It's about time for me to rebuild my PC. General web surfing, MS Office and maybe some light gaming. Planning to use either a Ryzen 7 2700 or Ryzen 5 2600 with 16GB RAM and a Samsung 970 NVMe 2.0 SSD 1TB with a fresh Windows 10 install. Not sure what mobo to use. B450 seems the best for my needs. All the ones I've looked at seem just ok with a lot of DOA. I've had good luck with ASUS in the past and that's what I have currently. Some reviews say ASRock or Gigabyte are better. Do I want WiFi or Bluetooth on my desktop PC? Not sure what I'd use it for but want to be future ready. Any recommendations?
AM4 Ryzen motherboard recommendations wanted
- Thread starter Leo99
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Anandtech has a list with 28 different B450 boards.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1309...zen-a-quick-look-at-all-the-motherboards
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1309...zen-a-quick-look-at-all-the-motherboards
I have two B450 boards, the Asus Strix B450-F (~$115 at MicroCenter), and the Gigabyte B450-DS3H WiFi (~$85 at MicroCenter). The Asus is billed as a higher-grade board, and it's good, but for the money the Gigabyte is pretty darn good. Since you're not looking for heavy gaming and/or overclocking, and the Gigabyte has built-in 802.11ac, there's a lot to love. If you do have a MicroCenter nearby, you'll also pick up a $30 discount on the motherboard when you buy the processor at the same time.
You didn't mention a video card... what are you using? If you don't have one, I would recommend the Ryzen 3400G with integrated graphics, and still keep your B450 board plans. I've got a 3700X in my Strix board, because I don't need the bells and whistles of an X470 or X570 board.
You didn't mention a video card... what are you using? If you don't have one, I would recommend the Ryzen 3400G with integrated graphics, and still keep your B450 board plans. I've got a 3700X in my Strix board, because I don't need the bells and whistles of an X470 or X570 board.
Asrock B450 Gaming K4 here, with a 2200g.
Got it 6 months ago, so forgot all of the perks. Rock solid board, runs cool and reliably.
Mosfets are well cooled, best in class, yes even compared to mid-range Gigabyte and Asus(whose value/mid level offerings scored last on Hardware Unboxed yt). Only other consideration may be MSI with Intel LAN and ALC1120 on mid tier boards.
ITX K4 has the higher end sound chip ALC 1120, which is great.
Decent board and if you can get it cheaper than Asus or Gigabyte - no brainer.
Can get a wifi card for less than 7-8$ of ebay, bluetooth is even cheaper, so dont bother overpaying for that on a mobo.
Got it 6 months ago, so forgot all of the perks. Rock solid board, runs cool and reliably.
Mosfets are well cooled, best in class, yes even compared to mid-range Gigabyte and Asus(whose value/mid level offerings scored last on Hardware Unboxed yt). Only other consideration may be MSI with Intel LAN and ALC1120 on mid tier boards.
ITX K4 has the higher end sound chip ALC 1120, which is great.
Decent board and if you can get it cheaper than Asus or Gigabyte - no brainer.
Can get a wifi card for less than 7-8$ of ebay, bluetooth is even cheaper, so dont bother overpaying for that on a mobo.
What are you planning to do? Video games - rendering - video editing etc. Are you going to buy aftermarket cpu cooler?
What is your budget?
If you are planning to play video games, you should choose 3600 instead of 2700 (prices should be close) as 3600 has better single core performance.
If you are not looking for top FPS numbers, and on tight budget, and want to be future ready, 2700 or 2700x would be the best option.
I would eliminate 2600 unless you really have tight budget, as 6 core will not be future ready as 8 core, and single core performance difference between 2600 and 3600 is huge.
Mobo: Definitely get the B450. You don't need x470 at all unless you do extreme overclocking.
I would recommend Asus w/ b450 platform. I bought 2700x and MSI b450 mini itx for my wife's gaming pc, and the motherboard got bricked after downloading the latest chipset. It always caused problems, such as turning itself off when restarting, blue screen etc. I cleared CMOS, tried different versions of BIOS but wasn't able to make it fully stable. After spending days and nights trying to figure out the problem, I finally gave up and returned MSI mobo and got Asus TUF B450 mini itx board. Since then, there is no problem. I am definitely not looking back and I will avoid MSI branded products like a plague. It is not just me, it is a common problem especially among AMD users, MSI's software support SUCKS.
Although Asus is not perfect on the Intel side. Their z390 motherboards are actually 4 phase VRM but they advertised it as a 8 phase VRM, which is NOT sufficient for power hungry 9900k cpu if you overclock it. This is the main reason (misleading advertisement) why I went with Gigabyte z390 which has 12 phase vrm with my 9700k. I am not super happy with Gigabyte bios though. It's been problem-free but BIOS is clunky for overclocking. As far as I know, their bios is also not the best (not as user friendly as Asus) with AMD platform.
