Unboxing and Simple Review of AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and MSI B850M-MORTAR-WIFI Motherboard- Zeruns's Blog

Simple Unboxing and Review of AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and MSI B850M MORTAR WIFI Motherboard

Preface

On June 24, 2025, I purchased this motherboard + CPU combo for 5,579 RMB and gave my PC an upgrade.

The reason I switched to the 9950X is because my previous setup with the Ultra7-265K and Gigabyte Z890 motherboard often experienced random crashes and restarts (under any circumstances—not just high loads, even with BIOS reset to defaults and stock clocks). A friend of mine also had similar issues with his 5700X build using a Gigabyte motherboard. In his case, the second M.2 slot couldn't read/write properly (the second slot is connected via the chipset, while the first is CPU-direct and works fine). I suspect Gigabyte's quality control is poor, and rather than wait for a warranty replacement and be left without a working PC, I decided to upgrade both the motherboard and CPU.

After submitting the old motherboard for a warranty replacement through JD.com, I sold the board and CPU second-hand on Xianyu for around 3,000 RMB—about 500 RMB less than their new price.

Simple unboxing and review of Ultra7-265K and Gigabyte Z890M AORUS ELITE WIFI7 motherboard: https://blog.zeruns.top/archives/51.html

The 9950X costs over 2,000 RMB more than the 265K, but in actual testing, the performance gain is only about 20% (possibly more in gaming). If you're after productivity, the 265K has a better performance-to-price ratio. Additionally, the 9950X runs hotter and is harder to cool efficiently, with a slightly lower power efficiency (265K is on a 3nm process, while the 9950X uses 4nm). A 240mm AIO cooler isn't enough to tame the 9950X.

Photos after assembling the computer:

Products Reviewed in This Article:

Apple Mac Mini M4 Mini PC Simple Review & Teardown: https://blog.zeruns.top/archives/35.html
PC Upgrade: Switched to i5-14600K & ASUS B760M Motherboard: https://blog.zeruns.com/archives/779.html
MECHREVO imini Pro820 Mini PC Review and Teardown: https://blog.zeruns.top/archives/15

Buy the 9950X Combo:

京东：https://u.jd.com/21TQrfK
淘宝：https://s.click.taobao.com/YopfsAr

Buy the 265K Combo:

京东：https://u.jd.com/2rTbEde
淘宝：https://s.click.taobao.com/05e1XMr

Specifications

Motherboard

The motherboard is MSI B850M MORTAR WIFI

Official product page: https://url.zeruns.com/MAG-B850M

Front of the retail box:

Side of the box:

Unboxing—motherboard with the small box for WiFi antennas:

WiFi Antennas:

Below are accessories including SATA cables, stickers, and user manuals:

Front view of the motherboard:

Back view, with a PCIe 4.0 x2 M.2 slot:

Rear I/O ports (from left to right):

Flash BIOS button (for USB BIOS update without CPU/memory) and Clear CMOS button
HDMI
5Gbps Ethernet port (Realtek® 8126-VB)
3x USB 10Gbps Type-A
1x USB 10Gbps Type-C
4x USB 5Gbps Type-A
1x USB 20Gbps Type-C
WiFi/Bluetooth antenna connectors
Audio I/O ports (SPDIF_OUT, MIC, LINE_OUT)

The front side features 2x PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 SSD slots, each with its own heatsink and thermal pads (remember to remove the plastic film from the thermal pads before installation).

Also visible is MSI’s proprietary EZConn interface. With the included extension cable, you can expand it to one PWM fan header and one 5V 3-pin ARGB header.

After installing the SSD:

The onboard WiFi 7 module is Qualcomm's FastConnect 7800, which is excellent. It supports 2.4GHz / 5GHz / 6GHz (320MHz), and MLO (Multi-Link Operation). When connected to a WiFi 7 access point, the negotiated speed shows 3570Mbps, indicating that MLO is active.

AM5 socket:

CPU

The CPU is AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, with the following specifications:

Cores/Threads: 16 cores / 32 threads
Base Clock: 4.3GHz, Max Boost Clock: 5.7GHz
Core Process: TSMC 4nm FinFET
IO Die Process: TSMC 6nm FinFET
TDP: 170W
L1 / L2 / L3 Cache: 1280KB / 16MB / 64MB
Socket: AM5
Supported Instruction Sets: AES, AMD-V, AVX, AVX2, AVX512, FMA3, MMX-plus, SHA, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, SSE4A, SSSE3, x86-64
Release Date: August 15, 2024

Official website: https://url.zeruns.com/9950X