Preface
Speaking of sapphire SAPPHIRE, I believe that the most well-known is the graphics card, especially the NITRO+ series, which is called super platinum in China, and is definitely a flagship-level product positioning, as for the sapphire motherboard, I believe many people have not heard of it. It's been 2021 since Sapphire last launched the NITRO+ B550I motherboard. Now the sapphire motherboard is back!
Today, Sapphire brings an upgraded version of the NITRO+ series motherboard - Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI Super Platinum Motherboard, you can see from the name alone, it is the same ITX motherboard as the predecessor B550I, so what is the configuration and performance of this motherboard, can it cope with the stronger performance of the Ryzen 7000 series processor and higher frequency DDR5 memory? Let's find out.
AMDB650 chipset introduction
Let's take a look at the detailed specifications of the new B650 motherboard chipset first. The B650 series will have two chipsets, namely B650 and B650E, and E stands for Extreme. Among them, the B650E will provide PCIe 5.0 standard expansion slots and NVMe storage, while the B650 is currently the PCIe 4.0 standard preferred by more gamers, which is sufficient and more cost-effective.
So what is the difference between B650 and big brother X670 and X670E?Let's take a look at the specifications of X670 first, the biggest difference between the chipset here and B650 motherboard is that it uses a dual-chip design, which can provide additional PCIe lanes, compared with B650, X670 and X670E will have 4 more PCIe 4.0 and 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes, and the expansion ability will be stronger.
However, the expansion performance of B650 is completely enough for 90% of users, X670 This flagship chipset is good, but many people can't use so many expansion devices, combined with the lower price of B650, it will become a more mainstream choice for gamers.
Motherboard introduction
The packaging of the Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI Ultra Platinum motherboard is different from most of the previous Sapphire products. The pure black style design adds a touch of hardcore atmosphere of e-sports, and the sapphire logo in the middle is also very recognizable, which can be seen at a glance that this is a classic Sapphire NITRO+ series motherboard.
The back of the box is still the same, densely written with the black technology of this motherboard, and players can understand the strength of the motherboard in advance.
Unpack the box and you'll see the motherboard. The style design of the motherboard is basically the same as the previous B550I, which is a family-style design, and a large area of "blackening" makes the texture of this motherboard go further. It is worth mentioning that the workmanship of this motherboard is comparable to many top flagships, with an 8-layer PCB process, which can provide stronger electrical performance than the 6-layer of ordinary motherboards.
In terms of recognition, Sapphire is the most recognizable, and the classic Sapphire brand logo and the motherboard's NITRO+ logo can be found on the cooling module and M.2 cooling vest of this motherboard.
Flip over and look at the back of the motherboard, the layout is neat and tidy, and the style of a proper big factory.
Socket AM5 interface
The biggest difference between this motherboard is that AMD uses the newly designed Soket AM5 interface for the first time, and the PGA pin interface is transferred to the LGA contact interface, and the package size of the two is also 40mm*40mm.
The advantage of switching to the Soket AM5 interface is that it can have more pins and achieve richer function definitions, including support for the latest DDR5 memory, PCIe 5.0 bus, native support for 107W processor power consumption, and even support for up to 230W power output, which means that we can work with higher specifications and higher power consumption processors.
Power supply module
Next to the AM5 socket is the power supply module of this motherboard, which has a large area of heat dissipation module on the surface, and the appearance is full of gaming black, which echoes the PCB. There are even a lot of bevel patterns added to the surface, which adds a touch of elegance to the motherboard.
Unscrew the screws on the back to remove this heavy heat dissipation module, and hold it in your hand, heavy and full of weight.
There is also a silica gel sheet with high thermal conductivity on the power supply module, which is conducive to improving the heat conduction efficiency and helping the motherboard improve heat dissipation efficiency.
If you look closely, the Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI Ultra Platinum motherboard is equipped with an 8-phase digital power supply design.
Each phase has an independent DrMos, and the power supply chip model is TDA21570 from Infineon, and the maximum support current is 70A.
The PWM chip is also from Infineon, the model is XDPE192C3B, and many X670 motherboards also use this main control chip, I have to say that sapphire has lost its money!
The power supply interface of the CPU is a single 8-pin, and the right side of the motherboard is still a 24-pin power supply interface, which is one of the important guarantees for the stable operation of the hardware.
