MSI B450 Tomahawk Motherboard

MSI B450 Tomahawk Motherboard

Features

• Supports AMD Ryzenâ„¢ 1st and 2nd Generation/ Ryzenâ„¢ with Radeonâ„¢ Vega Graphics Processors for Socket AM4
• Supports DDR4 Memory, up to 3466(OC) MHz
• Extended Heatsink Design: MSI extended PWM and enhanced circuit design ensures even high-end processors to run in full speed.
• Lightning Fast Game experience: 1x TURBO M.2, AMD Turbo USB 3.1 GEN2, Store MI technology
• Core Boost: With premium layout and fully digital power design to support more cores and provide better performance.
• DDR4 Boost:Advanced technology to deliver pure data signals for the best gaming performance and stability.
• MULTI-GPU: With STEEL ARMOR PCI-E slots. Supports 2-Way AMD Crossfireâ„¢
• Audio Boost:Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality for the most immersive audio experience.
• Mystic Light and Mystic Light Sync: 16.8 million colors / 10 effects in one click. Synchronize RGB strips and other RGB solutions for customization.
• BIOS FLASHBACK+: Simply use a USB key to flash any BIOS within seconds, without installing a CPU, memory or graphics card.
• In-Game Weapons: Game Boost, GAMING Hotkey, X-Boost
• EZ Debug LED: Easiest way to troubleshoot
• Click BIOS 5: Award-winning BIOS with high resolution scalable font, favorites and search function
• GAMING CERTIFIED: 24-hour on- and offline game and motherboard testing by eSports players

Overview

CONQUER THE BATTLEFIELD

Featuring heavy plated heat sinks and fierce looks, MSI ARSENAL GAMING motherboards are packed with gaming features for a refined gaming experience.

450 TOMAHAWK

READY TO DOMINATE

1. BIOS FLAHSBACK+
2. PS/2 Combo Port
3. DVI-D Port
4. USB 3.1 Gen2 (Type A+C)
5. HD Audio Connectors
6. Heavy plated gaming heatsinks - Military styles designed for maximum cooling
7. DDR4 Boost - Optimized traces and isolated memory circuitry
8. PCI-E Steel Armor - Protecting VGA cards against bending and EMI
9. Turbo M.2 - Delivering speeds up to 32 Gb/s using Gen3 x4
10. Audio Boost - Optimized gaming audio using best components
11. Extended Heatsink Design - Leading heatsink design, extended for maximum cooling and performance
12. Arsenal Sticker Area - Free for customization with personal style

FIRE YOUR IMAGINATION

Create your own unique stickers! MSI Arsenal GAMING motherboards are now available for personalization. With various design offered by MSI or design from your own inspiration, you are able to easily customize heatsink cover by using stickers in your favorite styles.

• ARMY STICKER
• MSI STICKER

MYSTIC LIGHT

PERSONALIZE YOUR GAMING RIG

Customize and set up your own color scheme with MSI Mystic Light utility. Select the available colors from the palette to match your system style. Bored of the same colors? Simply change the complete look of your system in 1 second!

• No animation
• Breathing
• Flashing
• Double Flashing
• Random
• CPU Tempera ture
• JAZZ
• Breathng cycle
• Flashing Cycle
• Color Cycle
• Off

MILLIONS OF MARVELOUS COLORS, GREAT SELECTION OF EFFECTS

With multiple colors available, you are the artist to create your own unique gaming rig. Done selecting colors? Choose between several LED effects to really make your system come alive and enjoy your personalized design!

• 16.8 - MILLION COLOR CUSTOMIZABLE
• 10 - LED EFFECTS

EXTEND YOUR RGB EXPERIENCE WITH EASE

MSI's Mystic Light Extension pinheader provides an intuitive way to control additional RGB strips and other RGB peripherals added to a system, without needing a separate RGB controller. By simply connecting any 12V RGB LED strip to the 4-pin Mystic Light Extension RGB-strip header gamers can sync colors to any style they choose.

