Amended build spec help please

B550 out on the 14h. Gigabyte Aorus brands sporting some of the best designed and beats their x570 range for cheaper....

Price of the Elite plus wife . Could get their Pro WiFi/master B550 for the same price. And the master beast pretty much any x570 board !
 
Dark Rock Pro or Noctua DH might be better CPU coolers.

AMD's 3000XT CPUs are rumoured for mid-month which will mean a price decrease for the older CPUs.

And I wouldn't be spending megabucks on a GPU right now, with both Nvidia and AMD releasing new GPUs in ~3 months.
 
I love the fan mount system on that Corsair HSF but I wouldn't pay that much for one when you can get a Mugen 5 or Shadow Rock 3 for around £40-50 from OCUK.

The B550 and X570 Tomahawk MAX should be out soon, will work out cheaper and arguably better than the Elite + adapter given the cost of the adapter.

Those Samsung SSD's are massively over priced.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £665.37 (includes shipping: £10.50)

1. Shadow Rock 3 probably performs better than that Corsair HSF at almost half the price.
2. 1TB NvME that's just as fast as the 512GB Samsung 970 in real world usage while not much more expensive.
3. WD Blue NAND is a TLC drive compared to the inferior QLC in the Samsung 860 while being cheaper.
4. Arguably better motherboard that works out cheaper due to the built in wifi.
 
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Wouldn't a b450 board like the pro carbon be better value for money here?

You could argue that but the OP might need the feature set of a more advanced board, or simply want one for whatever reason.

I'd lean toward your opinion personally, I wouldn't spend £270 on a B550, but then my needs from a motherboard are very basic.
 
Thanks for all your replies guys. It's a lot to think about and it think if i had a set up already then i wouldnt mind waiting for months or weeks or even days in some cases to get the latest stuff and slightly cheaper prices.

I am very keen to get a build going though and continue to revisit over the years, using your guidance where i can.

I have tweaked the SSD set up and have swapped out the cooler for a be quiet model, taking onboard some of your advice, but i'm at a point where i dont really want to wait any more as it feels like i've been waiting years already to get to this point.

Cheers.
 
Wouldn't a b450 board like the pro carbon be better value for money here?

You can still get £135 b550 boards (current pricing of Carbon and before it released at £115) .

Problems with AMD address bios is it only writes to first 16MB of it , Max boards have 32 but MSI will have to figure way of writing bios to it etc . MSI was only ones to come out with larger BIOS storage but now it's clear why the others didn't bother
 
You can still get £135 b550 boards (current pricing of Carbon and before it released at £115) .

Problems with AMD address bios is it only writes to first 16MB of it , Max boards have 32 but MSI will have to figure way of writing bios to it etc . MSI was only ones to come out with larger BIOS storage but now it's clear why the others didn't bother
The B550s at that price range will have stripped down features so your giving up a lot for pcie 4 which most won't use or benefit from like in OPs case and many others who buy or are considering a gen 4 board but buying a gen 3 nvme.

MSI have already confirmed support for all their B450s so will most likely mean cutting support for some older CPUs maybe even on max boards but the bios issues are no different from those on B550 which is probably why there is such a limited backwards compatibility even oddly cutting 3000 APU support which is bound to confuse some customers.
 
Agree with the X570 Tomahawk is a bit of a rip off atm. But B550 is expensive also tho! New launch so full price, and they aren’t cheap!

Not sure how it is a rip off ? It costs £20 more than the X570 Aorus Elite and £10 more than the X570 TUF Gaming. It is a much better board than either of those in terms of VRM and feature set. If the Tomahawk is a rip off then those two boards are as well.
 
Not sure how it is a rip off ? It costs £20 more than the X570 Aorus Elite and £10 more than the X570 TUF Gaming. It is a much better board than either of those in terms of VRM and feature set. If the Tomahawk is a rip off then those two boards are as well.
Does the OP need any of this though when he's buying a 3700x and a gen 3 nvme?.
 
Does the OP need any of this though when he's buying a 3700x and a gen 3 nvme?.

Not the point I was making, but if he wants wifi 6 as per his opening spec list, then the Tomahawk is a better option if he can wait for it to come back into stock.
 
Not sure how it is a rip off ? It costs £20 more than the X570 Aorus Elite and £10 more than the X570 TUF Gaming. It is a much better board than either of those in terms of VRM and feature set. If the Tomahawk is a rip off then those two boards are as well.
it is just the high price of it. appreciate its VRM is amongst the best in X570 range. however there are plenty in the £150-180 range with OK VRM (Asus Prime-P, Asrock Pro4 or Steel Legend etc pretty much every other X570 boards other than the MSI line). i thought tomahawk brand is meant to be budget friendly not high end. but due to their reputation, the tomahawk motherboards have hold the retail prices extremely well against competitors making them not what are meant to be I guess. also this board is retail $200 I can understand $200 becomes £200 but whacking another £30 on it seems a bit greedy.

also what's more in the tomahawk that the Aorus elite dont have btw? all three boards got 12 phases VRM, ok tomahawk runs cooler but the others are no slouch either. If had to buy, would defintley look at Aorus if you are looking to extreme overclock on 3950x. £20 is money :). also the zen 3 chips meant to be more efficient ie uses less power so all that power in the VRM may never be needed...who knows.

but hopefully these X570 boards will drop in prices (not sure when) especially the craze on the tomahawk goes red hot, the differential of Aorus and Tuf Gaming might get even bigger like the B450 tomahawk vs other B450 boards.

those B550 boards are expensive also right. Starting around $150 going all the up to $200+, whihc means min. £150 starting if they dont whack more numbers to it. people just end up with X570s surely
 
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it is just the high price of it. appreciate its VRM is amongst the best in X570 range. however there are plenty in the £150-180 range with OK VRM (Asus Prime-P, Asrock Pro4 or Steel Legend etc pretty much every other X570 boards other than the MSI line). i thought tomahawk brand is meant to be budget friendly not high end. but due to their reputation, the tomahawk motherboards have hold the retail prices extremely well against competitors making them not what are meant to be I guess. also this board is retail $200 I can understand $200 becomes £200 but whacking another £30 on it seems a bit greedy.

also what's more in the tomahawk that the Aorus elite dont have btw? all three boards got 12 phases VRM, ok tomahawk runs cooler but the others are no slouch either. If had to buy, would defintley look at Aorus if you are looking to extreme overclock on 3950x. £20 is money :). also the zen 3 chips meant to be more efficient ie uses less power so all that power in the VRM may never be needed...who knows.

but hopefully these X570 boards will drop in prices (not sure when) especially the craze on the tomahawk goes red hot, the differential of Aorus and Tuf Gaming might get even bigger like the B450 tomahawk vs other B450 boards.

those B550 boards are expensive also right. Starting around $150 going all the up to $200+, whihc means min. £150 starting if they dont whack more numbers to it. people just end up with X570s surely

The X570 Tomahawk is competing with the Asus TUF Gaming, Gigabyte Aorus Elite and ASRock Steel Legend according to the Hardware Unboxed article below. The Tomahawk has wifi 6 and 2.5G LAN which the other three don't have. Maybe not a dealbreaker for most people, but that would add around £60 if you wanted to add pcie adapters.

Also if you look at the VRM results the Tomahawk is pretty impressive. Of course the other three boards would also handle a 3950X just fine but it is still a plus to the Tomahawk nonetheless.

https://www.techspot.com/review/2020-msi-x570-tomahawk/


I think MSI have a B550 Tomahawk in their upcoming lineup, so maybe that will be the better option for someone wanting a better value MSI board.
 
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