Introduction
Today, we have now the MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI, certainly one of MSI’s latest M-ATX form factor motherboards. As a reminder, the MAG line-up from MSI is the bottom level of their three foremost tiers (MEG, MPG, and MAG) of products, and because it is designed to be the go-to for the no-frills gamer at a superb price. With a price tag of $239.99, it is available in across the middle of the B850 range of motherboards, nevertheless it does have some features that help justify this.
The MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI just isn’t a flashy motherboard by any means, and with it smutted black and green color scheme, together with no on-board LEDs, it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Nevertheless, it does have three (3) total M.2 NVMe slots, two (2) of which have MSI FROZR Cooling with the last on the back of the motherboard, and MSI’s EZ PCIe Release for quick release of your uppermost PCIe card. With all of those features, it makes this a formidable motherboard that might quite well exceed the expectations for a B850 product.
For the MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI, MSI didn’t provide a ton of contents within the box, but they didn’t skimp either. As you open the box, you will see the motherboard well packaged and guarded, with the WIFI antenna attached to the tray the motherboard is placed in. Below the tray, you will see all of the contents that ship with the motherboard. Outside of the usual regulatory notices, quick installation guides, and stickers you will see the conventional SATA cable, two (2) EZ M.2 Clip II’s, a single M.2 screw, the EZ M.2 Clip II Remover tool, a 1 to 2 EZ Conn-Cable, and MSI’s EZ Front Panel Cable for simple and clean wiring of your front panel connectors.
MSI B850M MORTAR WIFI Features
With the MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI, MSI has continued to make use of its blacked-out, with green/yellow accents, design of the MSI Arsenal Gaming (MAG) series of motherboards. With this being a mATX form factor board, MSI has done well to have as many features as they’ve. You will see that there are two (2) NVMe slots on the front of the motherboard, with a further one positioned on the back side for a complete of three (3) NVMe M.2 slots. After the NVMe slots, you will see there are two (2) PCIe slots, 4 (4) SATA ports, three (3) possible Type C USB ports, and a further 13 Type A ports.
Power Delivery
Since this just isn’t a full-size ATX motherboard, we don’t see an extravagant power delivery solution; nonetheless, that doesn’t mean that MSI skimped on it. MSI has gone with a 12+2+1 Duet Rail Power System, which has Smart Power Stages able to 60 Amps of power, all powered by two (2) 8-pin power connectors. The MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI likely won’t win any overclocking competitions; nonetheless, it also won’t have any issue reaching the Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) capability of most of AMD’s current generation of CPUs.
For all the warmth from the facility delivery, MSI is using their FROZR Design with an Prolonged Heatsink on the foremost power, and a “Heavy Plated VRM Heatsink” for the VRM and upper MOS. All of those heat sinks extend up a good amount, and in our testing, we see that it was capable of do the job in keeping the general temperatures reasonable.
Memory and Storage
Much like all other B850 series motherboards, the MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI uses DDR5, un-buffered, non-ECC memory, with a maximum capability of 64 GB per slot (256 GB total). With this, you should have the flexibility to make use of memory with AMD EXPO timings to simply “overclock” your memory, as much as a claimed maximum of 8200+ MT/s total speed. We do not need memory on-hand that’s rated at as much as 8200 MT/s; nonetheless, we had zero issue reaching the 6400 MT/s speeds of our trusty Patriot DDR5 kit.
Storage for this motherboard is a complete of three (3) M.2 slots for NVMe, all of that are designed to make use of a 2280 sized NVMe device (M.2_1/2 can support 2260 size). The slots positioned on the front of the motherboard are each Gen5 slots from the CPU, while the rear slot is from the Chipset. MSI helpfully labels each slot clearly, and includes information on where the PCIe lanes are from, the PCIe generation, and if it’s a SATA slot; all of that is in a box printed on the PCB right beside the slot. For cooling, MSI has provided a version of its EZ M.2 Shield Frozr II, which, together with being a single milled piece of aluminum, also has a fast release for simple removal. A pleasant touch MSI has done is include the road “Aug 1986” on the underside of the cooler, which is the month and yr that MSI was founded as an organization. Beyond this, you should have the flexibility to swap the standard clips for retention out with the EZ M.2 CLIP II system, which makes an already easy task even easier.