MYSTIC LIGHT SYNC: SYNCHRONIZE YOUR LED EXPERIENCE

With the convenience of Mystic Light Sync, you can control RGB LED solutions from other brands, such as CPU coolers, keyboards and mice or RGB system fans.

SMARTPHONE & PC CONTROL

Create your own colorful masterpiece with ease. The easy to use MYSTIC LIGHT APP is available on PC, phone and tablet. It offers remote control, simply using your smartphone or tablet. Make your PC look and feel brand new with any color you want with just a few clicks!

COOLING

STAY COOL WHILE GAMING

Cooling your PC is essential for reliable performance. We've made sure to include enough fan headers with full control to allow you to cool your system any way you want.

• Extended Heatsink Design
• 6x fan headers
• DC/PWM mode
• Full fan control
• Watercooling ready

THERMAL SOLUTION FOR MORE CORES AND HIGHER PERFORMANCE

With more cores’ processors, thermal and power design is more important to make sure the temperature keeps lower. MSI extended PWM heatsink and enhanced circuit design ensures even high-end CPU to run in full speed with MSI motherboards.

FULLY CONTROLLABLE FAN HEADERS

MSI motherboards let you manage speeds and temperatures for all your system and CPU fans, giving you full control to set up a cool & silent system. The fan headers are conveniently placed with the most popular CPU coolers in mind.

LOOKING COOL WHILE KEEPING COOL

High quality materials and smart fan optimizations contribute to cooling all essential components, which is key to making sure your system runs stable at the best performance during long gaming sessions.

DC OR PWM MODE WITH HYSTERESIS

OTHERS:

• Spiking fan speeds
• Annoying sound levels

MSI:

• Smooth fan speeds
• Smooth sound levels

MSI fan headers running in DC or PWM mode for optimal tuning of fan speeds and silence. Hysteresis also makes your fans spin up fluently to make sure your system stays silent, no matter what.

* This feature may vary according to your platform and model

TOTAL CONTROL IN BIOS AND SOFTWARE

Total Fan Control allows you to take control of your fans and check your primary system characteristics in a simplified graphical interface. You can also set up to 4 temperature targets for CPU and motherboard, which will adjust the fan speeds automatically.

OPTIMIZED FOR WATER COOLING

WATERPUMP HEADER

• Up to 2A supported
• Speed control from BIOS and OS

Designed to support the most popular All-In-One & custom water cooling solutions on the market. A dedicated water pump PIN header supports up to 2 amp, giving you full control of the water pump speed. A clearly marked ‘keep-out-zone’ allows for easy and safe installation and a perfect fit.

GAMING FEATURES

YOUR IN-GAME ADVANTAGE

Outsmart and outperform your opponents in-game using an array of unique MSI GAMING tools. Clever hardware & software tools, created to keep you one step ahead of the competition and boost your skills.

• Gaming Hotkey
• Gaming Device Port
• Game Boost
• Multi-GPU

MSI APP PLAYER

Developed under an exclusive partnership with BlueStacks, the MSI APP Player brings seamless gaming experience between mobile games and PC platform, and leverages customized features as specific keyboard lighting and better graphics with multi-task works.

TOTAL FREEDOM, MAXIMUM EASE

Easily program your most-used commands and execute them with a single keystroke. You’re free to choose any key you want, so choose wisely.

GAMING HOTKEY

Simply assign functions to any key whether to launch your favorite games, load profiles or do real-time overclocking with the push of a single button. The possibilities are endless!

User-friendly, easy-to-use application

Launch your favorite game with a single button

DEDICATED PORT FOR GAMING PERIPHERALS

The GAMING Device Port is optimized to deliver the best connectivity for high-end gaming peripherals to fully utilize their features and responsiveness. Customize your mouse DPI to enhance accuracy or program macro combinations using the easy-to-use Mouse Master software to perform multiple commands with just one click.

