AM4 motherboard for Ryzen 3000 advice

[Harbinger2000]

Hi guys

Would appreciate some advise/opinions on what motherboard to use for a Ryzen 3000 build (3700x most likely). With the lockdown and Rand rather low what would you consider getting at this point of time or near future? I checked online and see people recommending from B450 to X470 with X570 considered expensive with features not really utilized by current hardware.

Would you recommend:

1. going for a B450 motherboard at this stage and later upgrading to a B550 later on which as i understood would be releasing in the near future?
2. going for an X470 then upgrading later once new boards are available or X570 prices fall in the future? The X470 boards appear a bit scarce at the moment from my perusal of the online stores.
3. waiting until the B550 boards are available?
4. go for broke and get an X570 based on a pessimistic view of the possible future ZAR/USD exchange rate?

Some boards currently available that caught my eye, but which i haven't read up on yet are

• Gigabyte B450 Aorus Elite (link)
• Asus Prime X470-Pro (link)
• Gigabyte X570 Gaming X (link)

I also see several MSI boards still available, but have a personal preference for Gigabyte/Asus/Asrock boards.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Vinnige Fanie]

I would say go for a B450 till the X570's becomes more affordable.

been watching some reviews and the gains between the b450 and the x570 is not enough to justify the difference in price.

 

[JollyJamma]

A good B450 board is far better than a bad X570 board.

A B450 board is just an X470 chipset with features such as SLI removed.

The most important factor in a board is a combination of a good VRM setup and good feature list (good number of USB ports, flashback, display port, good VRM heat sink, etc)

Spending more doesn’t necessarily mean better.

 

[Harbinger2000]

good VRM setup

I found the below on reddit, and it seems that the Gigabyte B450 Aorus Elite is considered OK for a stock/OC'd 3700x, if I am reading it correctly. But would appreciate any advice in addition.

AM4 Vcore CRM ratings

 

[LouisABC]

Msi b450 tomahawk. Do it, and close the thread. Best bet now, waiting for new tech, you will always be waiting, as there will always be something new in the pipeline. Rather get the best or best value for money as of today.

 

[JollyJamma]

I found the below on reddit, and it seems that the Gigabyte B450 Aorus Elite is considered OK for a stock/OC'd 3700x, if I am reading it correctly. But would appreciate any advice in addition.

AM4 Vcore CRM ratings

Nope. The Auros elite doesn’t have good VRMs. It has ok VRMs and will run warm but you can get around this by shifting a ton of air over the board.

It’s not a bad choice, it’s just not the best.

Asus B450 boards = bad.
MSI B450 boards = good.
Asus X570 boards = (mostly) good
MSI X570 boards = mostly bad.

Go watch a Buildzoid video on AM4 boards.

 

[AresFaithfull]

B550 Boards will be coming soon to my understanding however i am not sure how soon

 

[Phence]

Nope. The Auros elite doesn’t have good VRMs. It has ok VRMs and will run warm but you can get around this by shifting a ton of air over the board.

It’s not a bad choice, it’s just not the best.

Asus B450 boards = bad.
MSI B450 boards = good.
Asus X570 boards = (mostly) good
MSI X570 boards = mostly bad.

Go watch a Buildzoid video on AM4 boards.

I've researched and found the same ^^

 

[JollyJamma]

B550 Boards will be coming soon to my understanding however i am not sure how soon

Mid June. Prices will be higher than B450 boards and there may be very little difference between the B450 and B550 boards.

I wouldn’t say that getting PCI-e 4.0 will make any difference to the performance. You’d be better off with a good PCI-e 3.0 SSD than a 4.0 SSD and unless you have a RTX Titan GPU, it makes fokol difference to a GPU.

With the updated BIOS chips to make space for the larger file size, it’s really going to make moving from B450 to B550 a tough sale (unless the VRM or other features are much better)

 

[Harbinger2000]

Go watch a Buildzoid video on AM4 boards.

Found this one (link) where the B450 Tomahawk and Aorus Elite are mentioned. The Tomahawk is preferred for better VRM, but the Aorus Elite seems would be fine (with PBO enabled) if you do not manually overclock further.

Thanks for the input guys, much appreciated.

 

[JollyJamma]

Found this one (link) where the B450 Tomahawk and Aorus Elite are mentioned. The Tomahawk is preferred for better VRM, but the Aorus Elite seems would be fine (with PBO enabled) if you do not manually overclock further.

Thanks for the input guys, much appreciated.

Pleasure.

Yeah. If you need all the features of the Elite, go for that.

I want to get the Tomahawk or Mortar (the prices went up quite a lot since I moved to the UK and I only just started working)

Nice thing about decent VRMs is that I could move from the 3600 to the 3950.