DDR5 memory slots
There are two standard DDR5 memory slots on the power side of the 24pin motherboard, which support up to 96GB capacity, support AMD EXPO technology, and officially support up to 6000MHz (OC).
Gamers only need to enable AMD EXPO technology in the BIOS, and when it is enabled, the frequency and performance of the memory will be increased to varying degrees.
PCIe slots
The motherboard also comes with a full-length PCIe ×16 slot, and the CPU gives it up to PCIe 4.0 x 16 speeds. And this PCIe slot is also reinforced with alloys, which can effectively prevent the slot from deforming, which is quite detailed.
Don't look at this as an ITX motherboard, there is no ambiguity in the configuration of the M.2 SSD slot, the SSD slot on the front supports 2280 length, and the speed is also given to PCIe 4.0 ×4.
At the same time, Sapphire also equips this SSD slot with a considerable amount of heat dissipation vest, and there is also a high thermal conductivity pad inside, which has first-class heat dissipation capacity!
The back is also equipped with a 2280-length SSD slot, which is also PCIe 4.0 ×4 rate, and the two high-spec SSD slots are definitely enough for most gamers.
Abundant expansion interfaces
In addition to the M.2 SSD slot, Sapphire has also arranged a wealth of expansion ports for this ITX motherboard, with 4 SATA ports on the side, which are compatible with old storage device interfaces, including HDDs, and optical drive products, etc., and support up to 6Gbps transfer speeds.
There is also a USB front expansion header next to it, which can be expanded with two USB 3.2 Gen 1 5Gbps (Type-A) ports, which can basically meet the expansion needs of gamers.
The motherboard also has 2 sets of fan headers, which can meet the needs of the liquid cooling radiator and case fan. After all, everyone knows the heat accumulation problem of the Ryzen 7000 series, and it needs good heat dissipation to ensure performance release.
There is also a 5V3-pin and a 12V4-pin ARGB pin at the bottom of the motherboard that can be controlled, and with Sapphire's control software, it can also realize multi-hardware lighting synchronization.
Rear I/O interface
The motherboard has a wide range of I/O ports, including one DP 1.2, one HDMI 1.4, two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, one USB 3.2 Type-C Gen 2 port, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, as well as a 2.5G wired network port, a Wi-Fi 6 antenna port, and a 7.1-channel audio port. Even this motherboard has a one-click BIOS clear button, which is full of practicality.
In terms of networking, the motherboard is pre-installed with Realtek's Wi-Fi 6 chipset, the model is a RTL8852-BE wireless card, which supports WiFi-6 and integrates Bluetooth 5.2. In terms of wired network, Realtek RTL8125BG network card is used, and the bandwidth is 2.5 times that of the previous gigabit network card.
The motherboard is equipped with Realtek's ALC1220 high-fidelity decoder chip, which supports 7.1 channels, which can provide us with an excellent audio experience, and there are dedicated capacitors for audio to ensure current stability.
Installation display
In order to make you feel more intuitively the small size of the Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI Super Platinum motherboard, we use it here to install and demonstrate, the chassis is naturally ITX specifications, and it is packed in a half-foot square chassis, this motherboard looks more exquisite.
The black exterior design, with the style of this case, gives a sense of gaming spontaneously. If you use it with a low-power processor like the R5-7500F, it can even be suppressed by just air cooling, and the form factor is even smaller.
If you are an ITX fanatic, you really don't want to miss the Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI Ultra Platinum motherboard, which is paired with the latest RX 7000 series graphics card, and it is not a problem to assemble a performance small steel cannon!
BIOS & Experience
Hardware specifications must have been seen by everyone, to measure the advantages and disadvantages of a motherboard, not only to look at the hardware, but also to look at the software. We experienced the BIOS operation of the Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI ultra platinum motherboard, and I have to say that compared with before, today's BIOS design is more concise and clear, and common functions such as EXPO and PBO can be adjusted in normal mode, which is very friendly to white players.
In Advanced mode, the motherboard's BIOS unlocks more operations, such as the home page to quickly check the various voltages of the hardware.
On the performance page, there's even more playability, with CPU overclocking, voltage adjustments, PBO settings, and more.