GAMING BENEFITS

• 3x more gold than regular connectors for the best signal
• 10x longer lifetime when plugging/un-plugging
• More responsive, more precise movements
• Customizable mouse settings
• No keypress left behind with n-key rollover

1-SECOND OVERCLOCKING!

Need more power from your CPU and memory to get more FPS? MSI Game Boost enables one-second overclocking, giving you the performance boost you need. Simply turn the dial or use the Gaming App and your PC gets another adrenalin shot!

* Features may vary according to your platform and model

STORAGE

BE THE FIRST ON THE BATTLEFIELD

This MSI GAMING motherboard supports all the latest storage standards. This allows you to connect any ultra-fast storage device, giving you in-game benefits. Start games faster, load levels faster and have a real advantage over your enemies.

• 1x M.2
• STOREMI

AMD STOREMI

All MSI X470 & B450 motherboards are shipped with StoreMI, the new AMD SSD technology to improve storage performance. This tool helps create a virtual SSD by blending capacity storage, treats flash as primary storage and optimizes data access with monitoring continuously. All these functions can enhance read/write speed for active data and provide fast boot times and application startup.

• Lower Cost
• More Performance
• More Usable Capacity
• Use any SSD you want

*Performance and price are vary with different model and platform

TURBO M.2

Enjoy a blazing fast system boot up and insanely quick loading of applications and games with MSI motherboards. Delivering speeds up to 32Gb/s per device using Gen3 x4, Turbo M.2 is over 5 times faster than a regular SATA III connection!

XBOOST YOUR STORAGE PERFORMANCE

This great little tool is very simple to use and automatically detects your storage devices connected to the system. When enabled, X-Boost optimizes your SSDs to keep your system fast and maximize storage performance, making sure you reach the battlefield even quicker or saving you a lot of time when transferring data.

SATA MASS STORAGE

We made sure each MSI motherboard comes with enough SATA ports to connect loads of HDDs for long term storage of large files and system backups.

ULTRA-FAST PERFORMANCE, GREAT GAMING EXPERIENCE

All of the next gen storage connectors support NVMe, the fastest storage standard in the world. Simply put, MSI GAMING motherboards offer the best of the best in storage options & performance. Instantly load your favorite games and always be the first on the battlefield with MSI.

VR

IMMERSE YOURSELF INTO VIRTUAL WORLDS

Integrating the very best of cutting edge technologies on MSI hardware provides a smooth VR ride. Through joint efforts with major VR brands, combined with unique MSI features geared to VR, MSI brings gamers and VR professionals a vivid and realistic experience in which content truly comes alive.

• One click VR

GET READY TO BE OVERWHELMED BY THE REALMS OF VR

From the start of Virtual Reality, MSI has been deeply involved in making VR Ready hardware in each of its product lines. Whether it's a feature-rich motherboard, a framerate boosting graphics card or a blazing fast complete gaming system, a huge set of VR-supporting features awaits you.

OPTIMIZED FOR THE BEST VR BRANDS

Want the best of the best VR experience without any compromise? MSI motherboards offer everything you need when exploring the possibilities of VR. By closely working with the industries’ leading VR vendors, we make sure you get the best possible gaming experience when choosing Virtual Reality.

STRAIGHT INTO THE ACTION WITH ONE CLICK TO VR

Both hard- and software need to be in tune for a smooth VR experience. One Click to VR makes it very fast and easy to get primed for VR. A single click sets all your key components to their highest performance and makes sure other software applications won’t impact your virtual adventure. Click here to learn more about MSI VR

AUDIO

SOUND THAT PULLS YOU INTO THE GAME

Get the most immersive sound experience when gaming. MSI Audio Boost delivers the highest sound quality through the use of premium quality audio components. This lets you enjoy breathtaking, game-changing sound to create the most exciting gameplay.

