Keep or Upgrade?

[BigRom]

Currently running a Ryzen 2200G and Asrock B450M Pro4 combo, I have intentions in the coming months to upgrade to the Ryzen 3600

 

The dilemma I have is whether I should keep my current motherboard, or upgrade to something better like the MSI B450 Tomahawk (max/non-max). I have already checked out several other motherboards as well just to survey my options, and ruled out several as well (prices converted from MYR)

 

Asrock Steel Legend is just a Pro4 with RGB sprinkled on it ($90-ish)

The ASUS B450-F Strix has some good IO & was offered in a tempting bundle with the 3600 CPU, but has pretty bad VRM cooling ($300 bundled with Ryzen 3600)

Gigabyte B450 Aorus Wifi somehow does even worse than the Strix, and I dislike Gigabyte's BIOS ($115-ish)

MSI Tomahawk is the preferred choice, but because its EOL its sold out almost everywhere (and the MAX is nowhere to be seen yet) or a bit more expensive than the other boards, or being sold by some rather sketchy listings ($125-ish)

 

I've been told that the B450 Tomahawk and the A-Pro are essentially almost identical, with the A-Pro losing the RGB and having a smaller heatsink on the mosfets. Is this true? I might go for that if I can't find a Tomahawk

[Fasauceome]

The pro4 is a solid board already, decent vrm without bells and whistles. If you're going for performance only, there's no reason to swap.

[Turtle Rig]

19 minutes ago, BigRom said:

Currently running a Ryzen 2200G and Asrock B450M Pro4 combo, I have intentions in the coming months to upgrade to the Ryzen 3600

 

The dilemma I have is whether I should keep my current motherboard, or upgrade to something better like the MSI B450 Tomahawk (max/non-max). I have already checked out several other motherboards as well just to survey my options, and ruled out several as well (prices converted from MYR)

 

Asrock Steel Legend is just a Pro4 with RGB sprinkled on it ($90-ish)

The ASUS B450-F Strix has some good IO & was offered in a tempting bundle with the 3600 CPU, but has pretty bad VRM cooling ($300 bundled with Ryzen 3600)

Gigabyte B450 Aorus Wifi somehow does even worse than the Strix, and I dislike Gigabyte's BIOS ($115-ish)

MSI Tomahawk is the preferred choice, but because its EOL its sold out almost everywhere (and the MAX is nowhere to be seen yet) or a bit more expensive than the other boards, or being sold by some rather sketchy listings ($125-ish)

 

I've been told that the B450 Tomahawk and the A-Pro are essentially almost identical, with the A-Pro losing the RGB and having a smaller heatsink on the mosfets. Is this true? I might go for that if I can't find a Tomahawk

Changing mobos wont speed up your system buying a 3xxx will or something higher then what you have if you don't want to shell out for a mobo.  You can slap a 2700x on it or do it all mobo and ram and cpu.  But as I said just upgrading mobo will do nothing for you.

[BigRom]

25 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

The pro4 is a solid board already, decent vrm without bells and whistles. If you're going for performance only, there's no reason to swap.

My Pro4 does have a small quirk though, its not particularly receptive to higher speed RAM. I ran the Kingston 3200Mhz for a while before eventually swapping in my friend's 2400Mhz kit as my games kept crashing on 3200Mhz, on its other XMP profile of 3000Mhz it wouldn't even POST 

 

I know it has decent VRMs which is why I'm hesitant on swapping it out, in fact its value has gone up for some reason since I bought it ($65 when I bought it, about $70 now brand new)

 

17 minutes ago, Turtle Rig said:

Changing mobos wont speed up your system buying a 3xxx will or something higher then what you have if you don't want to shell out for a mobo.  You can slap a 2700x on it or do it all mobo and ram and cpu.  But as I said just upgrading mobo will do nothing for you.

8-cores seem kinda overkill for a system that doesn't do anything remotely productive tbh 

[Fasauceome]

2 minutes ago, BigRom said:

My Pro4 does have a small quirk though, its not particularly receptive to higher speed RAM. I ran the Kingston 3200Mhz for a while before eventually swapping in my friend's 2400Mhz kit as my games kept crashing on 3200Mhz, on its other XMP profile of 3000Mhz it wouldn't even POST

A new CPU with a better IMC could make all the difference. My brother went from a 7400 to a 7700 and his ram was able to run at its rated speed instead of 2133

[BigRom]

4 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

A new CPU with a better IMC could make all the difference. My brother went from a 7400 to a 7700 and his ram was able to run at its rated speed instead of 2133

Yeah its partly why I wanted to finally dump the 2200G, also recently got the Acer VG240 144Hz monitor so I kinda want a CPU that can really deliver that amount of frames to make use of the monitor