B450 vs B550 motherboard

[virtualninja78]

Hi!

I am building a new PC with a Ryzen 7 5700g CPU and I was wondering if I should buy a b450 motherboard instead of a b550 motherboard. I know that b450 motherboards do not support pcie 4.0 but nor does the CPU I'm using. Moreover, I don't really care about pcie 4.0 as I'll be using this pc for programming and 3D rendering and pcie 3.0 storage is very fast. My only concern is that b550 boards in general have much better VRMs but then I won't be doing any overclocking anyway, so does it really matter? Also the b450 boards are cheaper than the b550 ones. What would you suggest?

 

These are the two boards I'm considering using in my build:

B550: Asrock B550 Steel Legend ($220)

B450: Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro ($140) (will this be good enough?)

Thanks!

[suedseefrucht]

16 minutes ago, virtualninja78 said:

will this be good enough?

Yes...

But:

 

Do you want HDMI or DisplayPort for your monitor?

The Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro supports HDMI and DVI only.

The ASRock B550 Steel Legend supports HDMI and DP.

 

[Jurrunio]

1 hour ago, virtualninja78 said:

but then I won't be doing any overclocking anyway,

what about CPU upgrades on this socket?

[Chris Pratt]

1 hour ago, Jurrunio said:

what about CPU upgrades on this socket?

5000 series is that last gen on AM4. You can "upgrade" to something like a 5900X or 5950X, but the buck stops there.

[virtualninja78]

2 hours ago, suedseefrucht said:

Yes...

But:

 

Do you want HDMI or DisplayPort for your monitor?

The Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro supports HDMI and DVI only.

The ASRock B550 Steel Legend supports HDMI and DP.

 

I have an HDMI monitor so that won't be a problem.

1 hour ago, Jurrunio said:

what about CPU upgrades on this socket?

I don't plan on upgrading the CPU. When I do, I'll upgrade to a new platform altogether.

 

I just want to know if the VRMs are going to be fine (especially in high ambient temps). Also, it uses capacitors rated for 5k hours vs 12k for the steel legend according to this page: https://www.kitguru.net/components/motherboard/ryan-martin/gigabyte-b450-aorus-pro-motherboard-review/3/#:~:text=The capacitors appear to be 5K (5%2C000 hours durability) rated units%2C which are some way below the 12K capacitors often found on overclocking capable motherboards.

Does that mean that they're more likely to fail? Does that make a big difference?

And thanks for the replies!

[Kronion]

1 hour ago, Jurrunio said:

what about CPU upgrades on this socket?

As already mentioned, the 5000 series is the last on AM4.

 

It isn't quite clear at this point (at least not to me) whether AMD actually plans to launch a "5000 refresh" series that still works on AM4 sockets. If so, there might a couple chips that are theoretically faster than the 5950X or 5900X. But to be quite honest, if there's a 5900/5950XT (or whatever they'll call those), I don't expect them to be that much faster than the current chips.

[Bad5ector]

1 hour ago, Chris Pratt said:

5000 series is that last gen on AM4. You can "upgrade" to something like a 5900X or 5950X, but the buck stops there.

Going to play devil's advocate here and say, are you sure about that? The new chips with 3D cache are built on Zen3 tech. No reason they couldn't release a 5900/5950 refresh with the larger and faster cache on the AM4 platform as a stop gap. Unless something has been reported that I missed to 100% confirm they (AMD) are not going to pull something like this?

 

But outside of that, yeah I don't see there being anything higher than the 5000 series being supported on AM4.

[Fasauceome]

3 hours ago, virtualninja78 said:

Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro

I would personally recommend a motherboard with a BIOS flash button because you won't find a B450 motherboard off the shelf that supports Ryzen 5000. If you don't already have a CPU that's compatible with the board, you will need to get one for the 5700G to be compatible.

 

The MSI MAX series of B450 motherboards almost universally have BIOS flash buttons and don't need a compatible CPU.

[Jurrunio]

48 minutes ago, virtualninja78 said:

I don't plan on upgrading the CPU. When I do, I'll upgrade to a new platform altogether.

 

I just want to know if the VRMs are going to be fine (especially in high ambient temps). Also, it uses capacitors rated for 5k hours vs 12k for the steel legend according to this page: https://www.kitguru.net/components/motherboard/ryan-martin/gigabyte-b450-aorus-pro-motherboard-review/3/#:~:text=The capacitors appear to be 5K (5%2C000 hours durability) rated units%2C which are some way below the 12K capacitors often found on overclocking capable motherboards.

Does that mean that they're more likely to fail? Does that make a big difference?

And thanks for the replies!

Then it's borderline fine. Gigabyte B450 boards have basic VRM back when 8 cores is the max so dont expect too much.

 

Capacitor hours dont matter as much as making the VRM run cooler.

 

@Kronion @Chris Pratt I'm asking whether he will upgrade further on this motherboard purchase

[Chris Pratt]

1 hour ago, Bad5ector said:

Going to play devil's advocate here and say, are you sure about that? The new chips with 3D cache are built on Zen3 tech. No reason they couldn't release a 5900/5950 refresh with the larger and faster cache on the AM4 platform as a stop gap. Unless something has been reported that I missed to 100% confirm they (AMD) are not going to pull something like this?

 

But outside of that, yeah I don't see there being anything higher than the 5000 series being supported on AM4.

That will still be 5000 series. It'll be something akin to the mid-cycle refresh on Zen 2, with the XT models (but probably actually beneficial in this case). In any event, the point was that AM4 is mostly a deadend.

[Bad5ector]

1 hour ago, Chris Pratt said:

That will still be 5000 series.

I suppose that's true. Unless they rename the new refresh to something like 6000 (which would be confusing IMO), most likely will be (if they do it) a 5900xt and 5950xt.