Should I get motherboard with stock WI-FI or buy an expansion card

[Zakolichoo]

Hey, in beggining of August I plan on upgrading PC, almost from scratch, I will only leave case, PSU and SSD disk. Since I don't have a very big budget I want to build my PC around Ryzen 5 5600 and RX 6550. For this I need a motherboard with AM4 socket. My favourite is B550 model, and I want to ask you guys about recommendations. I would like to have OC on it so in future I can give it a try. The other thing is Wi-FI and Bluetooth, at the moment I don't use any devices with Bluetooth, but in future I will probably want to switch my Keyboard, Mouse, Headset, etc. for wireless devices, so my question is: Should I get motherboard with integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, or is it better to buy an expansion PCI card later on. Open for opinions!

[filpo]

1 minute ago, Zakolichoo said:

Hey, in beggining of August I plan on upgrading PC, almost from scratch, I will only leave case, PSU and SSD disk. Since I don't have a very big budget I want to build my PC around Ryzen 5 5600 and RX 6550. For this I need a motherboard with AM4 socket. My favourite is B550 model, and I want to ask you guys about recommendations. I would like to have OC on it so in future I can give it a try. The other thing is Wi-FI and Bluetooth, at the moment I don't use any devices with Bluetooth, but in future I will probably want to switch my Keyboard, Mouse, Headset, etc. for wireless devices, so my question is: Should I get motherboard with integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, or is it better to buy an expansion PCI card later on. Open for opinions!

Get a mobo with stock Wi-Fi. The pcie card takes up more space in your case for more money for no reason as Wi-Fi on mobos is good enough nowadays 

 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Country?

Budget?

Usecase?

Full specs of current pc? Maybe theres still stuff that can be reused

 

Rx6500 is worthless and you are better off buying a used rx6600 or rx5700(xt)

 

Ryzen 5500 tends to be 20-30$ cheaper than a 5600, you can oc to 4.7-4.8ghz allcore to match the 5600 and cezzane has an insane imc so you can also overclock the balls of your ram to nullify the cache deficit.

 

As for ocing imo ram is the only fun thing to oc nowadays with basically no headroom on cpus and cpu oc being dead simple (set static volt + allcore multi) so if you wanna get into ocing then have a look at ram oc cause you can still do 50%+ overclocks, imc can do 5000+ 1:1 fclk compared to non apu ryzens capping out at 3800-4000 1:1 fclk. If you are interested in ram overclocking id reccomend picking up some used 2133 m378a1g43eb1 8gb samsung e die sticks, unkillable and 2v+ voltage scaling, if you wanna overclock later just do some lazy 4000 18-26-26-52 ~1.5v oc, trfc 350/400, everything else auto set

[Zakolichoo]

2 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Country?

Budget?

Usecase?

Full specs of current pc? Maybe theres still stuff that can be reused

 

Rx6500 is worthless and you are better off buying a used rx6600 or rx5700(xt)

 

Ryzen 5500 tends to be 20-30$ cheaper than a 5600, you can oc to 4.7-4.8ghz allcore to match the 5600 and cezzane has an insane imc so you can also overclock the balls of your ram to nullify the cache deficit.

 

As for ocing imo ram is the only fun thing to oc nowadays with basically no headroom on cpus and cpu oc being dead simple (set static volt + allcore multi) so if you wanna get into ocing then have a look at ram oc cause you can still do 50%+ overclocks, imc can do 5000+ 1:1 fclk compared to non apu ryzens capping out at 3800-4000 1:1 fclk. If you are interested in ram overclocking id reccomend picking up some used 2133 m378a1g43eb1 8gb samsung e die sticks, unkillable and 2v+ voltage scaling, if you wanna overclock later just do some lazy 4000 18-26-26-52 ~1.5v oc, trfc 350/400, everything else auto set

Hey! 
Thanks for answer,
Country is Poland, my budget on motherboard is max 170$. I don't know name of my case but it's compatible with ATX and Micro-ATX I think... To be honest, none of those parts can be reused, I got AM3 motherboard, Ryzen Phenom II x4 995, GTX 960 which I will give away to my father after I buy my new PC. I will only pass PSU which is TS XFX 550 W, which I had no problem with.