If you're a geek, the advanced menu is a must-see, and there are even more options to operate here, from CPU and DDR5 memory to USB and NVMe.
In the security menu, you can set the encryption settings to keep your hardware safe.
Finally, there is the startup menu, which is mainly used to adjust startup items and other operations, and the page design agrees to be simple and clear.
In addition to the easy-to-use BIOS, this motherboard can also be used with TRIXX-M software for more operations. For example, detect hardware information and monitor CPU status.
Even the CPU's temperature, voltage and other information are displayed in detailed charts, so players can easily grasp the hardware status.
Common RGB lighting control is naturally essential, and Sapphire has also prepared a variety of preset RGB lighting modes for players to choose from.
TRIXX-M software also has a more advanced way to play, in the past, we needed to adjust the CPU Fan or Sys Fan in the BIOS, now you don't need to, you can customize the speed of the fan in TRIXX-M, the operation is more convenient and fast.
Of course, this app also offers some advanced settings, such as the voltage of the CPU, the frequency of the memory, etc., which is very useful for geek gamers.
Introduction to the test platform
In order to verify the extreme performance of the Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI Ultra Platinum motherboard, we chose the AMD Ryzen R7-7800X3D, which is known as the game god U, and enabled the PBO function in the BIOS.
The graphics card is also Sapphire's RX 7600 8G D6 platinum version OC graphics card, the memory naturally can't be lost, directly turn on the EXPO DDR5-6000 frequency, and the 16G×2 deck can also show the strength of this platform.
The other hardware configurations are as follows:
Benchmark performance testing
As a rule, we still look at the platform hardware information in CPU-Z first, and at the same time, we can also perform some performance tests on the processor. As can be seen from the figure below, the 7800X3D supports DDR5 memory, and the memory in this test runs in 6000MHz Gear2 mode. In addition, the addition of the Sapphire AMD Radeon RX 7600 8G D6 Platinum OC graphics card gives this platform a good performance.
In addition, we can also see from the figure that the single-core score of 7800X3D is 693.7, and the multi-core score is 7496.5, which is almost the same as that on the X670 platform, and the Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI ultra-platinum motherboard does have excellent performance and is fully capable of driving the heavy task of 7800X3D.
LOOKING AT THE COMPRESSION AND DECOMPRESSION TEST OF 7-ZIP, THE TOTAL TEST SCORE OF THIS PLATFORM IS 124.281 GIPS, AND THE USAGE SCORE IS 16.35 GIPS, WHICH IS ALSO THE BEST AMONG THE B650 MOTHERBOARDS.
Thanks to the strong platform support of the Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI ultra platinum motherboard, the compression speed of the 7800X3D can reach 102,312KB/s, and the decompression speed is even faster, reaching 1,480,774KB/s.
We also tested the familiar CineBench, first of all, CineBench R20, the 7800X3D scored 678 cb for single-core and 7102 cb for multi-core.
Switching to the more stressful CineBench R23, the single-core score came to 1747 pts, and the multi-core score was as high as 18225 pts, which is quite good.
Not to be outdone, the 7800X3D is not to be outdone by switching to GeekBench, an app that measures the single/multi-core performance of desktop processors. We measured the 7800X3D with the latest version of 2690 for single core and 15098 for multi-core, which is in line with the level that this processor should have.
Finally, the 3DMark CPU Profile test, this test can more accurately test the performance of the CPU in single-core and multi-core, the measured 7800X3D has a single-thread score of 945, and the maximum thread score is 8134, which is a good performance, as a CPU specially designed for gaming, this score can fully meet the needs of mainstream users.
Caching & Memory Testing
The motherboard also has a certain impact on the read and write performance of the memory, so we use the cache and memory test that comes with the AIDA64 software to check the read and write speed and latency performance of the memory on the motherboard.
The measured DDR5-6000MHz memory of 16G×2 runs stably, and the performance is also quite fast, reading 58964MB/s, writing 80328MB/s, copying 58846MB/s, and even the latency is good, only 81.6ns. It should be noted here that 7800X3D adopts a single CCD design, compared with the big brother of dual CCD7950X3D, the biggest advantage of single CCD is that it eliminates the scheduling problem, but it will be sacrificed in memory read performance.
