Question Best budget conscious AM4 board for Ryzen 3000 series

[Draken21]

Need some help/suggestions.

I need to upgrade 2 desktops. I am planning buying 4 memory modules (2 for each - any suggestion welcomed), two Ryzen 3600 CPUs and two motherboards. The rest will be moved from the old desktops.

Ideally for the motherboards I wouldnt like to spend more than 100€ each but it would be good to support the following:

• Flashing to support Ryzen 3600 without the need for a CPU (just to play it safe)
• Support for PCIe 4.0 (after flashing the BIOS - Gigabyte already has done it with older boards I believe)
• 4 memory slots
• 6 SATA slots
• 2 M.2 slots (nice to have)

I will not be overclocking but a good quality board is always preferable.

Any suggestion as to which motherboard I should go for?

 

[DMAN999]

1. At this point in time ALL X470 and B450 MB's require a BIOS Update to support the new 3000 Series CPU's (AFAIK).
2. AMD dropped PCIe 4.0 support for older AM4 MB's:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-pcie-4.0-socket-am4-motherboard,39559.html


So, unless you revise those 2 requirements your ONLY option at this time would be a new x570 MB which will cost well over $100.

Personally I would recommend you look at the MSI B450 Tomahawk (which reviews well with 2000 series Ryzens) or the Asus ROG Strix B450-F.
Either should work well with the 3600 with a BIOS update and sell for a little over $100.
But until the R5 3600 gets reviewed by a few good tech sites on various B450's and X470's no one can really say how well (or poorly) they will perform on those boards.

I personally plan on possibly upgrading to a 3600 next year if the cost to performance is worth it to me.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...
But until the R5 3600 gets reviewed by a few good tech sites on various B450's and X470's no one can really say how well (or poorly) they will perform on those boards.
.....

Buildzoid's latest video is very informative...claiming 3800/3700/3600 chips are drawing less power than 2700/2600 chips even while overclocked so one of the decent B450 or X470 boards will be quite enough unless getting a 12 core or 16 core CPU.

Also that many of them will easily get the sweet-spot memory speed of 3466/3733 Mtps. Above that infinity fabric drops into 2:1 mode so over-all performance will probably suffer.

It seems obvious he's either under NDA or has some inside leaked info from someone who is.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JElrCCPDPA

 

[DMAN999]

I hope that ends up being true.
My 2600 at 4 GHZ runs very well on my Strix B450-f and my VRM temps idle at around 29-30C and have never gone above 35C (I have a sensor laying between the VRM and the IO shield).
And my 3200 RAM runs at 3400 MHz with tighter timings too.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I hope that ends up being true.
My 2600 at 4 GHZ runs very well on my Strix B450-f and my VRM temps idle at around 29-30C and have never gone above 35C (I have a sensor laying between the VRM and the IO shield).
And my 3200 RAM runs at 3400 MHz with tighter timings too.

I've watched quite a few of his PCB breakdown videos (I'm a glutton for punishment I guess) so I have a feel for what interests him. He's always looking for top-end power delivery to support overclocking attempts and he's really impressed by the X570 boards for their construction. So when he claims even a decent B450 board should be quite good enough for overclocking the sweet spot gaming CPU's (6 or 8 cores) then I do believe he's on to something.

 

[SgtScream]

Do you guys know why the x570 needs a chipset fan? Using a third gen Ryzen on a x470 motherboard without the chipset fan or with an older chipset, would that limit the new processors? That's what i'm waiting to find out post release.

 

[Draken21]

1. At this point in time ALL X470 and B450 MB's require a BIOS Update to support the new 3000 Series CPU's (AFAIK).
2. AMD dropped PCIe 4.0 support for older AM4 MB's:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-pcie-4.0-socket-am4-motherboard,39559.html


....

1. I wouldnt mind to BIOS update as long as the update doesnt require a CPU to do so. Sth like this list.
2. Is that true though as Gigabyte already supports PCIe 4.0 with some older boards, after a BIOS update. You can read more about it here.