• Audio Boost
• Audio capacitors

AMPLIFY YOUR GAME WITH AUDIO BOOST

Built on years of experience in building motherboards dedicated to giving gamers true Hi-Fi sound. Audio Boost has developed into a high quality audio unit, offering a clear advantage over your opponents when gaming. Locate your enemies with your eyes closed using Audio Boost.

ISOLATED AUDIO DESIGN

Audio Boost operates like a dedicated soundcard by being physically isolated from the rest of the motherboard circuitry to ensure the purest audio signal possible.

SEPARATED AUDIO LAYERS FOR CLEAN LEFT & RIGHT CHANNELS

Using separated layers in the PCB ensures equally pristine sound quality for both left and right audio channels.

DE-POP PROTECTION

Audio Boost protects your ears by eliminating those annoying loud popping sounds when you plug/unplug devices or turn your PC on/off.

DEDICATED HIGH DEFINITION AUDIO PROCESSOR

Audio Boost is powered by an EMI-shielded high quality HD audio processor, making sure you enjoy the purest sound quality in both stereo and surround sound.

HIGH QUALITY AUDIO CAPACITORS FOR A WARMER SOUND

By dedicating golden audio capacitors to the front output, a high fidelity sound experience with exceptional acoustics and realism for studio level headphones is ensured. The high quality audio capacitors are widely considered to be one of the great choices for the best sound output.

GOLDEN CONNECTORS FOR OPTIMAL 7.1 SOUND QUALITY

With golden audio connectors you get the best possible signal output with the least chance of distortion. Using gold also prevents any corrosion or oxidation in the long run, which could impact signal quality.

GAMING LAN

DOMINATE THE GAME WITH THE LOWEST LATENCY

Get ready to crush your enemies on the battlefield with MSI GAMING LAN. Featuring the highest quality components tuned to deliver the best online gaming experience without lag.

• LAN protect

LAN PROTECT TO SHIELD YOUR SYSTEM AGAINST POWER SURGES

Featuring 15KV anti-surge protection to shield your network from lightning strikes and static electricity, the LAN Protect connector is designed to give you a reliable networking experience.

MEMORY

UNMATCHED MEMORY PERFORMANCE

MSI motherboards are crammed with features to fuel your gaming rig's memory with more speed, higher overclockability and increased stability.

• Optimal layout
• 100% compatibility
• A-XMP

ENHANCED STABILITY WITH OPTIMIZED MEMORY LAYOUT

Optimized traces and a fully isolated memory circuitry ensures perfect stability and performance, so you never have to worry about your system crashing during games.

MEMORY SPEED IMPACTS PERFORMANCE

The technical enhancements of DDR4 Boost allow for more stability at higher memory speeds compared to other brands. Enjoy the additional boost in gaming performance or when working with large video and photography files.

* Benchmarks conducted with The Witcher 3 RYZEN, GTX 1080, 1080P, Max settings, Hairworks off.

EXTREME STABILITY & COMPATIBILITY TESTING

MSI conducts thorough memory testing with the most popular memory brands under extreme conditions to ensure your system runs stable no matter what. Our memory partners include brands like Corsair, Crucial, Kingston, G.Skill and many more to optimize memory modules, configurations and even improve overclocking.

EASY A-XMP

Enable A-XMP with ease using a single option in the BIOS to gain performance and create a perfectly stable system.

TUNING

DESIGNED FOR LIMITLESS TUNING

Founded on experience and with a long history of creating the best performing motherboards packed with smart features, you can count on this motherboard to deliver the best performance under the most extreme conditions. Countless system tuning and troubleshooting tools are at your disposal to push your system to new heights and satisfy even the most demanding tweaker.

CORE BOOST

Core Boost technology combines MSI's premium layout and full digital power design which allows for faster and undistorted current delivery to the CPU at pin-point precision. Not only supporting multi-core CPU, also creating the perfect conditions for your CPU

FOR POWER USERS

LOAD-LINE CALIBRATION

What you set, is what you get. LLC makes sure your CPU voltage remains 100% stable under any load. This greatly improves stability when demanding more CPU performance.

