Good budget MoBo for R5 1600 build?

[Timstertimster]

This is a continuation of a CPU thread that resulted in my understanding that the Ryzen 5 1600 is a good choice for me

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3476755/amd-cpu-general-purpose.html#19975005

Now it's the motherboard question.

HOLY SHIZZLE THERE ARE A LOT of options. I'm utterly overwhelmed. But maybe have narrowed it down a little bit:

Asus has been good for me in the past and they still have a decent reputation component wise. Solid kit they make. AsRock being like their budget offshoot is also considered. The rest, Gigabyte, MSI, etc to me just seem risky and cheap.

I learned that I should also pay attention to the UEFI that the board has.

Aside from smaller form factor, whats the difference between Micro and regular ATX boards? I doubt I'll really need 128 GB RAM so I believe 2 DIMM slots are enough. I'm probably only ever going to use 1 beefy GPU instead of loading 2, although still not clear what the SLI fuss is about.

https://m.newegg.com/ProductList?keyword=Asrock+am4+micro

These are some nice looking little micro ATX boards. Will I have heat issues? Can I even attempt OC or is that kind of chipset not going to work?

But then I see the Taichi and it's awesome but geez, 250 bucks! No thank you...

So in the 100-ish range, I'm trying to:

1. Potentially OC a Ryzen 5 1600
2. Maybe attempt a NVma boot disk setup
3. Back up my data on SATA connected HDDs
4. Run games off a couple dedicated Samsung 840 evo SSDs
5. Keep my current GTX 970 Ti Strix but one day might decide to replace it with a 1060 Ti... or even 1080 should I stumble across a wad of cash...
6. Perhaps get more serious about multi GPU setup if the use case warrants it (CUDA rendering and VR gaming)

The last 2 points are really unlikely and if they weren't I'd just budget $250 and get a taichi.

But I'm hoping to do this on a $100-ish budget

 

[Chugalug_]

The MSI B350 Tomahawk is a very solid deal atm.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Y4kwrH/msi-b350-tomahawk-atx-am4-motherboard-b350-tomahawk

 

[Timstertimster]

Yea except I'm skittish about MSI. Don't want to have to deal with things getting weird in a year.

And looking I to it further it appears that I'm gonna need a x370 chipset after all if I ever want to have the option of multi GPU and also I will probably max out 4 sata drives right away if I go b350...

 

[Chugalug_]

Multi-GPU isn't a good choice unless going top of the line, keep that in mind.
What's the budget for your entire system?

 

[madmatt30]

Asrock b350 pro 4 for me personally.

6 sata ports , an m2 sata based port & a seperate m2 ultra PCI express based port.

Can't fault the board for anything for its pricepoint , good vrm setup , good build quality , no issues overclocking my 1700 to 4.1ghz.

You CAN run 2x nvidia cards on a b350 for rendering use BTW, just not in a sli configuration.

 

[madmatt30]

On another note I have no idea what MSI were thinking only putting 4 sata ports on their b350 boards , I can understand it on the matx variants but not the full atx boards.

 

[Chugalug_]

The B350M Pro4 is also a good value option as mentioned above.

 

[madmatt30]

You should in no way consider asrock to be a budget offshoot of Asus BTW.

While they're the same mother firm they are a seperate entity on design & development.

At the same comparative pricepoint as the Asus boards the asrock boards are IMO better.

On a budget basis the Asus b350 prime & the asrock pro 4 (& I mean the full atx ones) are hard to beat.

 

[Chugalug_]

Yeah, Asus' AM4 boards have been kinda lazy I feel.... design wise and in terms of components to me they feel like copy pastes of Intel's B250 series with a different socket having worked with both brand's boards regularly, still solid though.