 

[DMAN999]

1. That should work BUT since I don't own one of those MB's so I can say for sure.
From that list I would choose between these 2:
MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC
MSI B450 Tomahawk
2. I don't know because those reports about PCI-e 4.0 on the Gigabyte boards are all older than the AMD statement I linked to above.
Just because they added the option to the BIOS doesn't mean it will actually work or not get removed in a future BIOS update.
So I would be skeptical until we see some reviews of the 3000 series CPU's on the B450 and X470 MBs.

 

[DMAN999]

Do you guys know why the x570 needs a chipset fan? Using a third gen Ryzen on a x470 motherboard without the chipset fan or with an older chipset, would that limit the new processors? That's what i'm waiting to find out post release.

I have no idea yet.
I would guess that running the highest end 3000 series CPUs (3900x and 3950x) need a bit of extra voltage (and more power producing more heat) so the chipset gets a bit warm.
But until we see actual reviews it is anyone's guess.

 

[SgtScream]

I have no idea yet.
I would guess that running the highest end 3000 series CPUs (3900x and 3950x) need a bit of extra voltage (and more power producing more heat) so the chipset gets a bit warm.
But until we see actual reviews it is anyone's guess.

Yeah and if that's the case, I wouldn't upgrade to any of the 105w tdp 3rd gen chips if you had a b450/x470 or lower motherboard.

 

[DMAN999]

^ That's exactly why I am really only looking to stay with the 65W CPU's on my MB.
I bought it with that in mind.
I could probably get away with a 95W Ryzen But I really don't have a need for more than what I already have and the 3600 will hopefully be a decent step up in a year or so for me.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Do you guys know why the x570 needs a chipset fan? Using a third gen Ryzen on a x470 motherboard without the chipset fan or with an older chipset, would that limit the new processors? That's what i'm waiting to find out post release.

From the few leaks/reports I've read... the fan is needed because of PCIe4. It will not really be needed unless you have a number of high-bandwidt gen 4 devices on the chipset's lanes.

So i imagine only if you put a PCIE gen 4 NVME RAID card, populated with four PCIE gen 4 x4 NVME's, in one of the chipset provided X16 slots will it ever come into play. Or something else like that.

I expect it to be a a complete non-issue for 90% of buyers since there aren't any devices available for Gen 4 and very few that can use it anyway. Just consider that nobody complains about the Gen2 lanes provided by X470 chipset and you see what I mean.

 

[SgtScream]

^ That's exactly why I am really only looking to stay with the 65W CPU's on my MB.
I bought it with that in mind.

I have a R7 1700 and b350m motherboard. I'm going to wait until 4th gen (Zen 2+) then see if i'll go 4th gen or 3rd gen used for an upgrade.

 

[SgtScream]

From the few leaks/reports I've read... the fan is needed because of PCIe4. It will not really be needed unless you have a number of high-bandwidt gen 4 devices on the chipset's lanes.

So i imagine only if you put a PCIE gen 4 NVME RAID card, populated with four PCIE gen 4 x4 NVME's, in one of the chipset provided X16 slots will it ever come into play. Or something else like that.

I hope that's the case. Now that I think of it, b350/450 & x370/x470 all supported higher than 65w tdp chips like the R7 1800x/2700x. I don't know how they're going to pass the 16 core 32 thread processor with these dual channel motherboards. You're going to have to go with some really high bandwidth memory to pull that off.

 

[Draken21]

To go back to the initial subject and being a bit of budget conscious I think I lean towards:
MSI B450 Tomahawk
Ryzen 5 3600 (not x)
A pair of 3466Mhz DDR4

Any comments on the above?

@DMAN999: You were right, AMD's Robert Hallock came out a few days ago stating that older boards will not be supporting PCIe 4.0 on Reddit blaming stability, which makes me personal think that they are rather trying to push the more expensive X570 board more than anything. Let's not forget that the cheapest B550 chipset will be coming out in ~6 months, rather than on 7/7, so that makes me even more suspicious.

Although motherboard manufacturers launched BIOS updates with PCIe 4.0 support that will be rolled back once the new Ryzen series hits the market next month.

 

[DMAN999]

The MSI B450 Tomahawk reviews well and seems to be a Very decent board.
I don't foresee any issue with it running a R5 3600.
And it does support 3466 MHz RAM so that's good too.

 

[Karadjgne]

Cpus routinely pull far more than rated. Rated only applies to bios support. The i9-9900k for instance is rated at 95w, but under OC conditions can and does draw far more power, upwards of 200w. The reason for the additional EPS over normal.

