[SOLVED] MSI B450 Tomahawk or MSI B450 Gaming Plus?

[Justin Hunter]

Is there really a difference between the two? The B450 Tomahawk has not gone lower then $129.99 CAD in the past year while the B450 Gaming Plus has fluctuated between $125 - $140 over the last little while. Is the extra money worth it for the B450 Tomahawk? Right now I can get the B450 Gaming Plus from eBay (Newegg seller) for $132 CAD with a 10% discount promotion at the moment.

Here is my build for a better idea:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor | Purchased For $166.24
Memory | Team Vulcan 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory | Purchased For $91.33
Storage | Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive | Purchased For $83.99
Video Card | Gigabyte Radeon RX 570 4 GB Gaming 4G Video Card | Purchased For $180.57
Case | Phanteks P300 ATX Mid Tower Case | Purchased For $45.00
Power Supply | Corsair TXM Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply | $79.99 @ Canada Computers
Case Fan | Corsair Air Series AF120 Red 52.19 CFM 120 mm Fan | Purchased For $5.00
Case Fan | Corsair Air Series AF140 Red 66.4 CFM 140 mm Fan | Purchased For $5.00
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total (before mail-in rebates) | $677.12
| Mail-in rebates | -$20.00
| Total | $657.12
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-09-28 17:20 EDT-0400 |

 

[Darkbreeze]

For that CPU, either of those boards will work fine. If you were going with a Ryzen 7 instead, then the Tomahawk or Pro carbon would be better choices. I'm not honestly a fan of any of these MSI boards except the Pro Carbon, but for that build it should be fine.

 

[Justin Hunter]

For that CPU, either of those boards will work fine. If you were going with a Ryzen 7 instead, then the Tomahawk or Pro carbon would be better choices. I'm not honestly a fan of any of these MSI boards except the Pro Carbon, but for that build it should be fine.

Whats wrong with MSI?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Nothing is "wrong" with them, I just happened to have noticed a trend for a while there on a lot of premature failures on the Tomahawk and lower tiered boards like the Bazooka and Mortar. Others don't agree AND I haven't seen any of these issues recently so it may have been a bad batch of boards or a BIOS issue that we've moved past now. Hard to say, but fact is that traditionally, across the board, regardless of AMD or Intel platform, there has been a tendency to see higher numbers of issues on MSI boards. Especially lower tiered models. The assumption would be poorer quality control than with some other brands and it got better for a couple of years after a BAD period of them with the AM3+ boards but then did some backsliding starting with the Kaby lake era. Nothing out of bounds, just something that you notice when you do this for a long time.