Motherboard choice: Asus TUF B450 Pro Gaming or MSI B450 Tomahawk Max?

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I decided to upgrade my i5 6600 to a Ryzen 7 3700X, I'm more of an Asus fan so my first choice was the Asus TUF B450 Pro Gaming (I thought of getting the Strix one but it had a lot of negative reviews) but the MSI B450 Tomahawk is getting a lot of great reviews and recommendations. The MSI Tomahawk I assume all have an updated bios for the 3rd gen, but does the Asus TUF B450 also have a 3rd gen ready bios? 

[Princess Luna]

The tomahawk would be the better choice.

[mariushm]

The MSI board has better VRM (the dc-dc converter which powers the cpu), and better heatsink on the VRM, so there's higher overclocking potential and should be overall a bit cooler.

 

The MSI board also supports bios flashback, which allows you to update the bios without cpu installed in the socket. The MAX models have a bigger size bios and they come from the factory with Ryzen 3rd gen. support.

The Asus motherboard has no bios flashback feature, so if the motherboard is too old, you'd have to find a Ryzen 1st or 2nd gen processor to use just for the bios update.

 

[boggy77]

if you are a fan of asus get te x570 tuf. it's a very good board. otherwise, as others said, go for the b450 tomahawk max or a-pro max or gaming plus max

[Analog]

I bought the Asus TUF B450 Pro Gaming mATX board a couple of weeks back to pair with a 3900X. I chose this board as it was decent and there weren't many mATX options that had reasonable shipping time. I have had no issues with overclocking the RAM and CPU, which considering the price point of this board is actually great. The only downer is that the BIOS didn't come pre-updated to a version which supported 3rd gen Ryzen. If you decide to go with that board, better contact the seller in advance and ask them to updated for you. If you had friends that have 1st or 2nd gen Ryzen, like I have, ask them to borrow the CPU so that you can update the BIOS on your own. 

 

The B450 Tomahawk Max has a BIOS flashback option which will make things easier. I personally don't like the look of it though, but that's just me. 

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6 hours ago, Analog said:

I bought the Asus TUF B450 Pro Gaming mATX board a couple of weeks back to pair with a 3900X. I chose this board as it was decent and there weren't many mATX options that had reasonable shipping time. I have had no issues with overclocking the RAM and CPU, which considering the price point of this board is actually great. The only downer is that the BIOS didn't come pre-updated to a version which supported 3rd gen Ryzen. If you decide to go with that board, better contact the seller in advance and ask them to updated for you. If you had friends that have 1st or 2nd gen Ryzen, like I have, ask them to borrow the CPU so that you can update the BIOS on your own. 

 

The B450 Tomahawk Max has a BIOS flashback option which will make things easier. I personally don't like the look of it though, but that's just me. 

Taking a closer look at the TUF B450 Pro Gaming it does seem like a great board for the money and I've heard it's quality is just as good. Though I might instead go with a 2700X, I planned on going for the 3700X but the price difference is much higher than the performance difference (the 3700X is over 40% more expensive for some 10-20% performance, aside from the lower power requirements) but in that case I'll get the 3700X once it's price drops so updating the BIOS won't be a problem for the TUF.