Need a reliable board for ryzen 5 1600

[Sarathismg]

Well all my life I used Intel, never even thought of anything else. But right now the Z370 price is driving me down crazy. As a result I am now thinking of AMD. My previous system was a first gen i5 with an Intel board which gave me awesome service until the board finally gave up the ghost.... I paired them up with a Gtx 960 and played the AAA titles occasionally.... Now I need to switch to new one in a really tight budget. With sky high Ram prices, it's pretty important for me to save some in the board. Now I am looking at this one:

ASUS EX-A320M-GAMING

I am thinking of using it with ryzen 5 1600, maybe I'll use it for occasional gaming and some simulation and machine learning stuffs. My main concern is reliability. Will it be able to handle the load properly? And maybe I'll look for the cheapest 8gb ddr4 modules like Patriot or such company. Will there be any compatibility issues. Or should I go for another choice of CPU, like i3 8100 with an extremely high priced motherboard or the ryzen 5 1400, which will save me a bit of money?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Hellfire13]

The CPU is fine. Pretty good for its price to performance ratio in current market. It should also give you that much longevity into the future compared to the 1400. However going for a a320 board would be like skimming the potential of that CPU. You should go for a b350 board so that, if not now, atleast later on down a couple of years, you can OC that chip when you need more juice out of that chip. You also get more features and PCIe lanes as well. Look for one of the following boards as per your budget and location...

ASRock AB350 Pro4

MSI B350 TOMAHAWK

ASRock AB350M Pro4

MSI B350 PC MATE

Asus STRIX B350-F GAMING

MSI B350 GAMING PRO CARBON

 

[feelinfroggy777]

I like the MSI B350 Tomahawk. It is a good priced midrange board. I would not go with a A320 board. They don't support overclocking and even if you are not going to overclock your CPU, you really should OC your RAM on a Ryzen chip.

That leads to my next point, don't just buy the cheapest RAM you can find. For one thing, Ryzen CPUs have a lot of RAM compatibility issues. Make sure you get RAM that is on the motherboard QVL or it may not work. So buy RAM on that list. The other reason is Ryzen scales very well with higher speed RAM. So I recommend looking for RAM with speeds of 3000 -3200mhz.

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ptX6LD
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ptX6LD/by_merchant/

Motherboard: MSI - B350 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $64.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-14 14:46 EDT-0400

 

[nobspls]

I would stay away from Asrock AB350 whatevers. I had AB350M-pro4 that was about as rock solid as jello. Random hangs, black screen etc. And then I saw this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/78pc3x/new_pc_amd_ryzen_5_1600_32_asrock_ab350m_pro4/
And if you look at the newegg reviews 1/3 of them complained about the same issues.

That is one board to definitely avoid.

And recently, as in last week, I had to help by brother-in-law put together a machine. And we went with this combo, $150 for the 1600:
http://www.microcenter.com/product/478826/Ryzen_5_1600_32GHz_6_Core_AM4_Boxed_Processor_with_Wraith_Spire_Cooler
You get $30 on for the mobo so we got the
http://www.microcenter.com/product/484054/Prime_B350M-E_AM4_mATX_AMD_Motherboard

And there was another $15 rebate on the board so effectively only $35 for the board. We put it thru the whole test cycle, burn-in the ram, ran it non-stop for 72 hours without issue.

 

[Sarathismg]

I would stay away from Asrock AB350 whatevers. I had AB350M-pro4 that was about as rock solid as jello. Random hangs, black screen etc. And then I saw this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/78pc3x/new_pc_amd_ryzen_5_1600_32_asrock_ab350m_pro4/
And if you look at the newegg reviews 1/3 of them complained about the same issues.

That is one board to definitely avoid.

And recently, as in last week, I had to help by brother-in-law put together a machine. And we went with this combo, $150 for the 1600:
http://www.microcenter.com/product/478826/Ryzen_5_1600_32GHz_6_Core_AM4_Boxed_Processor_with_Wraith_Spire_Cooler
You get $30 on for the mobo so we got the
http://www.microcenter.com/product/484054/Prime_B350M-E_AM4_mATX_AMD_Motherboard

And there was another $15 rebate on the board so effectively only $35 for the board. We put it thru the whole test cycle, burn-in the ram, ran it non-stop for 72 hours without issue.

I read somewhere that b350 OCing isn't on the par because of power delivery ......... If that is the case, then shouldn't I rather go for the a320 boards with 4 ram slots? I don't think overclocking is gonna be done anytime soon.

 

[Hellfire13]

The power delivery is good on the Asus F board and even better with MSI Carbon board. Thats why i have put them on the list. But they are a bit on the expensive side. But imagine, 4yrs down the line when you need a little bit more performance from that processor, you will have to sell the a320 board and invest on a b350/x370 board altogether to overclock. Thats like paying for two boards when you could be be done paying upfront.

 

[Sarathismg]

The power delivery is good on the Asus F board and even better with MSI Carbon board. Thats why i have put them on the list. But they are a bit on the expensive side. But imagine, 4yrs down the line when you need a little bit more performance from that processor, you will have to sell the a320 board and invest on a b350/x370 board altogether to overclock. Thats like paying for two boards when you could be be done paying upfront.

I see. MSI is pretty high priced in my region. But what about this one?

Gigabyte GA-AB350M-D3H

This has almost the same price as the A320. I am not sure, but this one reads another GPU slot? Maybe an SLI here?

 

[Hellfire13]

Crossfire, not SLI. You can put two AMD cards on that board. But SLI/Crossfire is not really worth it for gaming purpose.

 

[Sarathismg]

Crossfire, not SLI. You can put two AMD cards on that board. But SLI/Crossfire is not really worth it for gaming purpose.

I hope that will work properly with a single GTX 960?
And is there any issue regarding gigabyte component quality? About 8 years ago I bought one which burnt out only three months later. I don't know about present condition though.

Can this board make it's place in your list?

 

[nobspls]

...

I read somewhere that b350 OCing isn't on the par because of power delivery ......... If that is the case, then shouldn't I rather go for the a320 boards with 4 ram slots? I don't think overclocking is gonna be done anytime soon.

If you are having trouble deciding between B350 vs A320, you should read this:
https://www.techspot.com/article/1584-amd-a320-vs-b350-motherboards/

 

[Hellfire13]

The 960 card should work fine. That is not an issue. Other than that, its in the basic range of boards with all the necessary features. I have not read many reviews about it, but it looks good overall. The thing with Ryzen boards are, even after many BIOS updates, stability and performance is like hit and miss. One user can get good performance out of a certain board, while another might not on the same board.
But it should be fine overall.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

The power delivery is good on the Asus F board and even better with MSI Carbon board. Thats why i have put them on the list. But they are a bit on the expensive side. But imagine, 4yrs down the line when you need a little bit more performance from that processor, you will have to sell the a320 board and invest on a b350/x370 board altogether to overclock. Thats like paying for two boards when you could be be done paying upfront.

I see. MSI is pretty high priced in my region. But what about this one?

Gigabyte GA-AB350M-D3H

This has almost the same price as the A320. I am not sure, but this one reads another GPU slot? Maybe an SLI here?

That is not a bad board for what you are looking for. It is much better than the A320.