Choosing B650/X670 Motherboard

[Phoenix864]

Looking for some recommendations on picking out a board for a Ryzen 7000 system. I'm currently planning to pair the board with a X3D Zen 4 CPU when AMD launches them (hopefully soon). I'm not a huge overclocker, but will likely do some tinkering to push the CPU a bit farther. I generally keep my hardware for a while (currently running a X99/GTX1080 setup from 2016), so I don't mind paying a bit more for something that's built better/more reliable. However, I've been having a hard time telling when spending more is worth it, or if it's just a waste. PCIE gen 5 isn't a huge deal for me, so it seems like B650 is the better value proposition.

 

I've been looking at the Asus B650-Plus Prime ($200), Gigabyte B650 AORUS Elite AX ($230), and the ASRock B650E Steel Legend ($250). These boards seem pretty well regarded, but I've found it challenging to find much info on each specific model. These are also numerous other boards in the same price range with compatible features. The specs on each of the boards seem pretty similar - is there any reason to spend the extra $50 on the ASRock vs the Asus (ie VRM cooling/design, overall construction, etc.)? Does it make sense to just pick the cheapest B650 board that's available?

 

Any advice would be much appreciated.

[RONOTHAN##]

38 minutes ago, Phoenix864 said:

I'm not a huge overclocker, but will likely do some tinkering to push the CPU a bit farther

With Ryzen 7000 there isn't a ton of point to do manual tuning. You can mess around with the curve optimizer and the PBO limits, but that's about the only thing you can do. 

 

39 minutes ago, Phoenix864 said:

Does it make sense to just pick the cheapest B650 board that's available?

The general rule for picking a board is to get the cheapest board that fits your needs that doesn't have any major downsides for what you're doing. If the cheapest B650 board does that for you, get the cheapest B650 board. 

 

43 minutes ago, Phoenix864 said:

is there any reason to spend the extra $50 on the ASRock vs the Asus (ie VRM cooling/design, overall construction, etc.)?

The ASRock and Gigabyte boards do have better VRMs, so if you're planning on going for a Ryzen 9 chip I'd go for either the Aorus Elite or the Steel Legend instead of the Prime. If you're sticking to a 7700X or a 7600X though (and their X3D variants), the amount of power they'll pull is so little that all of those boards will have no trouble powering the chips. 

 

If I were going for one of those boards, my pick would likely be the Aorus Elite AX. It's got a VRM that I would trust to not need active cooling with a Ryzen 7950X, IMO it has a better feature set than the Steel Legend (more rear USB ports and more SATA ports), and the Gen 5 capability just isn't worth the extra $20 for the Steel Legend. The Prime board I'd want to avoid since it is a fair bit stripped down over the Aorus Elite (worse heat sinks, less M.2 slots if you care about them, less USB ports, no integrated IO shield, AFAIK no troubleshooting LEDs though ASUS's website is down so I can't download the motherboard manual to confirm) that those extra couple of features are worth the extra $30. Plus IMO it is the best looking board out of the three, but that's purely subjective. If you'd rather have the $30 for something else, that's fair enough and it would do just fine in a build with a 7700X or 7800X3D (or whatever they call it), but for the amount of creature comforts present in the Elite I'd recommend going for that instead if you can. 

[Phoenix864]

22 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

With Ryzen 7000 there isn't a ton of point to do manual tuning. You can mess around with the curve optimizer and the PBO limits, but that's about the only thing you can do. 

 

The general rule for picking a board is to get the cheapest board that fits your needs that doesn't have any major downsides for what you're doing. If the cheapest B650 board does that for you, get the cheapest B650 board. 

 

The ASRock and Gigabyte boards do have better VRMs, so if you're planning on going for a Ryzen 9 chip I'd go for either the Aorus Elite or the Steel Legend instead of the Prime. If you're sticking to a 7700X or a 7600X though (and their X3D variants), the amount of power they'll pull is so little that all of those boards will have no trouble powering the chips. 

 

If I were going for one of those boards, my pick would likely be the Aorus Elite AX. It's got a VRM that I would trust to not need active cooling with a Ryzen 7950X, IMO it has a better feature set than the Steel Legend (more rear USB ports and more SATA ports), and the Gen 5 capability just isn't worth the extra $20 for the Steel Legend. The Prime board I'd want to avoid since it is a fair bit stripped down over the Aorus Elite (worse heat sinks, less M.2 slots if you care about them, less USB ports, no integrated IO shield, AFAIK no troubleshooting LEDs though ASUS's website is down so I can't download the motherboard manual to confirm) that those extra couple of features are worth the extra $30. Plus IMO it is the best looking board out of the three, but that's purely subjective. If you'd rather have the $30 for something else, that's fair enough and it would do just fine in a build with a 7700X or 7800X3D (or whatever they call it), but for the amount of creature comforts present in the Elite I'd recommend going for that instead if you can. 

Thanks for the advice. It's likely that I'll be going with a 7-level CPU (probably whatever the Zen 4 version of the 5800X3D is). That said, I don't mind beefing up the VRM a bit nor having the extra features that the Gigabyte board provides - sounds like it's the best choice.