to push.

Against the £144.98 MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi, the gap is £14.99 and it buys Wi-Fi 7, a 5 Gbps LAN port and a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot at 128 GB/s. Both carry 12 power stages, so that money goes entirely on connectivity and the faster graphics link. Stay with the Gigabyte B650 Gaming X AX V2 if £130 is your ceiling and you do not need either.