Regarding to my first post, by accident I typed RX 6550 instead of RX 6650 XT which I want to get, so with that I think Ryzen 5 5600 will be just fine. I am still not sure which RAM I want to get, as size it will be 2 x 8 GB 3200 MHz so I could possibly upgrade it later on to 32 GB.

Purpose for this PC is 1080p gaming on mainstream games, preferably without ray-tracing so that is why I chose RX 6650 over RTX 3060.

[SorryBella]

3 hours ago, filpo said:

for more money

In a lot of case, its cheaper to buy an Intel AX200/210 card with antenna bracket (something like this) than to buy a board with dedicated wifi chip. But if OP wants bluetooth as well, or cant find a board with dedicated m.2 E key, you might wanna consider to get the dedicated wifi chip afterall.

[Zakolichoo]

15 minutes ago, SorryClaire said:

In a lot of case, its cheaper to buy an Intel AX200/210 card with antenna bracket (something like this) than to buy a board with dedicated wifi chip. But if OP wants bluetooth as well, or cant find a board with dedicated m.2 E key, you might wanna consider to get the dedicated wifi chip afterall.

Oh yeah, I've seen "E-key" phrase when looking on board specs, but how does it really work? I searched it up on google but only found some wikipedia page which I didn't really understand much from... Is it about matching your Bluetooth device with M.2 Disk?

[Yelsew]

22 minutes ago, SorryClaire said:

In a lot of case, its cheaper to buy an Intel AX200/210 card with antenna bracket (something like this) than to buy a board with dedicated wifi chip. But if OP wants bluetooth as well, or cant find a board with dedicated m.2 E key, you might wanna consider to get the dedicated wifi chip afterall.

In my case, the difference between a board with just an empty e-key and the same one with it populated with a wifi 6e card was only $10 so that would be cheaper for the wifi mobo. (Asrock b650 pro rs btw)

[SorryBella]

3 minutes ago, Zakolichoo said:

E-key

As a quick preface, M.2 is the interface/slot, not the drive. Like how USB ports have different shapes, m.2 slots differentiates its function and capability through keying. the standard m.2 storage usually uses the M and B key, or combination of both. M key is commonly used specifically for nvme drives, while B or M+B key slots are commonly used for SATA m.2 drive. Both are M.2, but one uses the pcie protocol for ultra fast read and write speeds, while the other uses SATA protocol which are limited to around 600MB/s.

 

There's also A and E key which are specifically for pcie and USB functionality instead of pcie and SATA. This is what commonly used for wireless adapters and more niche add in cards, and are usually reserved for exactly that.

[toasty99]

Pricing changes, but for a real long time the gigabyte b450m ds3h wifi has been the best value motherboard for am4. $80 and it has wifi and Bluetooth. Sure it's b450 so you don't get pci-e gen 4, but honestly on budget builds most people aren't using a SSD fast enough for that to matter.

 

When you consider that's just the price of other cheap b450/b550 boards the gigabyte b450 ds3h wifi just checks the logical boxes for something budget.

 

 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

23 minutes ago, toasty99 said:

Pricing changes, but for a real long time the gigabyte b450m ds3h wifi has been the best value motherboard for am4. $80 and it has wifi and Bluetooth. Sure it's b450 so you don't get pci-e gen 4, but honestly on budget builds most people aren't using a SSD fast enough for that to matter.

 

When you consider that's just the price of other cheap b450/b550 boards the gigabyte b450 ds3h wifi just checks the logical boxes for something budget.

 

 

Also the bios is abysmal on those boards, barren asf, not good if op wants to oc esp when it comes to ram

 

better off with a used b3/450, avoid asrock if you wanna ram oc, bullshit 1.4v max vdimm. A decent choice would be a used b3/450 tomahawk/pc mate or a pro/gaming plus