What is your budget?
If you are planning to play video games, you should choose 3600 instead of 2700 (prices should be close) as 3600 has better single core performance.
If you are not looking for top FPS numbers, and on tight budget, and want to be future ready, 2700 or 2700x would be the best option.
I would eliminate 2600 unless you really have tight budget, as 6 core will not be future ready as 8 core, and single core performance difference between 2600 and 3600 is huge.
Mobo: Definitely get the B450. You don't need x470 at all unless you do extreme overclocking.
I would recommend Asus w/ b450 platform. I bought 2700x and MSI b450 mini itx for my wife's gaming pc, and the motherboard got bricked after downloading the latest chipset. It always caused problems, such as turning itself off when restarting, blue screen etc. I cleared CMOS, tried different versions of BIOS but wasn't able to make it fully stable. After spending days and nights trying to figure out the problem, I finally gave up and returned MSI mobo and got Asus TUF B450 mini itx board. Since then, there is no problem. I am definitely not looking back and I will avoid MSI branded products like a plague. It is not just me, it is a common problem especially among AMD users, MSI's software support SUCKS.
Although Asus is not perfect on the Intel side. Their z390 motherboards are actually 4 phase VRM but they advertised it as a 8 phase VRM, which is NOT sufficient for power hungry 9900k cpu if you overclock it. This is the main reason (misleading advertisement) why I went with Gigabyte z390 which has 12 phase vrm with my 9700k. I am not super happy with Gigabyte bios though. It's been problem-free but BIOS is clunky for overclocking. As far as I know, their bios is also not the best (not as user friendly as Asus) with AMD platform.
I bought the Asus ROG Strix B450-F for my wife, with an AMD Ryzen 5 2600. Its been in use for 10 months now, and has been bulletproof. Running WIndows 10 and a Nvidia card- I do not think I have had a single problem with it. She does mostly photo and video editing and MS Office stuff. The Storemi software is included for free, so I combined a 5 TB hard drive with a 256 gb SSD for tiered storage.
Motherboard
https://www.newegg.com/asus-rog-strix-b450-f-gaming/p/N82E16813119140?Item=N82E16813119140
Storemi-
https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/store-mi
Motherboard
https://www.newegg.com/asus-rog-strix-b450-f-gaming/p/N82E16813119140?Item=N82E16813119140
Storemi-
https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/store-mi
Originally Posted by rubberchicken
I bought the Asus ROG Strix B450-F for my wife, with an AMD Ryzen 5 2600. Its been in use for 10 months now, and has been bulletproof. Running WIndows 10 and a Nvidia card- I do not think I have had a single problem with it. She does mostly photo and video editing and MS Office stuff. The Storemi software is included for free, so I combined a 5 TB hard drive with a 256 gb SSD for tiered storage.
Motherboard
https://www.newegg.com/asus-rog-strix-b450-f-gaming/p/N82E16813119140?Item=N82E16813119140
Storemi-
https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/store-mi
I forgot to mention- I enabled most of the power saving functions to kick in after about 1 hr of idle time, and my monthly electricity usage for her PC went from about $20-25 to less than $5, as measured by a Kill-A-Watt meter. This is comparing her obsolete Dell with the newer Asus AMD.
I bought the Asus ROG Strix B450-F for my wife, with an AMD Ryzen 5 2600. Its been in use for 10 months now, and has been bulletproof. Running WIndows 10 and a Nvidia card- I do not think I have had a single problem with it. She does mostly photo and video editing and MS Office stuff. The Storemi software is included for free, so I combined a 5 TB hard drive with a 256 gb SSD for tiered storage.
Motherboard
https://www.newegg.com/asus-rog-strix-b450-f-gaming/p/N82E16813119140?Item=N82E16813119140
Storemi-
https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/store-mi
I forgot to mention- I enabled most of the power saving functions to kick in after about 1 hr of idle time, and my monthly electricity usage for her PC went from about $20-25 to less than $5, as measured by a Kill-A-Watt meter. This is comparing her obsolete Dell with the newer Asus AMD.
Memory is supposed to bottom out in price around November as well- I saw an article that one of the biggest prediction companies says DDR4 PC-3600 16GB should be around $50-55 by then (vs $80-85 now), and slowly rise again once a huge excess inventory is depleted.
So if you're looking to go huge on memory, Black Friday should be a veritable cornucopia of cheap, fast memory!
So if you're looking to go huge on memory, Black Friday should be a veritable cornucopia of cheap, fast memory!
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