Question Looking for a AMD am5 socket motherboard

[Thkei]

What are some good amd am5 socket motherboards? (planning for building a pc next year) I've been looking for 1 hour and there's so many different ones with good ratings so I don't know what's good. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Math Geek]

i offer the same advice to this question every time i see it. "best" is very subjective depending on your needs. what is best for me is not always the best for you or someone else.

start by figuring out what you need in a mobo. how many and what kind of usb ports/headers. how many pcie slots, m.2 slots. rgb headers. what kind of audio do you want. what cpu do you want to use (helps know vrm needs). and so on and so on.

with that information in hand, start narrowing down models that meet your needs. pcpartpicker has some good filters as does newegg.

once you have some good options, start looking at price and the bells and whistles you don't need but may be fun to have, such as pretty lights, wifi/bt and other options. this will narrow it down to a few choices. now we can talk about which one is "better" for you.

 

[Thkei]

i offer the same advice to this question every time i see it. "best" is very subjective depending on your needs. what is best for me is not always the best for you or someone else.

start by figuring out what you need in a mobo. how many and what kind of usb ports/headers. how many pcie slots, m.2 slots. rgb headers. what kind of audio do you want. what cpu do you want to use (helps know vrm needs). and so on and so on.

with that information in hand, start narrowing down models that meet your needs. pcpartpicker has some good filters as does newegg.

once you have some good options, start looking at price and the bells and whistles you don't need but may be fun to have, such as pretty lights, wifi/bt and other options. this will narrow it down to a few choices. now we can talk about which one is "better" for you.

the pc is gonna be primarily for gaming. As it's my first pc being built (I'm using a hand me down from my brother currently) how would I know the following "how many and what kind of usb ports/headers. how many pcle slots, m.2 slots. rgb headers. what kind of audio do you want". Other than that I want to use a amd ryzen 7 7800X3D. I had narrowed down the motherboard models to the chipset supporting the cpu on pcpartpicker but there's still a lot at hand. Strong and reputable brands would be helpful.

 

[Eximo]

Start with a budget of course. How much do you have to spend on the total system? Or just the motherboard?

Number of USB ports is pretty straight forward. If you are just Keyboard/Mouse, then two. All boards have at least two. So start looking at other things you plug in. USB external drives like flash drives, your phone for charging or downloading pictures, joystick/steering wheel/controller, USB headset. What type of connectors USB A, or USB Type - C? Do you need USB4 speeds, USB 3.2 1x1 enough, or do you have anything that needs more performance. Thunderbolt?

PCIe slots: For a gaming system, you certainly want a discrete GPU. So at least one x16 slot. All boards tend to have this. Then we come down to add in cards. Do you have need for network speeds beyond 2.5Gbps (There will be boards with 5Gbps and 10Gbps built-in, or you can plug in a network card into an available 4x/x16 slot. Do you need WiFi, again, some boards will have that built in, or you can add a discrete card. Other devices might be additional storage slots for M.2 drives or disk controllers for SATA or SAS drives if the motherboard doesn't meet your needs out of the box. 2-8 SATA ports is possible on motherboards, but bandwidth may be shared between various things in the system.

Onboard motherboard audio is pretty decent these days. But there is the bare minimum like 5.1 surround sound, you can pick out boards with better audio 7.1, etc. Though most enthusiasts tend towards USB DACs these days (another USB port needed)

M.2 drives. My suggestion is to get a large PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive, like 2TB. Most boards have at least two M.2 slots, and getting 2 or 4 TB drive in the future should be sufficient. But if you want all your games locally installed you need to expand that. Either through PCIe cards that split out multiple M.2 slots (which means you need a motherboard that supports complex bifurcation) or you can do SATA drives for bulk storage.

And last and certainly not least, how big of a motherboard? Mini-ITX limits you to zero expansion cards beyond the GPU, max of 2-3 M.2 slots and they will either be stacked or on the back of the motherboard. Micro ATX generally have a 4x and maybe a 1x slot accessible after a two slot GPU is installed, but larger GPUs cover up most of the board. Micro ATX tend to be the cheapest boards, and offer minimal features. And ATX generally have room for seven slots, but only 4-5 are generally useable with M.2 slots tucked in here and there and can be quite fully featured. There are also sizes like Full ATX, EATX that are even larger and require slightly larger chassis.

Brand isn't so important as the individual products, price ranges, and features.

If I were to make a blind recommendation, something like these:

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/sz...ifi-atx-am5-motherboard-b650-gaming-plus-wifi

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Tz...ifi-atx-am5-motherboard-b650e-pg-riptide-wifi

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Lw...fi-atx-am5-motherboard-mag-b650-tomahawk-wifi

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/m7...tx-am5-motherboard-x670-aorus-elite-ax-rev-10

 

[Math Geek]

thanks for jumping in Eximo

i stepped out for a few. exactly what i would have written. only thing i would add is to consider the next couple years and what you might want to do then as well as now. for instance, maybe you wish to stream your gaming for others to see. or maybe you want to get into video editing and so on.

sucks to get a good mobo and then next year all of a sudden you wish you had one more feature you did not bother with when you built it. for instance i decided to add a second gpu so i could passthrough one to a vm. my mid range board could not handle a second card so i had to buy a new higher end one to allow for my new needs. had i payed attention when i built the system i would have done it to begin with and not had to spend more money down the line.

i know it seems like a lot to consider, but this little exercise will pay off big time when you get exactly what you need and can enjoy your system for years to come