MSI B850M Gaming Pro MAX appears with external BCLK control
MSI has added the MAG B850M GAMING PRO MAX WIFI to its motherboard lineup for AMD Socket AM5 systems. The new mATX board supports Ryzen 9000, Ryzen 8000, and Ryzen 7000 desktop processors, with four DDR5 slots for up to 256GB memory and support for DDR5-8200+ overclocking.
Source: MSI
The main addition is MSI’s OC Engine. MSI describes it as a dedicated chip for independent base clock control through asynchronous mode in BIOS, aimed at finer tuning without affecting memory, PCIe, or NVMe stability. The company also claims up to 15% higher gaming performance in a Ryzen 7 9800X3D test case , although MSI notes actual gains may vary by platform. The board uses an 8+2+1 direct power design with 60A Smart Power Stages and 8+4-pin CPU power connectors.
Source: MSI
On the expansion side, the MAG B850M GAMING PRO MAX WIFI offers one PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for graphics and a second PCIe 4.0 x4 slot. Storage includes one PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 slot, one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, one PCIe 4.0 x2 M.2 slot, and four SATA 6Gbps ports. Networking is also upgraded, with Realtek 5GbE LAN, Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth 5.4 listed in MSI’s specifications.
Source: MSI
Compared with the earlier B850M GAMING PRO WIFI6E, the new MAX version moves the primary graphics slot from PCIe 4.0 x16 to PCIe 5.0 x16. It also upgrades networking from 2.5GbE and Wi-Fi 6E to 5GbE and Wi-Fi 7, while adding the OC Engine feature that is not listed on the older model. One small layout change is that the previous board had an extra PCIe 3.0 x1 slot, while the MAX model is listed with two expansion slots in total.
MSI also lists a 64MB BIOS ROM, EZ PCIe Release, EZ M.2 Shield Frozr II, pre-installed I/O shielding, DisplayPort 1.4, and HDMI 2.1 support. The company has not posted pricing yet. Based on MSI’s current product pages, this looks like a direct refresh of the earlier Gaming Pro WIFI6E board with stronger connectivity and a more overclocking-focused feature set.
MSI has not provided any information on pricing or availability date.
Source: MSI
