Cheapest decent B550?

[marbled]

Hi,

 

Basically as per my title - I'm playing around with a hypothetical build for around £1000-£1200 all in including all peripherals. I will be waiting until the new Ryzen CPUs and Nvidia/Big Navi GPUs launch later in the year to build anything, but at the moment I've got two builds in PC Part Picker. The more expensive one is as follows (ignore the keyboard I'll either get a cheaper one or maybe get this if it's on sale):

 

 

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  (£159.00 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: ASRock B450M Pro4-F Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£68.79 @ Amazon UK) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  (£59.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Western Digital Blue SN550 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  (£61.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB OC Video Card  (£299.97 @ CCL Computers) 
Case: Cougar MX330 ATX Mid Tower Case  (£38.89 @ CCL Computers) 
Power Supply: Corsair TXM Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  (£69.99 @ Currys PC World) 
Wireless Network Adapter: Gigabyte GC-WB1733D-I PCIe x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter  (£25.19 @ Amazon UK) 
Case Fan: ARCTIC F12 PWM 53 CFM 120 mm Fan  (£5.48 @ AWD-IT) 
Monitor: AOC 24G2U/BK 24.0" 1920x1080 144 Hz Monitor  (£189.95 @ Amazon UK) 
Mouse: SteelSeries Rival 3 Wired Optical Mouse  (£29.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Headphones: Kingston HyperX Cloud Stinger  Headset  (£39.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Custom: Fnatic miniSTREAK Pro Gaming Mechanical Tenkeyless esports Keyboard (Cherry MX Brown Switches, Multi-Color RGB Lighting, Ergonomic Wrist Rest, Programmable) UK-Layout  (£99.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Total: £1149.21
 

I want something that will deliver 60FPS+ at 1080p for several years, but also want to ensure I have a decent upgrade path available down the road. I've seen that manufacturers will have the option to allow you to update the BIOS to allow for 4th Gen Ryzen processors but in 4-5 years I'm guessing the B450 will be pretty behind the times in other respects, so just out of interest, what would be the cheapest B550 motherboard you'd recommend? I'll drop that into the more expensive build and will keep an eye on prices...

[Haro]

10 hours ago, marbled said:

what would be the cheapest B550 motherboard you'd recommend?

b550 pro4m or the atx version or the a pro. 

as for b550 in general. 

b550 tomahawk.

mortar.

aorus pro.

strix f.

steel legend.

pro 4.

a pro. 

10 hours ago, marbled said:

. I've seen that manufacturers will have the option to allow you to update the BIOS to allow for 4th Gen Ryzen processors but in 4-5 years I'm guessing the B450 will be pretty behind the times in other respects,

depends. i would still consider it. if you've got the budget for b550 then go for that, but if you're limited. an a pro max or a pro vdh max or a tomahawk max or a mortar max or a pro 4, will do the job. also msi did say that they will support zen 3 on their b450 boards. 

[marbled]

32 minutes ago, TofuHaroto said:

msi did say that they will support zen 3 on their b450 boards. 

Interesting thanks - so currently I have the ASRock B450M Pro4-F in my build for £69 but looks like I could get the MSI B450M PRO-M2 MAX for £65 - other than the zen3 support, is there much difference between the two?

[Haro]

3 minutes ago, marbled said:

MSI B450M PRO-M2 MAX for £65

Absolutely avoid this dumpster fire. 

25a crappy board. The pro 4f is superior in every way really. And is not a bad deal. And in addition to the pro 4f. All the boards I listed above are decent. 

[marbled]

6 minutes ago, TofuHaroto said:

Absolutely avoid this dumpster fire. 

25a crappy board. The pro 4f is superior in every way really. And is not a bad deal. And in addition to the pro 4f. All the boards I listed above are decent. 

Cool thanks for the help - I'll leave the pro 4f in place then and will see whether ASRock has announced support for zen 3 by the time I'm looking to buy.

[Nena Trinity]

ASRock B450 Pro 4 series or maybe the B550 version of same board. IMO but for the love of God do not pair it with RAM from G.Skill!!!

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, Nena Trinity said:

ASRock B450 Pro 4 series or maybe the B550 version of same board. IMO but for the love of God do not pair it with RAM from G.Skill!!!

What is your issue with G.Skill ?

[Nena Trinity]

1 minute ago, lee32uk said:

What is your issue with G.Skill ?

ASRock boards does not like em... 

[Mateyyy]

B550-A Pro 

If that's too expensive, B550M Aorus Pro, though you'll want some direct airflow on the VRMs if you want to run a 3950X with this board.

 

13 minutes ago, Nena Trinity said:

ASRock boards does not like em... 

Asrock boards tend to have bad memory compatibility in general, not just with G.Skill.

[marbled]

3 hours ago, Mateyyy said:

B550-A Pro 

If that's too expensive, B550M Aorus Pro, though you'll want some direct airflow on the VRMs if you want to run a 3950X with this board.

 

Asrock boards tend to have bad memory compatibility in general, not just with G.Skill.

Cool thanks, I'll take a look - to be honest all the 550 motherboards are more than I'd want to spend at the moment but we'll see where things stand later in the year. I definitely wouldn't be running anything more than a 3600 in the short term and then probably that sort of level of the Ryzen 4000 series if/when I upgrade...

[Mateyyy]

12 minutes ago, marbled said:

Cool thanks, I'll take a look - to be honest all the 550 motherboards are more than I'd want to spend at the moment but we'll see where things stand later in the year. I definitely wouldn't be running anything more than a 3600 in the short term and then probably that sort of level of the Ryzen 4000 series if/when I upgrade...

For B450, the best boards you'd be looking at are these:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/jcYQzy/msi-b450-tomahawk-max-atx-am4-motherboard-b450-tomahawk-max

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/h7WBD3/msi-b450m-mortar-max-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-b450m-mortar-max

 

MSI confirmed a little while ago that they're going to have Zen 3 support on their 400 series motherboards, granted with a no-going-back beta BIOS, but it's better than not having the option at all. For current-gen Zen 2 chips, either of these boards should be able to handle up to a 3900X without direct airflow onto the VRMs (as in they'll work just with the incidental airflow inside your case).

[SFFDesigns]

4 hours ago, Mateyyy said:

B550-A Pro 

This board is truly great! I’d highly recommend it.

 

i personally use a tomahawk with my 3700X, but my friend uses an A-Pro with it an boy is it a good budget B550 board.

[infigo]

Just a note on the b550 a pro. 

The second 16x (4x lanes electrical) shares lanes with the second m.2. So the slot and two ssds at the same time. 

The two 1x can of course be used but many GPUs are 2.5 slots nowdays which might block one of them, not the one op has chosen. 

I don't think MSIs compromise it that good buy it's their choce, just like asrock use 2x for the second m.2 and have the second 16 slot  Connected with 4 lanes. I personally like Asus approach to lanes the best. Splitting the lanes from the 16x slot (4x electricql) to all 1x slots if any card is used in One 1x slot (except if the 1x slot is cpu connected, the lanes used for WiFi on WiFi models.)