B550 Steel Legend vs B55 Tomahawk

[DrNO]

I'm new to building I have a ryzen 5 3600 cpu and an rx 5500xt gpu I mostly web serve, watch movies, do lite image editing and a little gaming (no first person shooter). What would be the best choice in mobo's as they are the same price? I do like the look of the Steel Legend if all things are equal. Also I do not overclock.

 

Thanks for your advice and stay covid free

[DailyProcrastinator]

Welcome to the forum!

 

39 minutes ago, DrNO said:

I'm new to building I have a ryzen 5 3600 cpu and an rx 5500xt gpu I mostly web serve, watch movies, do lite image editing and a little gaming (no first person shooter). What would be the best choice in mobo's as they are the same price? I do like the look of the Steel Legend if all things are equal. Also I do not overclock.

Are you planning to upgrade the CPU? If not you could save and get a B450. Anyway both are good, Steel Legend VRM performance isn't as good, the Tomahawk is slightly better with regards to VRM performance. However for a 3600 this will not matter, especially since you do not plan to OC.

 

I would personally consider the features each has into the decision, if one is more feature rich with more internal headers etc. That would get my consideration. 

[DrNO]

Thank you for your reply, I apologize for being so slow to respond back but I am living in Japan and the time difference is crazy. I don't think that I will be upgrading the cpu anytime soon. Other than the PCI express upgrade would it be beneficial to save a few dollars and go with a B450, if so which one would you recommend? I read that through a bios update the 450's would probably support zen3 anyway.

 

Again, Thanks

[DrNO]

So what would be a couple of the best B450 mobo's to consider?

 

[SAVE-12-HK]

vrm isnt everything

both are good enough in vrm temp, ,nothing shall overheat them

asrock has error post codes so you can easily overclock ram, aslo supports m.2 wifi and better look imo

[DailyProcrastinator]

6 hours ago, DrNO said:

Thank you for your reply, I apologize for being so slow to respond back but I am living in Japan and the time difference is crazy. I don't think that I will be upgrading the cpu anytime soon. Other than the PCI express upgrade would it be beneficial to save a few dollars and go with a B450, if so which one would you recommend? I read that through a bios update the 450's would probably support zen3 anyway.

You need to ' Reply ' to comments in order for people to see them, this is done by clicking the arrow.

 

PCIe 4.0 is not going to make any difference. If the savings for B450 is significant then I would consider it. The same options are good, the MSI B450 Tomahawk and Asrock Steel Legend. 

[DrNO]

5 hours ago, SAVE-12-HK said:

vrm isnt everything

both are good enough in vrm temp, ,nothing shall overheat them

asrock has error post codes so you can easily overclock ram, aslo supports m.2 wifi and better look imo

Thank you for responding, I also like the look of the Steel Legend but just found a Tom. for $79 on Amazon, the SL goes for $110 so I think I'm sold

[DrNO]

5 hours ago, DailyProcrastinator said:

You need to ' Reply ' to comments in order for people to see them, this is done by clicking the arrow.

 

PCIe 4.0 is not going to make any difference. If the savings for B450 is significant then I would consider it. The same options are good, the MSI B450 Tomahawk and Asrock Steel Legend. 

Thanks I'm a 61 year old newbie never posted anything before. I appreciate your patience.

[DrNO]

6 hours ago, SAVE-12-HK said:

vrm isnt everything

both are good enough in vrm temp, ,nothing shall overheat them

asrock has error post codes so you can easily overclock ram, aslo supports m.2 wifi and better look imo

Thank you, appreciate your input and time. Stay healthy.

[DrNO]

17 hours ago, DailyProcrastinator said:

Welcome to the forum!

 

Are you planning to upgrade the CPU? If not you could save and get a B450. Anyway both are good, Steel Legend VRM performance isn't as good, the Tomahawk is slightly better with regards to VRM performance. However for a 3600 this will not matter, especially since you do not plan to OC.

 

I would personally consider the features each has into the decision, if one is more feature rich with more internal headers etc. That would get my consideration. 

Thanks, I think that is good advice. I appreciate your time and effort responding to my post. Stay healthy.

[DailyProcrastinator]

10 hours ago, DrNO said:

Thanks I'm a 61 year old newbie never posted anything before. I appreciate your patience.

No worries!

10 hours ago, DrNO said:

Thanks, I think that is good advice. I appreciate your time and effort responding to my post. Stay healthy.

Happy to help!

[DrNO]

On 1/15/2021 at 12:58 PM, MarfP said:

Why the B450? If you want to have something more affordable just get the Asrock B550 M Pro4, it's a really good board and I've seen it under 100$ sometimes when it goes on sale.

Sorry for the delay. I want to stay with a full ATX board and the Pro 4 is about $170 on Amazon jp where I live. I would like to stay around the $100-125 range. So I assumed these were the 2 best b450 boards in that range.

[DrNO]

Now starting to look at the B450 steel and tom about $10- apart and both under $100- Is there really any difference for a non-clocker/non-heavy gamer?

[Analog]

59 minutes ago, DrNO said:

Now starting to look at the B450 steel and tom about $10- apart and both under $100- Is there really any difference for a non-clocker/non-heavy gamer?

 

If you are looking into B450 the Steel Legend isn't really that good of a board. I mean it's fine for the 3600, but if you intend on upgrading later o to a 12 or 16 core processor, probably not the best option. From the cheaper B450 boards, the best one is the MSI B450 Tomahawk Max.   

 

Check out this video.