X570 vs B550 Motherboard

[Jetrise]

Hi Guys,

 

I'm making a new system and I've purchased most of the parts already bar Case, Mobo and CPU Cooler (see PP link below). With the motherboard, I'm unsure whether or not I should go B550 or X570. I understand B550 has less PCIe Gen 4 lanes avalible, limiting future upgradibility. At the same time, the B550 Chipset doesn't have any additional point of failure (active chipset cooling). Is there any advice you guys can give on what chipset to go with? For refrence, there are two boards I'm looking at, linked below. I've read lots of material surrounding B550 and X570 and it's very mixed feelings, with some saying B550 was stupid while some are saying wait out until X670 (if there even is one in dev?).

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/WKdrxr/msi-mag-x570-tomahawk-wifi-atx-am4-motherboard-mag-x570-tomahawk-wifi

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/vFhmP6/asus-rog-strix-b550-f-gaming-wi-fi-atx-am4-motherboard-rog-strix-b550-f-gaming-wi-fi (only negative with this is no internal Type C connector) 

 

Thanks,

 

Shaun.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor	£461.51 @ Overclockers.co.uk
CPU Cooler	Noctua NH-U12S chromax.black 55 CFM CPU Cooler	£64.98 @ Amazon UK
Motherboard	MSI MAG X570 TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX AM4 Motherboard	£193.48 @ Ebuyer
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory	£107.47 @ Scan.co.uk
Storage	Western Digital SN750 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	£126.88 @ Ebuyer
Storage	Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	£50.38 @ CCL Computers
Video Card	Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 8 GB GAMING OC Video Card	£599.99 @ Ebuyer
Case	Corsair 4000D Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case	£72.31 @ Box Limited
Power Supply	Corsair RM (2019) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	£99.95 @ Amazon UK
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£1776.95
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-11-29 11:33 GMT+0000

 

[Eigenvektor]

Quote

With the motherboard, I'm unsure whether or not I should go B550 or X570. I understand B550 has less PCIe Gen 4 lanes avalible, limiting future upgradibility. At the same time, the B550 Chipset doesn't have any additional point of failure (active chipset cooling).

Unless you expect to require additional Gen 4 SSDs in the near future, B550 is perfectly reasonable. That should give you enough 4.0 lanes for your GPU and boot drive. If you do a lot of high speed file transfers disk to disk, then more lanes may be a sensible investment. Of course you should also look at other features that might be superior on the X570 board.

[Inhaps]

I'm looking to get a very similar build. I settled on B550 (Asus ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING (WI-FI)
). Couldn't see how I could benefit from more pcie4. Unless you have a specific use case in mind, you're probably in the same boat as me. X570s seem to have more ports and internal headers in general but you could make do with an expansion card if you really need more. I'm also not a fan of tiny fans that many have.

[mariushm]

B550 are newer designs, and often better than x570 boards because manufacturers learned from x570 and improved (better heatsinks, newer vrm controllers, often better onboard audio for example alc1220 instead of alc1200 or alc892,  2.5g ethernet)

you also don't need a fan on the chipset, which is a potential point of failure, very small chance but nevertheless it's there.

 

The only downside of b550 is that the pci-e lanes created by the chipset are pci-e 3.0 - basically that means the bottom pci-e x16 and some pci-e x1 slots and a 2nd m.2 connector may be only pci-e 3.0  - the video card slot and the first m.2 connector are pci-e 4.0

 

IF you absolutely need onboard wireless, you have Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro AX for around 10 pounds more : https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/TMLwrH/gigabyte-b550-aorus-pro-ax-atx-am4-motherboard-b550-aorus-pro-ax

 

You get WiFi 6, ALC1220 onboard audio, usb 10gbps for front panel connector, and in theory better memory overclocking, otherwise same number of connectors and everything.

 

IF you want to save some money you have ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING (WI-FI) at around 181 pounds : https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/vFhmP6/asus-rog-strix-b550-f-gaming-wi-fi-atx-am4-motherboard-rog-strix-b550-f-gaming-wi-fi

 

again you get wifi 6, you get better rebranded alc1220 onboard audio,  theoretically a bit less good memory overclocking compared to gigabyte model but in practice you won't use more than 3600-3800 mhz so doesn't matter.

You lose the usb 3 10gbps for the front panel connector, and there's a few less usb connectors on the io shield

 

Even cheaper, you have Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro AC from around 158 pounds : https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/FMxbt6/gigabyte-b550-aorus-pro-ac-atx-am4-motherboard-b550-aorus-pro-ac

 

Same ALC1220, but you lose WiFi6, it's only regular 802.11ac, and like with the Asus board above you lose usb 3 10gbps front panel connector.

 

 

 

 

[Jetrise]

@mariushm the only difference between:

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/TMLwrH/gigabyte-b550-aorus-pro-ax-atx-am4-motherboard-b550-aorus-pro-ax

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/WKdrxr/msi-mag-x570-tomahawk-wifi-atx-am4-motherboard-mag-x570-tomahawk-wifi

 

Is the audio codec, which to me, isn't worth the £20 quid (there's not many options to purchase over here for the GB board). 

 

In terms of VRM, Tomahawk, from the reviews, is one of the coolest boards, even in comparison to B550. Is there anything else I'm missing?

[mariushm]

5 minutes ago, Jetrise said:

@mariushm the only difference between:

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/TMLwrH/gigabyte-b550-aorus-pro-ax-atx-am4-motherboard-b550-aorus-pro-ax

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/WKdrxr/msi-mag-x570-tomahawk-wifi-atx-am4-motherboard-mag-x570-tomahawk-wifi

 

Is the audio codec, which to me, isn't worth the £20 quid (there's not many options to purchase over here for the GB board). 

 

In terms of VRM, Tomahawk, from the reviews, is one of the coolest boards, even in comparison to B550. Is there anything else I'm missing?

 

The Gigabyte has

* better onboard audio ALC1220

* better memory support ( up to 5200 Mhz claimed, compared to MSI's up to 4600 Mhz)

* an extra pci-e x16 slot ( x16 , x4, x2)   compared to x16 + x4 on the MSI board.

* a bunch more usb connectors on the IO shield ( 6 USB2 + 5 USB 3  5/10g  compared to 2 USB 2 + 6 USB 3 5/10g)

* visually more pleasing if you're into that, nicer m.2 heatsinks, better position for the m.2

* no fan that could break down

 

The VRM is every so slightly weaker ... 12 phases with 50A stages on Gigabyte, 12 phases with 60A mosfets on MSI, but that would only make a minute difference on a cpu like 5900x or 5950x. You're planning to use a 5800 which is not a big deal in terms of power consumption

 

With a 5800x both VRMs will be close to their peak efficiency, we're talking a difference of maybe a couple of watts in efficiency difference, it's really not worth talking about it.

As for VRM temperature, again, with a 5800x you'd be looking at something like 70c temperature on Gigabyte, 65c on MSI, when the VRM can sit at 90-100c  24/7 for years without any worries.

 

If your budget is tight and you don't mind losing the usb 10gbps front panel connector,  it may make more sense going with the pro ac board at 158-160 pounds.. and maybe use a bit of the difference to get 3600 mhz memory, it helps with 5xxx processors. 

Maybe also put 10-20 pounds more and switch to a 4-6 TB mechanical drive. 

 

A tempting option would be buying one of those 8 TB external WD drives, it's super easy to take them out of the plastic shell and use them inside the PC ... and you get 8 TB for around 125 pounds : https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Elements-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B07FNK6QMT/