Question Help choosing a B450m Motherboard

[Fredin]

So I'm about to build a small APU system.

Ryzen 5 2400G
16GB 3000 Mhz Corsair Ram
Corsair VS 550

Im a bit confused about the motherboard

Currently I can choose between
Gigabite B450m Ds3h
Asus Prime b450m A
MSI b450m pro vdh
Asrock B450m Pro 4

Cant get anything else so which one among these would be better?
I might OC a little bit.

I'm leaning towards the Asrock and MSI board since they have better vrm cooling and connectivity than the others.

Asus doesn't have any heatsink on the vrm.

How is the bios of the asrock board? I'm seeing mixed reviews. MSI's Bios looks better IMO(I'm a noob, so..) But the overall cooling looks better on the asrock board.

But I've heard Msi have good aftersale services. How's Asrock?

Help me choose😣

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Asus Prime

 

[Fredin]

Asus Prime

But what about the vrm cooling?

 

[drea.drechsler]

But what about the vrm cooling?

If by cooling you mean heat sinks? It's non-existent on Asus B450M-A Prime. I'd restrain overclocking ventures to very moderate levels on this one, if at all. And put a fan on those poor naked FET's! please!

While the MSI board does have a heat sink, it's not particularly massive nor heavily finned. And the VRM FET's are a conventional 4 phase arrangement lacking the 'big phase' approach of some of their other B450M boards.

The Asrock Pro4 has a three phase VCore VRM but uses a 'big phase' approach with 4 powerful FET's per phase (2 lo, 2 hi) and it has a very well-finned heatsink that keeps it cool running. The biggest criticism about Asrock seems to be in the area of their BIOS's. They do everything that's needed, it just takes more clicks and screens than others. Especially when overclocking.

 

[Fredin]

Thanks. I'll probably get the Asrock board. I can get the hang of its bios with a little bit of time and I'm only going for light overclocking.

 

[TJ Hooker]

I'd say DS3H or Pro4, leaning towards the Pro4.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Thanks. I'll probably get the Asrock board. I can get the hang of its bios with a little bit of time and I'm only going for light overclocking.

Depending on just how 'light' your overclocking goal is...and what particular chip you have in mind...the Asus might be OK for you. Asus does have a great BIOS and their reputation for good hardware is well earned. It's really unfortunate they chose to leave those FET's completely absent a decent heatsink on that board.

I remember watching a guy running a B350M Prime A/CSM (also with naked FET's) at 4.0Ghz with R7-1700 on it. His point was how dumb it is doing this...the FET's were running 120C or so...and the board won't last anytime in service this way. But it was taking it, and kept on chugging for an hour or more of this before he shut down.

Good hardware, just not built to overclock an 8 core to high levels.

 

[Fredin]

Depending on just how 'light' your overclocking goal is...and what particular chip you have in mind...the Asus might be OK for you. Asus does have a great BIOS and their reputation for good hardware is well earned. It's really unfortunate they chose to leave those FET's completely absent a decent heatsink on that board.

I remember watching a guy running a B350M Prime A/CSM (also with naked FET's) at 4.0Ghz with R7-1700 on it. His point was how dumb it is doing this...the FET's were running 120C or so...and the board won't last anytime in service this way. But it was taking it, and kept on chugging for an hour or more of this before he shut down.

Good hardware, just not built to overclock an 8 core to high levels.

Im leaning towards the Asrock board. I don't see any issue except the BIOS.

 

[Fredin]

Just a bit worried about Asrock's RMA and after sales services. Are they any good?

 

[drea.drechsler]

Just a bit worried about Asrock's RMA and after sales services. Are they any good?

That I couldn't say: I've never had to use any mfr's RMA process. My practice is only buy from vendors that have a decent store return policy (Microcenter, Walmart, Amazon are best, Newegg too but you're more likely to pay return shipping) and don't let hardware sit around before setting it up and testing it out.

And asking this question all you're going to hear is horror stories, it's just human nature. You won't hear enough from the happy campers to get a balanced picture.

 

[Fredin]

That I couldn't say: I've never had to use any mfr's RMA process. My practice is only buy from vendors that have a decent store return policy (Microcenter, Walmart, Amazon are best, Newegg too but you're more likely to pay return shipping) and don't let hardware sit around before setting it up and testing it out.

And asking this question all you're going to hear is horror stories, it's just human nature. You won't hear enough from the happy campers to get a balanced picture.

That is true, people report more negative stuffs than positive.

But their bios looks real messy, like overclocking the internal graphics is hard and so is allocating more vram.

And I've heard that the gpu doesn't clock down when idle if its overclocked.

Maybe I shouldn't be thinking so much😅