Motherboard Purchasing [Help]

[Waqas409]

since my old motherboard (MSI B450 Tomahawk Max) just died a few days back.

 

I made a list of which are available in my area, out of those can you guys help me pick the best one?

 

1. ASUS TUF Gaming B550M-PLUS AM4 Micro-ATX Motherboard
2. Gigabyte A520 AORUS ELITE Motherboard for AMD Ryzen
3. Gigabyte B550M DS3H Motherboard AMD Ryzen AM4 Socket
4. ASUS PRIME B550M-A/CSM AM4 Micro-ATX Motherboard
5. ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming 4/ac WiFi AM4 AMD B550 SATA 6Gb/s ATX AMD Motherboard

EDIT: price difference is not much so i'd like to have the best one from above 5.
 

The specs I have now are the following:

CPU: Ryzen 5 3600
RAM: 32gb (corsair vengeance lpx 3600mhz 8x4)
GPU: 1070 Ti (will get 3080 in a week)
PSU: 550W (I'll upgrade to 850W once I get my rtx 3080).

Thanks

[RONOTHAN##]

How much are you spending on all these boards? Assuming they're about the same price the TUF B550M-Plus is hands down the best board on that list, but if it's over double the price of one of the other boards it's a bit harder to recommend

[Fasauceome]

13 minutes ago, Waqas409 said:

I made a list of which are available in my area

Are these all priced similarly? Each is suitable for your Ryzen 5 CPU, I think you should consider which motherboard has the features and visual appeal that matches what you want most.

[PDifolco]

I won't get a A520 board, and neither a low end DS3H, then Asrock boards are sh#t half of the time, so I'd go for the Asus TUF 

[mariushm]

They will all work OK with the Ryzen 3600, but some will not handle well much more powerful processors should you wish to upgrade in the future, because they either lack heatsinks on the VRM or the VRM is undersized (ex. Asrock Phantom Gaming)

 

Gigabyte A520 Elite is the only ATX model, which means you have two nicely spaced pci-e x16 slots (the second is only x2 electrically) and 3 pci-e x1 slots.

+ You get plenty USB ... you do get 4 usb 2.0, 3 usb 3 (5gbps) and 1 usb 10gbps on the back, but they're all usb type a.

+ You get Realtek ALC1200 which is good, and you also get optical out and 5 stereo jacks (so you can have 5.1 and microphone and line in)

 

You won't care with the 3600, but otherwise a negative would be HDMI + DVI, which means if you had integrated graphics, only one output would be 4K capable, and the DVI is called at 2560x1600 and it's only DVI-D so no VGA compatibility... basically DVI is stupid in this scenario.

 

With A520 you can't overclock. This board is not gonna have any problems with a 3600, and will probably work just fine with up to a 5900x, maybe even more.

If you don't plan to overclock, it's not a bad choice.

 

Asrock Phantom Gaming should be cheap, but they make it cheap by making the VRM (the circuit which converts 12v from power supply to 0.6v..1.5v for the processor) undersized, using cheaper lower performance components, and using very small heatsinks. It would overheat and could throttle more power hungry processors like 10+ cores processors.

You may get wireless, but it will be otherwise barebones (only 6 usb 5gbps ports, only 1 gbps ethernet) and the wireless is meh. The VRM is poor quality, and the heatsink on it is very small. I wouldn't buy it. 

 

Asus B550M-A CSM  ... CSM is basically for companies, sort of " models that use components we're fairly sure will exist a few years from now so we can ensure spare parts or replacement boards for a few years"

So they use older onboard audio chips like ALC887 which was launched in 2008 and only 3 stereo jacks, they have only one pci-e x16 slot, but you do get a decent heatsink on the VRM and you get 2 usb3 10gbps ports and you get 3 video outputs (hdmi, dvi, vga) which would be cool, if you used integrated graphics (for companies it's great to reuse vga monitors).

As it's "office" oriented, I doubt it would have good overclocking capabilities, so depends on price... A520 Elite may be better value vs performance.

 

Gigabyte B550M DS3H is sort of like Asus B550M-CSM but less features, and  better than Asrock Phantom Gaming in the VRM department and with better heatsink so it won't suck should you wish to upgrade.  

Unlike B550M-A and A520 Elite, you don't get usb 3 10gbps, but you get 4 usb 5 gbps, 4 usb 2.0

You get older ALC887 like CSM, but unlike you get an extra pci-e x16 slot

 

The B550M-Plus  is the best, decent vrm with decent heatsink, you get ALC1200 audio, you also get 2.5 gbps ethernet, you also get good mix of usb ports including a usb type-c, and you also get hdmi + displayport for integrated video.

Also, seems like it's the only model with BIOS Flashback features.

 

BUT again ... it's all in the price and what you care about.  If you don't care about overclocking, the A520 Elite would be just as good as the B550M-Plus minus the 2.5gbps ethernet part.

 

[Waqas409]

48 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

How much are you spending on all these boards? Assuming they're about the same price the TUF B550M-Plus is hands down the best board on that list, but if it's over double the price of one of the other boards it's a bit harder to recommend

 

47 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

Are these all priced similarly? Each is suitable for your Ryzen 5 CPU, I think you should consider which motherboard has the features and visual appeal that matches what you want most.

Price difference is not much so i'd like to have the best one from the above 5.
Previously i had MSI B450 Tomahawk Max, some of its circuits got shorted not sure why so i want a reliable one.