The final thing we would like to say is that ASRock has provided 4 (4) total SATA 6 GB/s ports for every other storage the tip user might want to incorporate.
Expansion
This motherboard has a complete of two (2) PCIe slots for non-USB expansion, which might be limiting to some users, but for nearly all of users on the market, that is good enough. The highest-most slot is a full PCIe Gen5 x16 slot that’s provided via the CPU, with the second slot being a Gen4 x4 slot provided by the B850 chipset. The Gen5 slot has just a few features value mentioning, as MSI has decided to offer a metal reinforcement for support of enormous sized graphics cards, together with MSI’s EZ PCIE release, which is a button positioned on the precise most side of the motherboard as an alternative of the standard latch. This last item is very appreciated when you want to remove a graphics card with a back plate. There are not any limitations with using any mixture of PCIe and NVMe M.2 slots, which is a pleasant feature to have.
I/O
For I/O, the MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI is pretty much set as much as cover most gamers, and even skilled users. There’s the flexibility for as much as 16 total USB ports, with nine (9) on the rear I/O panel. On the rear panel, you will see one (1) USB Type-C 10 Gbps port, one (1) USB Type-C 20 Gbps port, 4 (4) USB Type-A 5 Gbps ports, and three (3) USB Type-A ten Gbps ports. Onboard headers allow for a further USB Type-C 10 Gbps port, two (2) more USB Type-A 5 Gbps ports, and 4 (4) total USB Type-A 2.0 ports.
Beyond the USB connection options, there’s a single 5 Gbps LAN port provided by a Realtek 8126-VB chipset, two (2) antenna ports for the Wi-Fi card. While we couldn’t determine the precise card utilized by MSI, we do comprehend it provides the user with Wi-Fi 7, together with Bluetooth 5.4 and MU-MIMO support. Following this, the user may have the flexibility to attach a monitor on to the motherboard with the HDMI port, and Audio to either the S/PDIF connector or the Line-out & Mic-in jacks for as much as 7.1 channel surround sound powered by a Realtek ALC4080 codec. Lastly, you will have each a Clear CMOS button for resetting your BIOS when something goes fallacious and a Flash BIOS button to permit for a BIOS update when you will have nothing installed within the motherboard.
The last connectors that we have now not mentioned yet are the six (6) total 4-pin fan connectors, with one (1) dedicated to a CPU fan, one (1) combo for either a fan or a pump, and 4 (4) more for system fans. After this, there are a complete of three (3) Addressable V2 RGB LED connectors, and a single (1) RGB LED connector for all the interior LED lighting a user might want. Lastly, MSI has provided their EZ Conn-header and cable to simplify the connection of your front panel buttons to the motherboard itself.
UEFI
ASRock is using its standard UEFI BIOS with the ASRock B850 LiveMixer WiFi. With this, there are not any real deviations beyond the previous generations, or frankly, every other ASRock motherboard we have now seen. Once you first enter the BIOS, it opens to the Advanced Mode screen, as an alternative of the everyday Easy Mode we’re used to. Luckily, it is simple to swap between the modes by hitting “F6” on any screen.
Inside Easy Mode, you’ll quickly see information in your system, out of your DRAM information to XMP settings, to fan speeds, to quick temperature references, all at a fast glance. Consider that when you wish to adjust anything further than RAM speeds or your fan speeds, you will want to enter the Advanced Mode.
Once you might be in Advanced Mode, you’ll have the option to alter essentially any setting it is advisable to for any reason. We’ve got taken screenshots of most screens and settings available to be adjusted. Take a fast take a look at the gallery below to see all of them.
Motherboard Performance
As with all of our recent 2025 reviews, we might be using our latest performance section. You will see that images of all of our testing ends in the gallery, while the next paragraphs summarize what we experienced. As at all times with our AMD 2025 reviews, we may have the Ryzen 9 7900X because the CPU of alternative for testing.
Our first point of testing, like at all times, is our storage test, and we’re back to using our MSI SPATIUM M570 PRO FROZR (originally reviewed at the tip of 2023) as our primary drive, and our trusty ADATA LEGEND 970 2TB NVME SSE as our secondary drive. As normal, we ran each drives concurrently in CrystalDiskMark with the 1GiB profile. With the third M.2 NVMe slot being on the rear of the board, we’re unable to check it with any of the drives we have now readily available, and as such only have a single data point here. The M570 was capable of achieve 12,353 MB/s read and 11,642 MB/s write speeds, while the LEGEND 970 we were capable of see a read speed of 10,088 MB/s and a write speed of 10,178 MB/s. Each of those are according to what we have now come to expect from these drives.
