B450 to B550.

[swanseajack]

At the moment I'm running tomahawk Max B450 with 5900X, Is it worth it to upgrade to B550 just for pcie x4 from x3?

 

[JollyJamma]

At the moment I'm running tomahawk Max B450 with 5900X, Is it worth it to upgrade to B550 just for pcie x4 from x3?

No.

It's not.

PCi-e 3.0 is fine for 99% of graphics cards save for maybe the 4090 and most people will never realistically full make use of Pci-e 4.0 SSDs.

An SSD is better when it has a good amount of DRAM cache, a good controller that is rated for a lot of I/O operations and good quality NAND rather than a hugely fast interface.

The B450 Max is an excellent motherboard and if you're considering upgrading anything, the GPU should be your first step. Anything else, consider moving to AM5 where you can make use of DDR5 which is faster than DDR4 and has other features that are more useful (PCI-e 5.0 is not one of them).

 

[Wing-Man]

there would be zero real world benefits at all, unless you spend all day moving large files from drive to drive.
for GPU again NO, based on your rig in the signature i would put money into a GPU (if you game) before anything else

 

[Tetras]

Most cards only lose a few percent in an old board (except for one or two edge cases). The fewer lanes the card has, the more performance you lose, so don't buy a graphics card with only 4 lanes and you'll be alright.

 

[swanseajack]

Thanks, I forgot to update my signature, done it now lol

I was thinking more about M.2 speeds, but I guess won't see much difference with boot speeds.

 

[Wing-Man]

Thanks, I forgot to update my signature, done it now lol

I was thinking more about M.2 speeds, but I guess won't see much difference with boot speeds.

It’s really doesn’t make a difference in the real world

 

[JollyJamma]

It’s really doesn’t make a difference in the real world

Agreed. It’ll make no difference to any gaming or general pc work.

You’re wasting your money getting a new motherboard.

If you’re loading huge datasets and need a ton of pci-e lanes then sure, go for the newer PCI-e revision.

 

[Joxeon]

It’s not worth going from B450 to B550 for pcie 4.0, if you did need pcie 4.0 for whatever reason then you’d be better going to AM5 rather than buying an already outdated AM4 board.

The biggest draw back on the B450 tomahawk imo is just the one M.2 but you could use an adaptor in the second Pcie X16 slot which has the 4 lanes to run the Nvme in full albeit at pcie 2.0 so a limit of around 1800MB/s

 

[Apex]

Motherboards are in general the biggest waste of money in PC gaming, the mental gymnastics people go through to convince themselves they need a £600 MOBO is hysterical, when in reality they want the £600 Mobo because shiny.

You want a 4090? you want the real high end CPU to go with it? - Go for it, you're going to get a great experience for years, whereas £300-£400 of that £600 you spent on your Mobo will do nothing for you and you might as well have flushed it down the u-bend.