[SOLVED] ASUS Prime B550M-A vs ASUS TUF B450-Plus Gaming for Ryzen 5600X?

[Deleted member 2841972]

Hi,

Prime B550M-A is the cheapest 550 motherboard in my country and TUF B450-Plus Gaming is the cheapest and the best goodlooking 450 motherboard. Going to use one of them with my 5600X, 3200MHz RAM. Possibly I will buy an NVMe M.2 SSD in future.
Here are the web pages of the motherboards:

Prime B550M-A: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/All-series/PRIME-B550M-A/
ASUS TUF B450-Plus Gaming: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/All-series/TUF-B450-PLUS-GAMING/

Some extra questions:

1- Is there that much difference between 450 and 550 motherboards? As I know, they both support 5600X.
2- Would getting 550 motherboard be an advantage in future for the new CPUs or other stuff?
3- What would I lose if I would go for a 450 instead of 550?
4- Does it matter if I get a Micro ATX or an ATX? Is it all about the size or would I lose performance on Micro ATX motherboards?
5- In this comparison, looks like tha 500 motherboard is the cheapest and bad one considering to the other 550s. In this case, would it be a better choice to get a ASUS TUF B450-Plus Gaming instead of getting a cheap 550?

Thanks.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I'd avoid the TUF B450-Plus. The B550M-A is a better choice, for a variety of reasons.

First is the B550's VRM is much more robust.

With B550 boards you get the option of PCIe gen 4 to the M.2 NVME and the GPU PCIe slot, and PCIe gen 3 to all other PCIe slots. You lose that option with any B450 board which is limited to Gen3 to the NVME and GPU, and Gen2 to all other PCIe slots. This depends on the CPU but is true for a Ryzen 5000 series CPU.

AMD is currently saying that 5000 series CPU's will be the last for the AM4 socket so the only CPU's you can get beyond a 5600X will be 5800/5900/5950X's. You'll need the more robust VRM the B550M-A has to handle one of those.

MicroATX (mATX) vs ATX matters most with your case: ATX boards won't fit in an mATX case. You also get more expansion slots with an ATX, so it's larger. But that's of very limited utility these days with all the peripherals (SATA and M.2 drive interfaces, ethernet, audio, USB, even WiFi on some) being furnished on the motherboard.

 

[dorsai]

I'm with drea.drechsler the B550M-A is the way to go if you're budget allows I would ge with a better B550 board though as both are rather low end items.