How good is the ASUS PRIME B350-PLUS for Ryzen 7 2700X?

[Rangan Das]

Planning to replace my old AMD 970 series motherboard and AMD FX processor.

How compatible are these parts?

• 
  ASUS PRIME B350-PLUS
  AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (Will run at stock settings with stock cooler)
  Corsair Vengeance LPX SERIES 16GB (8GBx2, 2400MHz) (...again, stock settings)

I already own these:

• 
  Sapphire RX480 8GB OC
  2x 2TB WD Blue
  1x DVD-RW drive
  Corsair VS650 PSU

I do not plan to overclock any component at any point of time. Most of my work is in Lightroom and Premiere Pro. Sometimes, I do play games like Ghost Recon Wildlands, FarCry 5 or Need For Speed Payback. I tend to max out the settings as long as I get around 40-50 fps at 1080p.

I need to know if there will be any power/heating or any other issues with this combination. Especially, how "reliable" and power hungry is that board? Most high end full ATX boards are quite power hungry. This one, I think, comes with the essentials, without extra frills (such as RGB lighting)

P.S: I know the PSU is not the best, but it's not that bad either. Using it for a while now, but my FX-8320 at 3.7 to 4GHz under load.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

I have it. It's a great board. Fully loaded options in BIOS. Although your not OC'ing it's a great OC'er.

Like you said, it's not RGB, with all the bells and whistles, but for the price is a quality mobo.

With your system and GPU you should be able to max most things and get steady 60FPS with minor drops here and there.

 

[zyh1987]

since you are running everything at stock settings, its fine.

stock cooler is good at cooling the vram as it push cold air into the board, there will be some air flow across the vrm so i won't worry too much about it.

you might need to find a way to flash the bios, if the motherboard doesn't have the latest bios. that's something to consider as well. you can order the bios flash cpu kit from AMD, but its going to take some time for them to ship it.

 

[Rangan Das]

I have it. It's a great board. Fully loaded options in BIOS. Although your not OC'ing it's a great OC'er.

Like you said, it's not RGB, with all the bells and whistles, but for the price is a quality mobo.

With your system and GPU you should be able to max most things and get steady 60FPS with minor drops here and there.

There are tons of negative reviews on Newegg and hence I'm worried. Especially, taking into consideration that I will be pairing it with a 105W TDP processor.

 

[Rangan Das]

since you are running everything at stock settings, its fine.

stock cooler is good at cooling the vram as it push cold air into the board, there will be some air flow across the vrm so i won't worry too much about it.

you might need to find a way to flash the bios, if the motherboard doesn't have the latest bios. that's something to consider as well. you can order the bios flash cpu kit from AMD, but its going to take some time for them to ship it.

Is this not "Ryzen Desktop 2000 Ready" yet?
A bunch of new motherboards are coming with the updated BIOS flashed. Does this come with an updated BIOS too?

 

[delaro]

ASUS PRIME B350-PLUS underwhelming performance would describe it the MSI B350 PRO Carbon or ASRock AB350 Pro4 are better values. Don't get me wrong the Prime is solid but if you compare how it performs with others around that price range you will see it lacking. VRM cooling is decent but the power phase is 4+2 which is a bit limiting but not the end of the world since you can still work around it.

 

[Rangan Das]

ASUS PRIME B350-PLUS underwhelming performance would describe it the MSI B350 PRO Carbon or ASRock AB350 Pro4 are better values. Don't get me wrong the Prime is solid but if you compare how it performs with others around that price range you will see it lacking. VRM cooling is decent but the power phase is 4+2 which is a bit limiting but not the end of the world since you can still work around it.

Can you explain the power phase scenario? What does the 4+2 mean and what better options are there?

I did a quick web search and I saw that it's how the motherboard delivers power to the CPU. Now, when you say 4+2, how are 4 phases different from 2 other phases? I just need to know in a little more detail on how this power phase design affects this CPU+MOBO pair.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

I have it. It's a great board. Fully loaded options in BIOS. Although your not OC'ing it's a great OC'er.

Like you said, it's not RGB, with all the bells and whistles, but for the price is a quality mobo.

With your system and GPU you should be able to max most things and get steady 60FPS with minor drops here and there.

