MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk WiFi Motherboard Review

The box and packaging is very simple. You only get a single SATA cable, 2 x M.2 screws, 2 x wifi antennas, some MSI stickers and a quick installation guide.

The MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk WiFi Motherboard

The motherboard comes in a black PCB with several large silver heatsinks. One covers the chipset, 2 x Shield Frozr for the M.2 slots, another covers the VRMs/Mofets on the top of the motherboard and lastly, a large heatsink covers the entire left side of the motherboard and this doubles as a I/O hood too.

There’s no onbard RGB lighting on this motherboard which is slightly disappointing, however you do get ARGB headers for additional RGB lighting of your choice. One thing I thought was quite strange, is that on closer inspection, I didn’t see any labelling on the PCB to show that it’s a “MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk WiFi”

I do like the screwless design of the M.2 locking mechanism as it allows me to quickly secure the M.2 SSD in place quickly and easily.

A Closer Look

Since this motherboard lacks onboard RGB lighting, it doesn’t mean the motherboard don’t support it. Fear not! … you’ll find 2 x 3-pin ARGB (5V) headers and 2 x 4-pin RGB (12V) headers, which is more than enough to add additional RGB lighting of your choice.

To give the motherboard extra power and stability, you’ll find 2 x 8-pin PCIE power connectors on the top left-hand corner of the board. Make sure you these connect up.

Because the B650 chipset does not support PCIE 5.0 for graphics card (only PCIE 4.0) … you get 1 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slot Steel Armor, 1 x PCIe 4.0 x16/x4, and 1 x PCIe 4.0 x1 slot. You’ll also notice that the motherboard comes with standard DIMM slots (not reinforced ones) and supports DDR5 ram up to speed of DDR5-6400 OC+. Please take note: The DDR5 memory slot is NOT compatible with DDR4 ram. 

For storage options, you get 6 x SATA3 ports and 3 x M.2 PCIE Gen4x4 slots, two of which are cooled by thier Shield Frozr heat sinks. And for connectivity, you get the Realtek^® RTL8125B 2.5 Gigabit LAN and AMD’s onboard WiFi 6E.

When it comes to USB connectivity, you get a ton! Including 2x USB 2.0 (Rear), 4x USB 2.0 (Front), 4x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type A (Rear), 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type A (Front), 3x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type A (Rear), 1x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type C (Front), and 1x USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type C (Rear). That’s a total of 17 USB connections!

The rear I/O panel include the flash BIOS button, DisplayPort, HDMI port, Realtek 2.5G LAN port, 2 x USB 2.0, 3 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20Gbps) Type-C, and 4 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 2 x Wifi 6E antenna connectors, and an array of audio connectors.