DIGITALL POWER DESIGN

A fully digital power design allows for faster and undistorted current delivery to the CPU at pin-point precision. Creating the perfect conditions for CPU overclocking.

EZ DEBUG LED

Run into trouble? Onboard LEDs for key components will indicate the source of the problem so you know exactly where to look to get up and running again.

OVERVOLTAGE PROTECTION

Prevents potential short-circuit damage to the CPU and other critical components.

USB

MAXIMIZE YOUR USB DEVICE PERFORMANCE

Transfer your favorite games, music and movies over USB faster than ever. MSI offers a wide variety of options to connect and boost your USB 3.1 devices, delivering lightning-fast transfer speeds up to 10Gb/s!

• Reversible Type-C connector
• Double bandwidth USB 3.1
• Boost your USB

MORE STABILITY WITH AMD TURBO USB 3.1 GEN2

Featuring the AMD TURBO USB 3.1 GEN2, MSI motherboards offer never before seen USB speeds with more stability when connecting USB devices.

Featuring the AMD TURBO USB 3.1 GEN2, MSI motherboards offer never before seen USB speeds with more stability when connecting USB devices.

TYPE-C REVERSIBLE CONNECTOR FOR NEXT-GEN USB

Get all the performance benefits from USB 3.1 combined with the convenience of the USB Type-C connector. This reversible USB connector allows for effortless connecting of USB devices.

SUPER CHARGE YOUR PHONE & GAMING GEAR

MSI Super Charger USB ports charge any connected device faster. It delivers more power than regular USB ports to your smartphone, tablet, USB game controller or portable console.

DOUBLE ESD PROTECTION

Never worry about damage caused by defective USB devices. The USB ports on MSI motherboards are shielded by a set of protective ICs to prevent damage caused by Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) from plugging/unplugging USB devices.

SOFTWARE

APPS TO GREATLY IMPROVE EFFICIENCY

With years of experience in creating performance enhancing tools that are easy to use, only the highest quality applications are at your disposal. Use these tools to get the most out of your motherboard and achieve victory when gaming.

• X-Boost
• Command Center
• Live Update
• RAMDisk

X-BOOST YOUR STORAGE

This unique and exclusive software allows you to boost the performance of any storage or USB device connected to your system. Simply use X-BOOST’s Easy or Advanced mode to tune your system for up to 20% increased speeds, higher system responsiveness and faster loading of in-game levels.

ALWAYS UP-TO-DATE

Never miss out on important updates. MSI Live Update automatically downloads and installs the latest drivers, BIOS and software so you can focus on your game.

"...the best update package available on any motherboard." - Anandtech

SSD NOT FAST ENOUGH? TRY MSI® RAMDISK

MSI motherboards include RAMDisk, allowing you to create a virtual drive from your system RAM memory. Instantly load your favorite game, speed up your browser or your page file to significantly speed up your system!

• Speed up system performance, over 25x faster than a SATA SSD
• Speed up games, apps and browser
• Increase SSD lifespan

CPU-Z MSI GAMING EDITION

MSI has worked closely with the CPUID team to develop a special edition of CPU-Z featuring the famous MSI GAMING dragon. Use CPU-Z to gather key information of your system’s key components, like CPU speed, Memory speed and timings, motherboard BIOS version and much more.

QUALITY & PROTECTION

BUILT ON EVERLASTING QUALITY

Using only the finest quality components and integrating the latest technological innovations delivers the best possible gaming and professional experience. Rigorous quality testing under the most extreme conditions ensures a super reliable, high performance motherboard.

• Steel Armor
• Gaming Certified

FORTIFY YOUR SYSTEM WITH PCI-E STEEL ARMOR

MSI PCI Express Steel Armor slots are armed with more solder points on the motherboard for a stronger hold, preventing any damage due to heavy-weight graphics cards. Steel Armor also protects PCI Express signals against electromagnetic interference for a pure gaming experience and even higher overclocking.