Next is our memory testing using AIDA64’s Cache & Memory Benchmark. With the MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI, our Patriot memory kit was capable of achieve a Memory Read Speed of 77,296 MB/s, a Write Speed of 76,504 MB/s, and a Copy Speed of 70,643 MB/s. These are all right according to our expectations for this memory kit with the Ryzen 9 7900X CPU.
The synthetic benchmarks are next up, with PCMark, 3Dmark, Cinebench (R23 and 2024), V-Ray, Blender, and eventually GeekBench6. PCMark continues the B850 trend we have now seen with lower-than-expected scores, where we’re coming in at 6,981, which is around 2,000 points lower than the X870E motherboards we have now tested. 3DMark brings us back according to our expected points, with the CPU Profile Max Thread rating coming in at 12,453, and Night Raid scored 20,139 for its CPU rating.
Each Cinebench tests are right around where we expect it to be, with R23 scoring 28,637 points in Multi-Core, and 1,974 points in Single-Core testing. The more moderen Cinebench 2024 is available in at 1,630 points for Multi-Core, and 120 points for Single-Core. V-Ray testing is again according to what is anticipated at 30,962 vsamples. Blender had a rating of 186.37 for monster, 133.13 for junkshop, and 94.83 for classroom scenes. The ultimate test we have now run is GeekBench 6 Pro, where we scored 3,020 for Single-Core, and 18,811 for Multi-Core, which is correct according to our historical values.
VRM Temperature
The last testing we accomplished on the MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI is the VRM temperature test. For this test, we run Cinebench 2023 Multi-Core test for no less than quarter-hour to completely stress the system. On the 15-minute mark, we take a screenshot and record the temperatures as reported by probably the most current version of HWiNFO 64, in addition to a manual temperature reading with a Handheld Infrared thermometer. All testing occurs at an ambient temperature of roughly 75°F (24°C).
The Prolonged FROZR heatsink on the MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI worked in addition to we hoped. HWiNFO recorded the very best Chipset temperature at 54.6°C, and the very best MOSFET temperature of 51.5°C. Our handheld readings gave us 43.8°C as the very best observed temperature on the MOSFET / power cooling area, and 42.3°C on the chipset.
Conclusion
Our testing of the MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI has shown it to be a capable motherboard, especially for a B850 mATX form factor. MSI has provided two (2) Gen5 NVMe M.2 slots, together with a single PCIe x16 Gen5 slot with features we regularly see on higher-end motherboards, like a distant release button or metal reinforcement. Beyond this, MSI has offered a 3rd NVMe M.2 slot on the rear of the motherboard if the user has the necessity.
Installation and Use
We bumped into no issues establishing the MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI. The inclusion of the EZ M.2 Shield FROZR II was appreciated for the simple installation of the M570 NVMe drive. It must be noted that while MSI provided two (2) EZ M.2 Clip II’s within the packaging, neither of them was installed within the motherboard from the factory; relatively, there’s a more standard “twist” mechanism to lock within the drives.
Updating the UEFI was flawless for us, and we had no issues with adjusting the EXPO setting for our RAM or forcing fan speeds to full speed, due to the easy-to-follow Click BIOS X from MSI. Further, we had no issues with the installation of Windows 11 or the updating of drivers through either Windows Update or the MSI Center software that we were prompted to put in. As at all times, we recommend you check for the newest chipset drivers at a minimum on your personal from AMD’s website.
Final Points
The MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI exists to fill a growing want for smaller desktop PC’s for the patron market, and it does it quite well. With its three (3) NVMe M.2 slots and 4 (4) SATA slots, it allows for many of storage expansion, and fast storage at that, with two (2) of the slots being Gen5 speeds. Beyond this, the user will have the option to make use of the most recent graphics cards, with the metal reinforced slot with Gen5 connectivity. So while the MSI MAG B850M MORTAR WIFI is a component of MSI’s lower tier of gaming-specific motherboards, its performance and features come near its larger brothers within the MEG and MPG series. At $239.99, it’s a superb value.