A real surprise – Intel Arc Pro B50 in the test and big workstation duel under 450 euros

1 - Introduction, unboxing and technical data 2 - Test system and equipment 3 - Teardown: PCB, topology and components 4 - Teardown: Cooling solution 5 - Teardown: Material analysis and ASTM TIM testing 6 - Autodesk AutoCAD 7 - Autodesk Inventor Pro 8 - PTC Creo 9 - Dassault Systèmes Solidworks 10 - Autodesk Maya 11 - SPECviewperf 15 (2025) 12 - Adobe Photoshop 26.10 13 - Adobe After Effects 2025 14 - Adobe Premiere Pro 25.41 15 - AI Benchmarks (AI Vision, Image, Text) 16 - Rendering 17 - Temperatues, clock rates, power draw and fan speed 18 - Summary and conclusion

Teardown

If you take a look at the Intel Arc B50 Pro in its disassembled state, you will quickly realize that it is not a gaming card, but an industrially optimized solution for workstation, SFF or cloud environments. The design is functional, but by no means careless. Everything has its clearly defined place – and if you look closely, you’ll even find a few interesting decisions in the cooling design.

The teardown is surprisingly simple. The card is connected to each other using standardized Torx screws, with all screw connection points located on the back. No special tools, clips or force are required. This speaks for a maintenance-friendly design. As soon as the backplate frame is detached, the solid radiator block with the soldered-in copper plate and the mounted pads can simply be removed. Of course, you must not forget to remove the fans.

Topology of the power supply from the slot to the rails

I’ll start at the PCIe slot this time, as the card doesn’t need any other power supply. The 12-volt path first runs through a low-impedance shunt labeled R005, the typical size in this class is 5 milliohms. This is immediately followed by input filtering consisting of a shielded choke with 220 nH and a mix of ceramic and polymer capacitors, which effectively dampens switching edges and feedback into the slot. An Onsemi NCP45496 is fitted to record the slot power; it measures voltage and current via the shunt and supplies the measured variables to the board logic; limit values and alarm lines are provided. This ensures that the monitoring of the 75 W specification (5.5 amps or 66 watts for 12 volts) is properly covered.

The GPU core rail with VDDC and VDDCI is designed as a six-stage (4 2), phase-shifted step-down converter. Six identical MPS MP87661 power stages sit in close proximity to three large dual coils, each dual coil containing two separate windings. The MP87661 is an integrated DrMOS stage with driver, high-side and low-side MOSFET in an LGA package, with a phase rating of around 60 amps in this class. The whole thing is controlled by an MPS MP29011 as a multiphase controller, the signal routing on the board shows six separately clocked phases without visible doublers. The result is a very responsive core rail for this GPU with low ripple and high transient reserves.

The GDDR6 memory from Samsung is clamshell equipped, with four packages each on the top and bottom of the card. The memory supply is a separate single-phase rail and also uses an MP87661 with its own shielded coil. The inductance of this coil is labeled R22, which stands for 220 nH, which matches the memory branch with an output of around 1.35 volts and additionally limits the ripple.

The 5 volt source is constructed as an independent step-down from 12 volts, recognizable by the separate, shielded power choke and the grouped support capacitors in the right-hand board area. The typical auxiliary rails for 3.3 volts and 1.8 volts as well as the PHY supplies are then derived from the 5 volts. An LM293 is located in the auxiliary network as a dual comparator, which provides power-good and threshold functions.

Dual coils, space savings and effects on design and cooling

The three large magnetics are dual coils, i.e. two completely separate windings share a common, shielded housing. This saves space and allows a very short current loop between DrMOS, coil and output capacitors, which reduces parasitic inductances and improves transient response. The housing shielding also acts like a Faraday cage and reduces electromagnetic emissions, which relieves the platform design from neighboring high-speed signals. In practice, the thermal coupling of the two winding chambers remains the only point to consider in the layout. The common metal cap distributes heat more evenly, which can mitigate hotspots on individual windings, while at the same time increasing the local heat density under the component. Intel has placed the coils directly next to the DrMOS so that the hot paths remain short; the large copper surfaces around the three double coils and the six power stages take on noticeable cooling tasks. For readers familiar with such designs, this is a neat solution for compact cards because it combines the electrical performance of the six phases with a tidy footprint.

UEFI and other active components

A GigaDevice component is installed as the EEPROM for the UEFI. In this class, GigaDevice usually supplies the GD32 microcontroller family based on ARM as well as the GD25 SPI NORs for the VBIOS. The VBIOS flash is classically located as an 8-pin SPI component, while the GD25Q family supports dual and quad SPI and thus accelerates the loading of the BIOS image. In the side rail area, there is also the aforementioned LM293 as a monitoring component, the expected high-speed components for signal routing and peripherals are located around the display outputs, and the voltage converters supply these islands from the 5-volt rail.

I see a very compact but technically clean power supply here. The combination of six MP87661s and three dual coils gets a high degree of dynamics and reserve out of the small board area, while the separate single-phase rail for the clamshell-equipped Samsung memory keeps it cleanly decoupled and, with 220 nH inductance, pleasantly ripple-free. The monitored slot input with R005 and NCP45496 is suitable for the 75 W class, the independent 5 volt source supplies the many small consumers without burdening the core rail. If you look carefully at the layout, you will see that the dual coils not only save space, but also make the thermal behavior predictable, because current paths remain short and the copper surfaces are used sensibly for heat dissipation. The end result is a coherent low-profile board that by no means thinks small when it comes to power supply.

Here is a high-resolution microscopy view of all the important components:

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