In addition, we also tested the GPGPU performance of the 7800X3D, and in some performance, the performance of this CPU is even better than that of the RX 7600, and it has to be said that the ultra-high specification configuration of the Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI ultra-platinum motherboard provides an excellent performance platform for the 7800X3D.
Authoring performance testing
After the theoretical performance, it is time for us to measure the creative performance. In order to be able to test this platform more professionally, we use PugetBench, which covers Photoshop, PR, AE, LR and other commonly used Adobe software, which can realistically simulate the user's use scenario and give you the most intuitive performance.
The 7800X3D and Sapphire RX 7600 graphics cards are like a tiger on the Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI ultra platinum motherboard, and the PS and LR projects won 1280 and 1082 points respectively in the image processing part, and the platform can also achieve super high scores of 1045 and 1883 points in the video editing and rendering level, if you are a creative work practitioner, this platform can also calmly meet your work needs.
Everyday experiential tests
In terms of daily use, we tested it with the PCMark 10 Extended project. The project includes common basic features, productivity, digital content creation, and playtest sections to comprehensively evaluate the experience of using the platform.
In practice, this set of performance hosts based on the Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI Super Platinum motherboard still performs well, with a total score of 11180 basically the same as the B650 motherboards we have tested before. Among the other sub-categories, the best performance is at the gaming level, with a score of 23,834 points, and it has to be said that the excellent motherboard with the excellent Sapphire RX 7600 graphics card makes the experience silky smooth.
Game performance testing
Of course, the game scores mentioned above are only theoretical tests after all. First of all, we tested the theoretical performance of this set of hardware in 3DMark, whether it is in the DX11 Fire Strike project, or the DX12 Time Spy project, the results are quite excellent, especially in Fire Strike, 7800X3D and Sapphire RX 7600 8G D6 Platinum Edition OC scores both exceeded 30,000 points.
The actual game experience also confirms the above test, we have selected 10 triple-A masterpieces, and the vast majority of games can maintain a performance of more than 60 FPS at 1080p. With FSR enabled, the game's performance can be further improved, and some games can even soar to 150 FPS after FSR is turned on, which is quite impressive. Even Cyberpunk 2077, known as the "graphics card killer", can have a performance close to 60 FPS in the stressful super ray tracing mode, and I have to say that this set of hardware is still good.
In general, the 7800X3D is specially designed for gaming, with the Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI super platinum motherboard, it is fully capable of dealing with all kinds of popular 3A masterpieces and online games, and AMD has a war in the future, the game performance may be further improved, and AMD old users understand it. If you're a pure gamer and you're building a powerful hardware platform for yourself with this motherboard, it's definitely worth the money.
FPU roast test
Finally, the FPU bake, at a room temperature of 24 degrees, the AIDA 64 software is used to perform the Stress FPU stability test, which can consider the CPU performance release effect and the stability of the power supply module.
After 10 minutes of baking, the 7800X3D is still stable output, don't look at the sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI ultra platinum motherboard to be equipped with 8-phase power supply, 7800X3D is enough here, the whole process is basically stable at about 4.3GHz, and there is no overheating and throttling, which also shows that the power supply module of this motherboard can well meet the standard power consumption needs of the new generation of AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors, and the power supply level of 70A per phase is quite powerful.
Write at the end
The NITRO+ series is consistently the flagship positioning in sapphire, and the sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI ultra-platinum motherboard launched this time is a high-end representative. Not only in terms of appearance, it continues the design style of the past, and the large area of black application makes this motherboard like a powerful "black warrior", which is quite eye-catching among many motherboards.
In addition to the exquisite appearance, this motherboard also has high-specification materials, the first is the 8-phase digital power supply module, each phase chip has a terrifying power supply capacity of 70A, and the measured 7800X3D is coming, and it can also have stable output. In addition, this motherboard also uses an 8-layer PCB design that can only be found in high-end motherboards, and the electrical performance is stronger. The 6000MHz DDR5 memory frequency support allows AMD gamers to experience ultra-fast reading performance. After a few experiences, this motherboard is full of surprises.
In general, if you plan to install your own ITX host, the Sapphire NITRO+ B650I WIFI Super Platinum motherboard may be one of the few ITX boards you can choose on the market that supports Ryzen 7000 series processors