MSI B850M Gaming Plus WiFi6E

Is the MSI B850M Gaming Plus WiFi6E worth buying?

Yes, if you are building a small AM5 PC: the MSI B850M Gaming Plus WiFi6E costs £115 and brings a Gen5 M.2 slot, Wi-Fi 6E and room for 256 GB of DDR5 into a micro-ATX case. It is the cheapest route onto the AM5 platform on this page, and 195 owners rate it 4.5. Skip it only if your case takes a full ATX board, where £9.70 more buys two extra power stages.

A Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 is the natural partner for this board, and four DDR5 DIMM slots leave room to add memory later. A 16-core Ryzen 9 belongs on something with more phases. The 195 ratings are a thinner sample than the 1,244 behind the £127.99 ASUS TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi, so weigh the average alongside how many buyers have actually lived with it.

What do 10 power stages actually mean on this board?

Divide the £115 price by the 10 duet rail power stages and each one costs £11.50. That undercuts the £144.98 MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi, which works out at £12.08 a stage, but it is £2.36 more per stage than the £127.99 ASUS TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi and its 14 stages at £9.14 each.

In use, ten stages with Core Boost architecture feed a Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 comfortably through hours of gaming. Pair it with a 16-core Ryzen 9 and every stage carries more current and runs hotter, which is exactly why the boards placed above it here hold 12 to 17. Memory is not the constraint: four SMT DIMM slots take DDR5 at up to 8,200+ MT/s with overclocking.

What comes in the box and how does it fit a build?

What arrives is the board itself, 1.4 kg and sold as model 7E81-001R, covered by a three-year manufacturer warranty. It takes a 24-pin main power connector, and the micro-ATX footprint fits cases that will not accept a full-size board.

Four DDR5 DIMM slots mean you can populate two now and fill the rest later, and the 3A combo fan header runs a pump and a system fan from the same socket. Storage goes into one M.2 Gen5 x4 slot at 128 Gbps and one M.2 Gen4 x4 slot at 64 Gbps, both under M.2 Shield Frozr, with EZ. M.2 Clip II making the drive easier to seat. Around the back you get a USB 10 Gbps Type-C port, 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6E with Bluetooth 5.3 and 7.1 HD audio with Audio Boost.

Where does the MSI B850M Gaming Plus WiFi6E fall short?

The graphics slot runs PCIe 4.0 x16 at 64 GB/s, so a PCIe 5.0 card works at half its link speed. The £144.98 MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi handles that with a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot at 128 GB/s, and it adds Wi-Fi 7 and a 5 Gbps LAN port where this board offers Wi-Fi 6E and 2.5 Gbps.

Ten power stages is the lowest count of any AM5 board on this page, and the single PCIe port leaves no home for a second add-in card once a graphics card is in place. The £124.70 MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi6E asks £9.70 more for 12 stages and a full ATX layout if your case can take it.

How does it compare with the other AM5 boards?

The £127.99 ASUS TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi costs £12.99 more and carries 14 power stages at £9.14 each against £11.50 here, with a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot and USB4 support on top. It comes in a full ATX size, so it only works if the case has the space. Choose it for a Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 9 you intend to push hard; choose the MSI B850M for a compact Ryzen 5 build.

The closer call is the £124.70 MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi6E: 12 stages, four DIMM slots and the same 256 GB ceiling, in an ATX board. That £9.70 works out at £4.85 for each extra stage. If your case only takes micro-ATX, this board is the cheaper of the two and gives up nothing a Ryzen 7 will notice.