Which B550 mobo for 3600?

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I'm coming to the conclusion that I need to upgrade my processor and consequently motherboard. I've pretty much settled on a Ryzen 5 3600 for the most suitable blend of price/performance for my needs.

It seems to me, that whilst I probably don't really need a new SSD to go with it, if I were to get a PCIe 4.0 m.2 SSD I could shave some time off boot times, etc and move the games data I have on my 1TB hybrid drive onto the then freed SATA SSD for a gaming performance boost. I also want to keep some of my data drives in use whilst I move the data on them to my NAS box, so need more than 4 SATA ports.

I'm not planning to move away from my 1080GTX yet, but would like this motherboard to last me through the next GPU refresh, which probably means PCIe 4.0 for the gfx card too, no?

Consequently, I'm looking at the 550 boards. I can then drop in a Xen3 processor if I decide to upgrade later. I'm not bothered by wifi as it will remain static and wired, I don't need 2.5Gb ethernet, cos all my switches are 1Gb; and I'm not that bothered by overclocking as I'm not really that desperate for an extra couple of fps.

So... any suggestions? Any manufacturers to avoid (ASRock seem to have some cheap options) or specifically recommended?
TIA
 
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You'll need new DDR4 RAM as well.

What SSD do you have currently and how old is it? PCIe 4.0 drives don't really boot much quicker than Gen3 NVMEs or standard SATAs either.
 
Soldato
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Buy a cheaper X570 board instead like the Aorus elite x570 or the Asus TUF gaming x570 i dont see the point in the B550 boards at there current price.
 
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I know it gets old hearing it but I'd hang on for a little while. B550 is currently sitting at an unattractive price point vs X570, this will stabilise however and B550 will undoubtedly become more affordable. Also being on the cusp of the Zen 3 release we will start to see some movement on the prices of the current line up of Zen 2 processors, there's a good chance we will see the 3700X drop below £200 before the end of the year.

Of course I'm a more budget minded PC gamer and don't immediately need the latest and greatest. If you're sitting on a pile of cash buy whatever you can afford now and be happy with your new toys, there's always something better around the corner.
 
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which probably means PCIe 4.0 for the gfx card too, no?
The new AMD cards are already pcie gen 4 but there is no performance difference when running them on gen 3. This will likely be the case for the next 5 years or so until cards get powerful enough so saturate gen 3. For reference only the 2080ti comes close to maxing out pcie gen 2.
 
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Buy a cheaper X570 board instead like the Aorus elite x570 or the Asus TUF gaming x570 i dont see the point in the B550 boards at there current price.

I totally agree, I was going to get a 550 for my daughters pc I'm building. In the end I pre-ordered the new X570 tomahawk motherboard as I want built in wifi, as it was not much more expensive than the 550 version. I think it was £25 more, which makes it a no brainer!

Also the Aorus elite x570 is a great board, I'm using one in my system. Though if I was picking a board now, it would be the x570 tomahawk.
 
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Ephraim: A Price budget would help so we could recommend a few boards to you, also what board size ie full ATX, micro, ITX? ;) .
 
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This has everything you need with confirmed up coming zen 3 support the only thing you would be lacking is pcie gen 4 but I doubt you would see any difference over a decent gen 3 drive for your use case anyway and it's quite a bit cheaper than most b550/X570.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £130.49 (includes shipping: £10.50)
 
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Sorry for the lack of response. I tripped and fell and spent out on the Asus B550-F Wifi on Sunday. With the cashback offer from Asus on their B550 boards, it came in at around £150, which felt ok for my needs, and was cheaper than any X570 I could find with similar features.
 
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Sorry for the lack of response. I tripped and fell and spent out on the Asus B550-F Wifi on Sunday. With the cashback offer from Asus on their B550 boards, it came in at around £150, which felt ok for my needs, and was cheaper than any X570 I could find with similar features.


Good choice, can't go wrong with that board, price is also excellent and you're future proof for next gen Ryzen AM4 CPUs :) .
 