So if bios says it supports a 105w rated cpu, then it does. It's upto the VRM's as to how far over that statement it'll actually handle. Figure the 65w cpus routinely draw upwards of 105w under OC conditions.

Not exactly sure what's going on with Asus, I've seen multiple reports of VRM's not being that good, whereas MSI seems to be hitting top grade, followed closely by Gigabyte.

Since nobody has any actual factual data on power draws, and scuttlebutt has had it that the 3k series will draw more than equitable 2k, I'd personally just sit and wait until the concrete hardens. It's all good saying you want XYZ, but relying on scuttlebutt, insider info, gossip etc and ending up with AyZ instead will just be irritating and a waste of money.

Pcie4.0 is supposed to double the bandwidth and bump the TX speeds a goodly ways. That means older boards must be built with every single component from resistors to diodes to traces to transistors that'll handle that upgrade without loss of performance. Good luck with that. You can add a bootable NVMe drive to a Z68/Z77 motherboard, hacking the bios to do so, but the motherboard itself wasn't built with that intended, it didn't exist yet. So performance is barely over that of a standard Sata SSD. Wasn't until Z97 that the boards caught up with component choices and full bios support. I don't see the Gigabyte hacked bios updates as any different. Sure 4.0 will be bios supported, but you'll only get barely over 3.0 ability.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...
MSI B450 Tomahawk
Ryzen 5 3600 (not x)
A pair of 3466Mhz DDR4
....

I personally feel that will be an ideal budget Ryzen 3xxx setup.

One that offers upgrade potential too as when Ryzen 4xxxx comes to market the 8 core and 12 core Ryzen 3xxx chips should be heavily discounted and worth a look.

 

[rigg42]

Need some help/suggestions.

I need to upgrade 2 desktops. I am planning buying 4 memory modules (2 for each - any suggestion welcomed), two Ryzen 3600 CPUs and two motherboards. The rest will be moved from the old desktops.

Ideally for the motherboards I wouldnt like to spend more than 100€ each but it would be good to support the following:

• Flashing to support Ryzen 3600 without the need for a CPU (just to play it safe)
• Support for PCIe 4.0 (after flashing the BIOS - Gigabyte already has done it with older boards I believe)
• 4 memory slots
• 6 SATA slots
• 2 M.2 slots (nice to have)

I will not be overclocking but a good quality board is always preferable.

Any suggestion as to which motherboard I should go for?

Here are the Motherboards with Bios flashback:

ASUS (USB BIOS Flashback)

ASUS Crosshair VI Extreme

ASUS Crosshair VI Hero

ASUS Crosshair VI Hero (Wi-Fi AC)

ASUS Crosshair VII Hero

ASUS Crosshair VII Hero (Wi-Fi)

MSI (Flash BIOS Button)

MSI B450 Gaming Plus

MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC

MSI B450 Tomahawk

MSI B450-A Pro

MSI B450M Bazooka Plus

MSI B450M Gaming Plus

MSI B450M Mortar

MSI B450M Mortar Titanium

MSI X370 Gaming M7 ACK

MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium

MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC

PCIE 4.0 is not going to be supported officially although some board partners might put it into their bios until AMD wags a finger at them. PCIE 4.0 is really not something that has any immediate real world benefit for anyone that isn't going to buy a new NVME that supports it. GPU's aren't really there yet. I'm of the opinion that no one should buy x570 unless they want to run the gen 4x4 ssd's, multiple gen 3x4 NVME drives at full rated speeds, or they need the power delivery to overclock a 12 or 16 core.

Many boards will have 4 memory slots, 2 m.2 slots, and 6 SATA ports. Just be aware that the PCIe lanes are limited so trying to utilize all of the I/O at the same time won't be possible. Trying to run 2 NVME drives at full rated speeds isn't possible without tapping into the GPU lanes as far as I'm aware. Just using the second M.2 slot will disable SATA ports or the x1 x4 pcie expansion slots. This stuff can get a bit confusing and varies a bit from board to board. Do your research if you think you'll be using a lot of expansion I/O. This can get even more confusing now that there are an extra 4 4.0 lanes from the CPU dedicated for NVME on the 3000 cpu's. I'm not sure if these can even be utilized on the older boards.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...
PCIE 4.0 is not going to be supported officially although some board partners might put it into their bios until AMD wags a finger at them
....

