MB tips for first build?

[7Crane]

Budget (including currency): $130-$250 USD

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: photoshop/illustrator, older AAA games like shadow of mordor.

Other details First build. Using a Ryzen 5800x. Never messed around in a BIOS before. 

 

Any thoughts on pros/cons for these MBs for a first time build? I'm leaning toward the Asus because brand reputation, the i/o, and from the specs it looks like it can support two M.2 NVMe drives (slot 1 at  PCIe 4.0 x4, and slot 2 at  PCIe 3.0 x4). Does having two M.2s affect performance?

 

GIGABYTE B550 AORUS ELITE — $135

 

MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK — $170

 

ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming (WiFi 6) — $186

 

[Chronified]

Depends what graphics card you have for what motherboard brand I'd go with, but that's just me. You'll be able to control your whole systems RGB from 1 software package instead of trying to get them synced together using MSI DragonCenter + Gigabye RGB Fusion for eg.

 

Having a second M.2 slot doesn't affect performance, it just lets you expand storage in the future by adding a 2nd drive. Just like SATA. 

 

[SupaKomputa]

$186 is too much for B550 motherboard. Yeah you're paying for the brand. Go with the gigabyte.

[7Crane]

@Chronified good to know, thanks. RGB isn't something I'm concerned about. As far as GPU, I'll be using a gtx 1080.

[ViruzMage]

I agree with the other two comments. The gigabyte has two memory slots, is cheaper, and is perfectly fine. As long as you don't totally destroy it with a hammer it should be perfect. (Tip: Look at their respective websites because they go more in depth as to why you should buy it.) But have fun with that build! You should post it on here when you have finished it.

 

ASUS: https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-strix/rog-strix-b550-f-gaming-wi-fi-model/ 

 

Gigabyte: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B550-AORUS-ELITE-rev-10#kf

[7Crane]

@SupaKomputa @ViruzMage thanks for the advice, much appreciated. I'll take a closer look at those links!

[Somerandomtechyboi]

search for a board that has the most i/o possible for the pricerange cause any overclocking bullcrap like better vrms do not matter at all since cpu overclocking has been dead since 9th gen, though you may wanna get a good ram oc board like b550 pg velocita incase you run micron dies (ballistix) or samsung b die kit (any cl14 or cl16 16-16-16 kit)