There are tons of negative reviews on Newegg and hence I'm worried. Especially, taking into consideration that I will be pairing it with a 105W TDP processor.

Maybe there are negative reviews. You will get that about any mobo. All the reputable reviews say the same thing. It's a decent priced mobo, middle of the pack for performance, low power draw, but a capable no frills mobo. It's highly rated for any of the reviews I've read. And I can attest that it's a solid performer. I've my 1600x OC'ed to 3.9ghz, ram OC from 2400 to 2733, with zero issues, and am happy out.

There are of course other budget B350 mobo's, ASRock, MSI, Gigabyte. You will find the same negative reviews about those too. It's a matter of choice, and the choice is yours.

 

[zyh1987]

4 +2 means 4 phase of power delivery goes into the cpu and 2 phase of power deliveyr goes into the SoC (memory controller, onboard graphics)

if your cpu needs 105w of power, likely the soc takes about 10w (i don't have the exact number), and the rest will be split among the core phases (105-10)/4 roughly 25w per phase.

more phase means less power delivered per phase, which means the total power delivery can be higher. each phase is is driven by a difference pwm signal, so that from the power supply side, it doesn't see huge current spikes, it also helps with voltage regulation, so the dc output is flatter.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

ASUS PRIME B350-PLUS underwhelming performance would describe it the MSI B350 PRO Carbon or ASRock AB350 Pro4 are better values. Don't get me wrong the Prime is solid but if you compare how it performs with others around that price range you will see it lacking. VRM cooling is decent but the power phase is 4+2 which is a bit limiting but not the end of the world since you can still work around it.

The ASRock has no LLC Bios options and is a worse performer. Not sure how that adds up to better value! Also, the ASRock is a 6 phase mobo (3+3)

More power phases is a good thing because then the load on each power phase is reduced. That means they generate less heat, and that's great because heat makes them less efficient and stable

 

[zyh1987]

there are many ways to configure them,
each power phase is usually good at delivery about 25A of current (you times the vcore to get the power delivery per phase)
above that vrm gets hot and unable to supply the required power.

if you want to read more, i suggest you look into buck converter.

anyways. 4+2, is usually okay for a stock ryzen drawing 80A -100A of current. but that's about it's upper limit.
what you want for a eight core is either a 6 phase or 4 phase with doubled everything (hi/lo mosfet and choke) to comfortably handle 100A.

that's why i said, it's okay for stock setting, but that's it. if possible, i would suggest x470 msi gaming plus. as it's for sure ryzen 2xxx ready and featuring a decent 4 phase vrm with doubled up components.

 

[Rangan Das]

Are "amd ryzen desktop 2000 ready" variants of these boards available in the global market now?

 

[zyh1987]

its hard to know unless you go to a physical store or manage to ask the seller.

 

[zyh1987]

There is a sticker on the box but if you are ordering online, it’s difficult to know.

 

[delaro]

ASUS PRIME B350-PLUS underwhelming performance would describe it the MSI B350 PRO Carbon or ASRock AB350 Pro4 are better values. Don't get me wrong the Prime is solid but if you compare how it performs with others around that price range you will see it lacking. VRM cooling is decent but the power phase is 4+2 which is a bit limiting but not the end of the world since you can still work around it.

The ASRock has no LLC Bios options and is a worse performer. Not sure how that adds up to better value! Also, the ASRock is a 6 phase mobo (3+3)

More power phases is a good thing because then the load on each power phase is reduced. That means they generate less heat, and that's great because heat makes them less efficient and stable

Have you built around either of these? The Pro4 "M" has a better VRM heat distribution setup physically, it runs cooler and is fine with 105W. Stat wise these boards are nearly identical but the Pro4 does give you lower temps across that VRM setup. Most of the software bios issues have been worked out across all of these boards so I won't get into the funky Ram problems you use to get across that Asus board or how you use to be stuck with 2933 regardless how hard you tried to O.C.

 

[ohenryy]

The X370 Pro might be a better pick. None of the B350's have really amazing VRMs at least with the Pro4 you get the chipset.

 

[Rangan Das]

How is the ROG STRIX B350? I may get this one instead, if the VRMs are good and the power draw is decent enough.

 

[zyh1987]

B350 is better than prime, but still fell behind of the mid range x370 boards, basically, the best b350 board uses matches with the X370