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£140-110 - same price as b450 or x470 floating about as well as out perform budget boards.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigabyte-b550-gaming-x-amd-am4-b550-atx-motherboard-mb-58w-gi.html

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...am4-b550-micro-atx-motherboard-mb-58u-gi.html

The new AMD cards are already pcie gen 4 but there is no performance difference when running them on gen 3. This will likely be the case for the next 5 years or so until cards get powerful enough so saturate gen 3. For reference only the 2080ti comes close to maxing out pcie gen 2.

volta can saturate 3.0 specially in SLi/ render rigs not using NVLink . Can also cause b550 Master/Taichi to drop 10-20 FPS if you use 2080Ti with Triple pcie 4.0 m.2's . Taichi actually comes off worse . As it pushes past PCIe 2.0 x16/ 3.0 x8.

Bios updates always given priority to Newest Product .

Hopefully ASUS cash back doesn't take to long, not as bad as MSI on that one . Need to see iif they use a 3rd party like MSI have done in the past but believe they do it in-house
 
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I looked at both of those boards, but they had insufficient SATA ports for my needs. Looked pretty decent in other regards.

Bios updates always given priority to Newest Product .

Hopefully ASUS cash back doesn't take to long, not as bad as MSI on that one . Need to see iif they use a 3rd party like MSI have done in the past but believe they do it in-house

Yeah, the bios thing seemed relevant, plus I don't really like the idea of a "beta" bios in order to be able to run a Xen3 on a B450.

We'll see on the cashback thing, there's an element to maths optimism about purchasing this stuff always. As with car buying, the most cost effective option is always what you already have. Doesn't stop me spending more than I need on a car.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
 
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£140-110 - same price as b450 or x470 floating about as well as out perform budget boards.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigabyte-b550-gaming-x-amd-am4-b550-atx-motherboard-mb-58w-gi.html

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...am4-b550-micro-atx-motherboard-mb-58u-gi.html



volta can saturate 3.0 specially in SLi/ render rigs not using NVLink . Can also cause b550 Master/Taichi to drop 10-20 FPS if you use 2080Ti with Triple pcie 4.0 m.2's . Taichi actually comes off worse . As it pushes past PCIe 2.0 x16/ 3.0 x8.

Bios updates always given priority to Newest Product .

Hopefully ASUS cash back doesn't take to long, not as bad as MSI on that one . Need to see iif they use a 3rd party like MSI have done in the past but believe they do it in-house

At present and near future I think it's really down to how much and what hardware you'll use, take my case for example I 'll use just one M2 slot At PCIE3 speed and one video card with one SATA mechanical HD for gaming, so saturation will not be an issue, I actually use a lot more USB stuff of lower bandwidth ie mouse,keyboard,USB flash drive/HD, USB DVD drive etc, so B550 would be more then enough in my case and for quite a few other users, so saturation is really down to your own personal hardware/usage at this time and near future, I have no interest in SLI or Crossfire, it causes more issues then what it's worth gaming wise.

Yes Asus do have some nice sweet deals with the cashback when buying CPU with their boards.
 
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£140-110 - same price as b450 or x470 floating about as well as out perform budget boards.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigabyte-b550-gaming-x-amd-am4-b550-atx-motherboard-mb-58w-gi.html

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...am4-b550-micro-atx-motherboard-mb-58u-gi.html



volta can saturate 3.0 specially in SLi/ render rigs not using NVLink . Can also cause b550 Master/Taichi to drop 10-20 FPS if you use 2080Ti with Triple pcie 4.0 m.2's . Taichi actually comes off worse . As it pushes past PCIe 2.0 x16/ 3.0 x8.

Bios updates always given priority to Newest Product .

Hopefully ASUS cash back doesn't take to long, not as bad as MSI on that one . Need to see iif they use a 3rd party like MSI have done in the past but believe they do it in-house
Tbf I doubt the average joe will be using SLI or triple gen 4 NVME.

For a gamer buying a mid range GPU/CPU and an SSD there would be no difference what so ever.
 

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