I am hoping AMD will relent on their position after the initial product roll-out and the user base gets experience. And especially after the board partners determine which of their X470/B450 boards are reliable with gen4 NVME's at least.

I am also aware the white hats are ramping up to provide modded BIOS's... at least for those not risk-averse.

 

[DMAN999]

Cpus routinely pull far more than rated. Rated only applies to bios support. The i9-9900k for instance is rated at 95w, but under OC conditions can and does draw far more power, upwards of 200w. The reason for the additional EPS over normal.

My Ryzen 5 2600 OC'd to 4 GHz has been as high as 124.8 W when stress testing with AIDA 64 according to the Argus Monitor software I use for fan control/monitoring.

https://imgur.com/98tZefE

View: https://imgur.com/98tZefE

 

[rigg42]

Here are the Motherboards with Bios flashback:

ASUS (USB BIOS Flashback)

ASUS Crosshair VI Extreme

ASUS Crosshair VI Hero

ASUS Crosshair VI Hero (Wi-Fi AC)

ASUS Crosshair VII Hero

ASUS Crosshair VII Hero (Wi-Fi)

MSI (Flash BIOS Button)

MSI B450 Gaming Plus

MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC

MSI B450 Tomahawk

MSI B450-A Pro

MSI B450M Bazooka Plus

MSI B450M Gaming Plus

MSI B450M Mortar

MSI B450M Mortar Titanium

MSI X370 Gaming M7 ACK

MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium

MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC

PCIE 4.0 is not going to be supported officially although some board partners might put it into their bios until AMD wags a finger at them. PCIE 4.0 is really not something that has any immediate real world benefit for anyone that isn't going to buy a new NVME that supports it. GPU's aren't really there yet. I'm of the opinion that no one should buy x570 unless they want to run the gen 4x4 ssd's, multiple gen 3x4 NVME drives at full rated speeds, or they need the power delivery to overclock a 12 or 16 core.

Many boards will have 4 memory slots, 2 m.2 slots, and 6 SATA ports. Just be aware that the PCIe lanes are limited so trying to utilize all of the I/O at the same time won't be possible. Trying to run 2 NVME drives at full rated speeds isn't possible without tapping into the GPU lanes as far as I'm aware. Just using the second M.2 slot will disable SATA ports or the x1 x4 pcie expansion slots. This stuff can get a bit confusing and varies a bit from board to board. Do your research if you think you'll be using a lot of expansion I/O. This can get even more confusing now that there are an extra 4 4.0 lanes from the CPU dedicated for NVME on the 3000 cpu's. I'm not sure if these can even be utilized on the older boards.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvyJikeOXYo

 

[drea.drechsler]

My Ryzen 5 2600 OC'd to 4 GHz has been as high as 124.8 W when stress testing with AIDA 64 according to the Argus Monitor software I use for fan control/monitoring.
....

How does that software measure power consumption? I ask because HWInfo64 also reports CPU power consumption, but it's laughably inaccurate if it's not first calibrated. The author even says it's inaccurate and shouldn't be trusted in his forum.

The only good way to determine power consumption is to measure it at the wall with an appropriate power meter... something like KillAWatt.

 

[DMAN999]

I assume it is from a sensor on the CPU but it might just be a calculation.
Aida64 showed a max CPU Power Usage of 107 W during that same stress test run.

A user in this thread said he compared the reading from Argus Monitor to power reading at the wall and said it was fairly close:

Software to measure CPU power dissipation

Is there any software to measure the present CPU power dissipation or a way to calculate it ?? Thank You falcon

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[drea.drechsler]

I assume it is from a sensor on the CPU but it might just be a calculation.
....

It's probably using SVI2, the same as HWInfo64, so it's something the CPU reports through telemetry based on inputs from the VRM controller combined with what it thinks it's doing. I believe that gets a bit crazy when put in overclock mode. At least this is what i've been able to understand as I can't get a copy of the SVI2 specification to understand it better. It would be interesting to compare to HWInfo64's readings concurrently.