Choosing the right motherboard for a 5950x

[atavax]

I'll helping a friend build a PC. A long with gaming, he wants to use a program that significantly benefits from extra cores, so 5950x. He's not super technically adept, so I'm thinking of slapping an ak620 on it and keeping it at stock speeds; so no overclocking. 2 things in regards to motherboard choice I'm concerned about is if it's likely to update the bios and how feasible it is without a earlier gen AMD CPU. And also the cpu power connectors. If 1 8 pin is ok, 1 8 pin + 1 4 pin; or if I really should get a motherboard with 2 8 pins for it.

[emosun]

3 minutes ago, atavax said:

if it's likely to update the bios and how feasible it is without a earlier gen AMD CPU

you didnt list a motherboard

[atavax]

1 minute ago, emosun said:

you didnt list a motherboard

the one i'm thinking about right now is the MSI MAG X570S TOMAHAWK MAX WIFI

[RONOTHAN##]

7 minutes ago, atavax said:

And also the cpu power connectors. If 1 8 pin is ok, 1 8 pin + 1 4 pin; or if I really should get a motherboard with 2 8 pins for it.

Single 8 pin is more than enough for a 5950X, you can probably get away with just a 4 pin if you aren't doing any manual overclocks (I wouldn't recommend it, but it's probably fine). The extra 4 pin or 8 pin only matter if you're taking the CPU on liquid nitrogen or if you've got an MSI board and plan on running 3-4 GPUs (MSI has the PCIe slot power plane and the CPU power plane wired up together, so if you're running 2-3 high power devices you the extra 8 pin is helpful). 

 

As for a motherboard to get, we need a bit more requirements than just if you need to worry about updating the BIOS, as long as the board hasn't been sitting on a shelf for 2 years it has a BIOS update for the 5950X. Is there any IO requirements (I.E. you need a ton of USB ports, or if you just need a mouse, keyboard, and that's it), does your friend care about aesthetics in the slightest, how many drives are they planning on running and what type are they, etc.? 

 

10 minutes ago, atavax said:

the one i'm thinking about right now is the MSI MAG X570S TOMAHAWK MAX WIFI

My problem with that board is that it's basically a B550 board with a second PCIe Gen 4 slot and costs $50 more. It's not a bad board or anything, it's just really overpriced for the features it offers. There are boards like the B550 Taichi that put it to shame in basically every aspect, more SATA ports, x8/x8 support, POST code (super useful if you ever need to troubleshoot something), and it's currently $10-20 less. If you want to save a bit of money and don't really need most of those features, the B550 Steel Legend is an option, it's $140 and still has a POST code (again, I'd want that if you're building a system for someone who's not technically savvy enough to troubleshoot themselves, the board will just tell you what's wrong with it), though it is missing BIOS flashback (update the BIOS without a CPU installed, can save you from a corrupt BIOS flash). The MSI B550-A Pro is another solid option, good rear IO, BIOS flashback, debug LEDs (not as good as the POST code, but still does point you in the general direction of an issue if one occurs). 

[atavax]

8 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Single 8 pin is more than enough for a 5950X, you can probably get away with just a 4 pin if you aren't doing any manual overclocks (I wouldn't recommend it, but it's probably fine). The extra 4 pin or 8 pin only matter if you're taking the CPU on liquid nitrogen or if you've got an MSI board and plan on running 3-4 GPUs (MSI has the PCIe slot power plane and the CPU power plane wired up together, so if you're running 2-3 high power devices you the extra 8 pin is helpful). 

 

As for a motherboard to get, we need a bit more requirements than just if you need to worry about updating the BIOS, as long as the board hasn't been sitting on a shelf for 2 years it has a BIOS update for the 5950X. Is there any IO requirements (I.E. you need a ton of USB ports, or if you just need a mouse, keyboard, and that's it), does your friend care about aesthetics in the slightest, how many drives are they planning on running and what type are they, etc.? 

 

My problem with that board is that it's basically a B550 board with a second PCIe Gen 4 slot and costs $50 more. It's not a bad board or anything, it's just really overpriced for the features it offers. There are boards like the B550 Taichi that put it to shame in basically every aspect, more SATA ports, x8/x8 support, POST code (super useful if you ever need to troubleshoot something), and it's currently $10-20 less. If you want to save a bit of money and don't really need most of those features, the B550 Steel Legend is an option, it's $140 and still has a POST code (again, I'd want that if you're building a system for someone who's not technically savvy enough to troubleshoot themselves, the board will just tell you what's wrong with it), though it is missing BIOS flashback (update the BIOS without a CPU installed, can save you from a corrupt BIOS flash). The MSI B550-A Pro is another solid option, good rear IO, BIOS flashback, debug LEDs (not as good as the POST code, but still does point you in the general direction of an issue if one occurs). 

the one thing is my previous PC; my current media player was an arock; and I found it's software rather disappointing. So I'm a bit biased against them. If you could reocommend a good 550 board for troubleshooting from like Gigabyte or Asus; it would be appreciated.

[RONOTHAN##]

3 minutes ago, atavax said:

the one thing is my previous PC; my current media player was an arock; and I found it's software rather disappointing. So I'm a bit biased against them. If you could reocommend a good 550 board for troubleshooting from like Gigabyte or Asus; it would be appreciated.