ULTIMATE MOTHERBOARD PROTECTION

We’ve made sure you can enjoy your system endlessly. MSI motherboards feature Double ESD protection with double layer grounding around the motherboard mounting holes, preventing Electrostatic discharge (ESD) surges from damaging the motherboard.

DOUBLE ESD PROTECTION - BEST

SINGLE ESD PROTECTION - AVERAGE

SEMI ESD PROTECTION - POOR

COMPONENTS CHOSEN BY ONLY HIGH QUALITY AND STABILITY

MSI uses components with the latest evolution of the industries’ highest quality standard. MSI quality approved components are shielded with the best protection and make sure your system run smoothly under the most extreme gaming conditions.

JAPANESE CAP

JAPANESE CAP is a key ingredient for high-end motherboard design , which has lower Equivalent Series Resistance (ESR) and longer lifespan.

DARK CHOKE

DARK CHOKE , a special core design ,aloows your system to run at a lower temperature and offers better power efficiency and stability.

CERTIFIED FOR GAMING

Each model is tweaked to deliver the best FPS for a stutter-free gaming experience. Tested in 24-hour on- and offline gaming sessions with the most popular gaming gear by the world’s best eSports players, so you can enjoy top performance and reliability in the world’s most popular games.

BIOS

A GAMERS' BIOS

We made sure our BIOS contains all the latest options and is easy to use for everyone. The extensive features let you fine-tune your system to deliver reliable maximum performance when gaming.

• Easy/advanced mode
• Convenient search
• Hardware monitor
• BIOS Flashback+

EASY TO READ, HI-RES BIOS FONT

An award-winning, high-resolution, scalable font is used to make CLICK BIOS 5 easy to read, no matter what type of screen you use. The clean design layout, together with this great font makes CLICK BIOS 5 a true next gen UEFI BIOS.

Low res, non-scalable

Sharp, hi-res, scalable design

EASY MODE FOR QUICK GAMING TWEAKS

When you just want to get back to your game, EZ-mode presents you with basic BIOS settings and functions for some quick adjustments. If you feel like spending more time fine-tuning options to boost your system’s performance, the Advanced mode is the way to go.

EASY SEARCH & FAVORITES

Can’t find a specific BIOS setting? Don’t worry, a permanent search option in the top right corner can be used to find what you need. Want quick access to important settings? My Favorites gives easy access to selected Favorite settings, supporting up to 5 groups of Favorites.

HARDWARE MONITOR WITH FAN CONTROL

Hardware monitor lets you take control of your system and check your primary system vitals in a simplified graphical interface. You can also set up to 4 temperature targets for CPU and motherboard, which will adjust the fan speeds automatically.

*The formal interface will vary by model.

MAKE YOUR SSD AS FAST AS NEW WITH SECURE ERASE+

When using an SSD, its performance will slowly decrease over time as more and more data is written onto it. This will slow down Read/Write speeds and increase access times of your SSD, making your system feel sluggish. Using an optimized formatting algorithm, Secure Erase+ lets you enjoy your SSD at maximum speed, making your system feel brand new!

INSTANTLY OPTIMIZE AND BOOST YOUR PERFORMANCE

CLICK BIOS 5 provides easy access to memory profiles to optimize your internal memory timings and speeds for maximum stability and performance in-game. Safely overclock your CPU with a single button for more performance using MSI Game Boost.

* Features may vary according to your platform and model

EASY BIOS RECOVERY WITH BIOS FLASHBACK+

Run into trouble when updating your BIOS? Simply flash the old BIOS version back and continue gaming within minutes with BIOS Flashback+. BIOS Flashback+ even works without a CPU, memory or graphics card installed!

STEP 1

No CPU/DDR/VGA required

STEP 2

Connect 24-pin & CPU power

STEP 3

Insert dongle with BIOS file

STEP 4

Use Flashback hotkey/button

Specifications