B550 over B450?

[potofn00dles]

Hey all, I'm new here and looking at building my first PC. I have it more or less planned out, but looking to see if I can save a few pounds here and there.

My question is, is there any benefit on getting a B550 over a B450? I don't care much about overclocking, cant be bothered to squeeze out every last fps out of my setup. And considering the latest AMD chips are the last ones that will come out using the AM4 socket, future proofing doesn't matter much either.

Is there anything else I'm missing out on if I just pick a good B450?

 

[potofn00dles]

Using the tomahawk b450 and tomahawk b550 as an example of both one of the better b450 and a solid b550, for the extra £50 you are getting a slightly more updated platform, faster RAM support, guaranteed support for the Ryzen 5000 series (b450 support not yet available officially). I would say its worth it. What do you have planned at the moment, may be able to help you save a little in other ways.

Aha! Great points, thanks for that. Im waiting for black friday to pull the trigger on my components, but atm I'm looking at:

Ryzen 5 3600 with its stock cooler (having the hardest time deciding if I should get a separate air cooler, don't think I really need an AIO)
Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3200 (or any other brand really, might add RGB for some flair)
Crucial P2 500 GB M.2 NVME SSD (already have another 1TB hdd)
Gigabyte RTX 3070 8 GB EAGLE OC (already have this, lucky enough to get it cheap-ish when it came out)
Lian Li Lancool II Mesh ATX Mid Tower Case

For power supply, I'm just watching prices for a 650+ of a reputable brand that's semi or fully modular.

 

[potofn00dles]

The latest And chips are good but ryzen will offer you better value.

How much you think of spending and maybe parts you want ?

I don't really have a set budget, but do wanna be sensible and keep it as low as possible. Gonna be my first gaming PC in like 12 years

 

[potofn00dles]

b550 gives you more wiggle room going forward IMO.

Also ditch the stock cooler on the 3600 for somethign like:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/arct...duo-white-cpu-cooler-2-x-120mm-hs-074-ar.html

By wiggle room you mean for overclocking? or what do you mean?

I think if I end up getting a cooler, it'll be that or a be quiet pure rock 2. Might do it if I get some good black friday prices.

 

[potofn00dles]

Give is an insight in what you want you achieve , what resolution do you want to game at abd games you want to play ?

Haha sorry yeah, missed my monitor, I actually have a Xiaomi Ultrawide, which is a 34” 3440x1440 144Hz display. I'm hoping a 3070 is enough for near max settings and an acceptable frame rate for games like Borderlands 3

 

[potofn00dles]

I mean for future expansion - moving to 5xxx and beyond,faster RAM etc.

Makes sense. I guess for a few pounds difference there's really no arguing, but a B450 can already support DDR4-4133 which is probably more than I'll need before a serious upgrade is warranted. B450 is getting zen 3 support, are there other cpus coming for AM4 that won't be supported?

Just looked st the bench marks for borderlands ultra detail a 3070 is near a 2080ti and it only getting 45fps may be a 3080 or the and 6800 xt mite be better options.

https://techgage.com/article/borderlands-3-graphics-card-benchmarking/

Cpu is less important had high resolution.

Damm auto fill.

Confused, I'm seeing 80-87 fps average on 1440p for a 2080ti in those graphs. I wouldn't honestly mind stepping down from ultra settings to get higher fps. I might upgrade to a 3080 if I can get a card at non scalper prices haha, but for now my 3070 is more than enough I think

Edit: I see what you mean, it;'s 49 for the 0.1% minimum fps for ultrawide, but it's still 70 average. I'd just step down a bit from ultra for this game still tbh

 

[potofn00dles]

This would be a good starting place;
My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Arctic Freezer 34 eSports Duo White CPU Cooler - 2 x 120mm= £34.99
• 1 x MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk (AMD AM4) B550 ATX Motherboard= £159.95
• 1 x WD Blue SN550 1TB NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS100T2B0C)= £94.99
• 1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey= £62.99
• 1 x Phanteks AMP 650W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply= £82.99

Total: £447.01 (includes shipping: £11.10)
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Unsure if any of those components will get cheaper on black friday in all honesty. You may get like 20/30 knocked off the 32gb kits but then thats down to like 120/130 so probably out of budget anyway.

Dude, this is awesome! Thanks so much! Specially for that power supply, not been paying attention to Phanteks, but that's a good price with a good rating. Yeah, I doubt prices will go down too, but I've waited this long, might as well wait a couple more weeks. So anxious though haha.

My mistake thought your monitor is 4k but it's an ultrawide monitor which is between 1440p and 4k.

No worries at all, thanks for that link btw, it's nice they cover performance for ultrawide at 1440p