Motherboard for Ryzen

[Terra Firma]

I have a master upgrade roadmap for switching my FX system to Ryzen, it involves a fairly budget purchase of CPU, MoBo, RAM, and an SSD for now. What seems smart to me is a Ryzen 3 or 5 paired with a decent motherboard, and upgrade to an R7 later.

My question is, would there be much difference between say, a B350 PC Mate and a Gaming Pro Carbon later on, would pairing an 1800X with the PC Mate later on be a bad thing?
Would it be worth it to shell out extra cash on the Carbon so i don't have to upgrade it again later, or just spend it on an R5 and an extra 4 threads?

[Damascus]

R5 and extra threads all the way.  As long as it's a B350 board it basically doesn't matter. 

[JoostinOnline]

There are two major things you want to consider:

1. RAM compatibility.  As you may have read, Ryzen runs much better with high frequency RAM.  You'll want 3200MHz RAM, but motherboards are finicky with those.  Check the QVL's for the motherboards (link in my signature) to see what's supported.
2. SLI.  They both support Crossfire, but only the Carbon one supports SLI.  If you want to SLI some GPU's in the future, you'll need it.

[Brooksie359]

well it may affect overclocking result if it has less power phases and cant give as stable voltage but idk if that matters as much for ryzen as there is a hard cap at around 4.0 ghz anyways so it isn't like you will be pushing the overclock super hard like with some of the other architectures.

[Terra Firma]

1 minute ago, JoostinOnline said:

Ryzen runs much better with high frequency RAM.  You'll want 3200MHz RAM, but motherboards are finicky with those.

I've also heard somewhere that there's some issues with 3000Mhz RAM? I have some 3000Mhz LPX memory picked out for the initial upgrade, some Dope RGB ram to replace it later on down the line. 

[Brooksie359]

1 minute ago, JoostinOnline said:

There are two major things you want to consider:

1. RAM compatibility.  As you may have read, Ryzen runs much better with high frequency RAM.  You'll want 3200MHz RAM, but motherboards are finicky with those.  Check the QVL's for the motherboards (link in my signature) to see what's supported.
2. SLI.  They both support Crossfire, but only the Carbon one supports SLI.  If you want to SLI some GPU's in the future, you'll need it.

if i remember correctly they say they support sli but the pcie lanes available for ti don't really allow it. i think the second card would run off of 4x gen 2 so it would bottleneck alot of gpus.

[Terra Firma]

Just now, Brooksie359 said:

if i remember correctly they say they support sli but the pcie lanes available for ti don't really allow it. i think the second card would run off of 4x gen 2 so it would bottleneck alot of gpus.

i kind of shy away from any form of SLI because for some reason i don't see the performance gains as worth it when you consider the price, i'll probably only go as far as a single 1080/Ti so multi-gpu support is the least of my worries

[JoostinOnline]

Just now, Terra Firma said:

I've also heard somewhere that there's some issues with 3000Mhz RAM? I have some 3000Mhz LPX memory picked out for the initial upgrade, some Dope RGB ram to replace it later on down the line. 

Only some models are supported by each motherboard.

2 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

if i remember correctly they say they support sli but the pcie lanes available for ti don't really allow it. i think the second card would run off of 4x gen 2 so it would bottleneck alot of gpus.

Well the B350 on says it only supports Crossfire.

[Brooksie359]

1 minute ago, Terra Firma said:

i kind of shy away from any form of SLI because for some reason i don't see the performance gains as worth it when you consider the price, i'll probably only go as far as a single 1080/Ti so multi-gpu support is the least of my worries

yeah sli has so many draw backs that I couldn't see myself using it. 

[Brooksie359]

Just now, JoostinOnline said:

Only some models are supported by each motherboard.

Well the B350 on says it only supports Crossfire.

well the same goes with the crossfire as well.

[Terra Firma]

@JoostinOnline on RAM, i have a Corsair CMK8GX4M2B3000C15 2x4GB kit picked out but it's not listed on the PC Mate's support list on MSI?

I really won't be able to go 2x8 for this initial purchase, it'll cut deeply into the allocation for anything else so i'm kinda stuck at that price point and i really don't want aesthetic compromises, i'm sure you understand

[JoostinOnline]

14 minutes ago, Terra Firma said:

@JoostinOnline on RAM, i have a Corsair CMK8GX4M2B3000C15 2x4GB kit picked out but it's not listed on the PC Mate's support list on MSI?

I really won't be able to go 2x8 for this initial purchase, it'll cut deeply into the allocation for anything else so i'm kinda stuck at that price point and i really don't want aesthetic compromises, i'm sure you understand

The 16GB 3200MHz version of that is supported, so the 8GB 3200MHz one should be too.  It looks the same and you'll get better performance for a slight price increase: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/GQqbt6/corsair-memory-cmk8gx4m2b3200c16

[Terra Firma]

1 minute ago, JoostinOnline said:

The 16GB 3200MHz version of that is supported, so the 8GB 3200MHz one should be too.  It looks the same and you'll get better performance for a slight price increase: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/GQqbt6/corsair-memory-cmk8gx4m2b3200c16

Maybe i'm stupid but when i was planning it out on PCPartPicker i couldn't find 3200Mhz 8GB kits. Thx m8

[JoostinOnline]

18 minutes ago, Terra Firma said:

Maybe i'm stupid but when i was planning it out on PCPartPicker i couldn't find 3200Mhz 8GB kits. Thx m8

No worries.  Here's a link: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/memory/#s=403200

 

Got to say I'd like some of that RGB RAM.  I'm still on the Z97 chipset though, so no motherboard controlled RGB for me.

[Terra Firma]

52 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

No worries.  Here's a link: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/memory/#s=403200

 

Got to say I'd like some of that RGB RAM.  I'm still on the Z97 chipset though, so no motherboard controlled RGB for me.

i don't know exactly how the RGB control works on RAM but i believe the RGB header is only for RGB strips and the RGB functionality of Ryzen stock coolers lmao
i'm going for Corsair RGB ram probably, i think it looks a bit better than G.Skill and it'll go nicely with the Kraken x52 and 570x case lol

[JoostinOnline]

13 minutes ago, Terra Firma said:

i don't know exactly how the RGB control works on RAM but i believe the RGB header is only for RGB strips and the RGB functionality of Ryzen stock coolers lmao
i'm going for Corsair RGB ram probably, i think it looks a bit better than G.Skill and it'll go nicely with the Kraken x52 and 570x case lol

RGB capable RAM is all DDR4. Z97 uses DDR3. It was also before the RGB craze so, despite being rather high end, it doesn't have any built-in RGB or even RGB headers. 

[Terra Firma]

3 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

RGB capable RAM is all DDR4. Z97 uses DDR3. It was also before the RGB craze so, despite being rather high end, it doesn't have any built-in RGB or even RGB headers. 

yeah i knew about the DDR3, i am on 990FX so i use DDR3 as well my dude 
it sucks