Main reason I recommend ASRock boards on AM4 is that they're 2/3 the price of the next cheapest competing boards. If you're going to get a board from Gigabyte and wanted a POST code the cheapest option is either the B550 Vision or B550 Master, boards that are both $250-300 while having the same feature set as the Taichi (at least the Vision does, the Master has a really weird feature set and not a board I'd recommend for a few reasons). If you want ASUS, they're even worse, their cheapest board is the Strix B550-E, a board last I checked was $300 and has the same features as the Taichi (with worse memory support as well). MSI has a couple other options in the Unify series, all of which are really nice boards, the B550 Unify X is basically the best board for overclocking DDR4, but they're still a bit more expensive than the taichi. 

 

ASRock's software isn't great, their Windows software barely works (though I'd argue the same is true for all the board vendors) and their BIOS on their low end boards is very hit or miss. Their B550/X570 boards have seem to fixed most of the BIOS issue, I actually prefer their BIOS to that of Gigabytes on AM4, but if you really don't want to buy one of their boards, fine. The MSI B550-A pro is a great value board, it's one of the few boards that actually make sense for the price in comparison to ASRock's B550 range, the 4 LED debug system, while not as good as the POST code, is still usable, and it's just an overall solid option unless you really need a feature found on a high end board. 

[freeagent]

Except the Asus can do SLi and the Asrock can’t. Memory performance is good on the Asus, nothing wrong with it.. I know what BZ said about the XE, but I was able surpass him on that front with my B-Die. Solid boards.. expensive though.. but you do get some toys.

[atavax]

48 minutes ago, freeagent said:

Except the Asus can do SLi and the Asrock can’t

i mean, let's be honest boys... SLI is effectively dead...

[jaslion]

13 minutes ago, atavax said:

i mean, let's be honest boys... SLI is effectively dead...

Not effectively it is officially dead. Nvidia gave up and left it to the developers of the games to bring it up to working order. Aka it's here in the driver you can use it but we will never ever touch it again kinda deal

 

As for the board you said. It's fine but expensive. You can get a tomahawk max form msi and it's just as good of a board for a good bit less.

[atavax]

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

You can get a tomahawk max form msi and it's just as good of a board for a good bit less

i think you misworded what you were trying to say. are you saying the asrock is just as good as the msi for less? because  i mentioned the msi...

[freeagent]

1 hour ago, atavax said:

i mean, let's be honest boys... SLI is effectively dead...

It still has its place, just not in the mainstream.

[RONOTHAN##]

2 hours ago, freeagent said:

Memory performance is good on the Asus, nothing wrong with it.. I know what BZ said about the XE, but I was able surpass him on that front with my B-Die.

I mean, you could've just gotten a good CPU memory controller, or this is a board similar to that of the Z690 Apex where half of them are crap and the other half are great. 

 

Most memory OC screenshots I've seen with ASUS boards are either fine or mediocre (not able to hit 3800MT/s dual rank), while the other vendors are more consistently fine (besides my X570 Taichi, that was just weird, it clocked memory really well but wouldn't lower tCL at all and I was stuck running 3800MHz CL16-13-13-21). It doesn't seem like it's just BZ who experiences problems with it. 

 

Besides, if you need SLI support, I'd argue the X570 Master is the better board for the price, at least there you get dual BIOS as well. Sure BCLK overclocking is broken, but realistically an extra 10MHz RAM isn't gonna help you that much in an SLI situation. 

[freeagent]

2 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

I mean, you could've just gotten a good CPU memory controller, or this is a board similar to that of the Z690 Apex where half of them are crap and the other half are great.

Maybe.. I only bought mine because it was about a hundred bucks off and it came with some extras that my -F didn’t come with. I had excellent luck with my -F and my -XE is a little better.

 

5 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Most memory OC screenshots I've seen with ASUS boards are either fine or mediocre (not able to hit 3800MT/s dual rank), while the other vendors are more consistently fine (besides my X570 Taichi, that was just weird, it clocked memory really well but wouldn't lower tCL at all and I was stuck running 3800MHz CL16-13-13-21). 

3800 dual rank was no problem on my Strix boards. All of my Asus boards except a midrange one I had were awesome and stood the test of time. I have an Asrock too, the hardware is good.. bios is hit and miss with some models.. Those timings are.. different  But I’m sure it was fine.

 

10 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Besides, if you need SLI support,

I don’t, but I do have some old cards that can be teamed up if I ever got bored and wanted to hit up the bot. It’s nice to have when a lot of x570 board don’t allow it.

[jaslion]

6 hours ago, freeagent said:

It still has its place, just not in the mainstream.

Not really? We are at the point that a bunch of single cards will absolutly max out older properly sli supported games.

[jaslion]

6 hours ago, atavax said:

i think you misworded what you were trying to say. are you saying the asrock is just as good as the msi for less? because  i mentioned the msi...

Was talking about the x570 from msi you mentioned. The thread hadnt refreshed so didnt see the whole asrock thing.

 

Asrock has great lowprice and highprice boards that stand out. In the midrange bracket their boards arent anything remarkable but certainly not bad

[freeagent]

6 hours ago, jaslion said:

Not really? We are at the point that a bunch of single cards will absolutly max out older properly sli supported games.

HWBOT..

 

Remember, this is a hobby too.

[jaslion]

16 minutes ago, freeagent said:

HWBOT..

 

Remember, this is a hobby too.

Oh right benchmarking still has that. Fair enough completly forgot about that.

[freeagent]

44 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Oh right benchmarking still has that. Fair enough completly forgot about that.

All good my man. It is very niche these days. I do have an SLi board but I will probably never use it.