Budget Motherboard for Ryzen 5 3600

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CJRoss

Member
May 31, 2017
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Now that Ryzen 5 3600 has been released, I'm looking at upgrading my old i7 3770 to enjoy some of that NVMe goodness.

I will be using an NVMe drive, GPU, and Aquantia 10G NIC. The capability for a second NVMe would be nice but not required. I don't care at all about RGB.

I keep debating between the B450 and X570. What would you recommend?

Thanks.
 

TXgamer

New Member
May 30, 2019
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B450 is typically "good enough"; just make sure the BIOS is set for 3rd gen Ryzen (or you have an older gen Ryzen CPU you can use to update the BIOS to latest). I just purchased a Ryzen 5 3600 that I intend to put in my still unused ASRock Fatal1ty B450 GAMING-ITX/AC. It's not exactly "budget", but it's pretty close and has solid features.
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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Which nvme drives are you planning? if you want pcie 4 ones have to go x570 or wait for the b550 boards.

If you are near a microcenter, you can get $50 off board and $50 off nvme... and $50 off gpu when bought with ryzen 3000, its pretty nice.
 

CJRoss

Member
May 31, 2017
91
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B450 is typically "good enough"; just make sure the BIOS is set for 3rd gen Ryzen (or you have an older gen Ryzen CPU you can use to update the BIOS to latest). I just purchased a Ryzen 5 3600 that I intend to put in my still unused ASRock Fatal1ty B450 GAMING-ITX/AC. It's not exactly "budget", but it's pretty close and has solid features.
My concern with going B450 is that it locks me out of future PCIe NVMe drives.
 

CJRoss

Member
May 31, 2017
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Which nvme drives are you planning? if you want pcie 4 ones have to go x570 or wait for the b550 boards.
I was looking at an EVO Plus. I'm not aware of any PCIe NVMe drives available.

I didn't realize there was going to be B550. I had only seen the X570. I'm not sure I want to wait until next year. though. I'm leaning towards trying to find a budget X570 board.

If you are near a microcenter, you can get $50 off board and $50 off nvme... and $50 off gpu when bought with ryzen 3000, its pretty nice.
Good to know. I'm planning on moving over my GPU, though. I'm not ready to upgrade it yet.
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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All nvme drives are pcie but not all pcie ssds are nvme, nvme just happens to be the current standard for pcie ssds, previously you had ahci m.2 nvme drives for a short bit and before that fully proprietary drives like FusionIO.

pcie is the fabric
nvme is the protocol
m.2, u.2, and pcie HHHL are formats/interfaces

The 970 evo plus is a pcie 3.0 x4 (4 lanes) drive pretty much maxes out the theoretical bandwidth of 4 lanes of pcie 3.
There are a handful of pcie 4.0 x4 drives out, all using the same phison controller and are all around 5GB/s reads and 4.2GB/s write.
That is nowhere near the max bandwidth and a new phison controller is coming shortly with 7GB/s read and write.

Almost no one needs the insanity of 5GB/s but the drives costs about the same as the 970 evo and offer more endurance. (shrugs)
X570 will of course cost more so the $50 discount for combos is quite nice.
 

CJRoss

Member
May 31, 2017
91
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All nvme drives are pcie but not all pcie ssds are nvme, nvme just happens to be the current standard for pcie ssds, previously you had ahci m.2 nvme drives for a short bit and before that fully proprietary drives like FusionIO.

pcie is the fabric
nvme is the protocol
m.2, u.2, and pcie HHHL are formats/interfaces
Correct. I was just using NVMe as a shortcut.

The 970 evo plus is a pcie 3.0 x4 (4 lanes) drive pretty much maxes out the theoretical bandwidth of 4 lanes of pcie 3.
There are a handful of pcie 4.0 x4 drives out, all using the same phison controller and are all around 5GB/s reads and 4.2GB/s write.
That is nowhere near the max bandwidth and a new phison controller is coming shortly with 7GB/s read and write.

Almost no one needs the insanity of 5GB/s but the drives costs about the same as the 970 evo and offer more endurance. (shrugs)
X570 will of course cost more so the $50 discount for combos is quite nice.
I'm confused. Are you recommending the 970 EVO Plus or a different drive?
 

Klee

Well-Known Member
Jun 2, 2016
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I was in the exact same situation, trying to decide between a B450 or X570 board.

I purchased a Ryzen 3700x and have no real need for pci-e 4.0 right now but I wanted to future proof more than what the B450 chipset would allow me.

So....

I decided on this board:
MPG X570 GAMING PLUS


It's a "gaming" board and even tho it has headers for RGB lighting it actually has no RGB lights on the board.

My criteria was :
X570 chipset
Price
Excellent rating.

That board is the cheapest x570 board with a 5 star rating on Newegg.

There was one issue I was worried about, lots of talk of X570 boards being loud because of the chipset fan but this boards chipset fan only runs when needed.

I just looked and as of this moment it is not running at all.

I have had ZERO issues.

Setup:
MSI motherboard listed above.
3700x cpu
Samsung 500 gb SSD for windows
240 Intel SSD for Ubuntu 18.04.2
32 Gb of Gskill Trident Z 3200 ram.
PowerColor Red Devil RX580 video card
Stock AMD cpu cooler
Added a PCI-e USB 3.0 card for more usb connections, had it laying around unused.
Phantek Entho Pro case, this is the 5th motherboard I have had in it. Great case!!

I am REALLY impressed with the onboard sound quality, noticeably better than even a couple of nice PCI-e sound cards I have.

The board is flat black with a few red highlights but is really understated and looks nicer than the "server green" asrock rack dual xeon board that I took out.

So far super impressed with the performance, I can even game at 4k with the Rx580.

Just about the only gaming I do is World Of Tanks, and have a older pc that plays it really nicely with a 1080p monitor that I was planning on using to keep gaming on but I installed Windows 10 and then WOT just to try it out.

I was really planning on this being a Ubuntu only box but WOT looks AMAZING at 4k I decided to buy a Windows 10 key and keep windows 10 on it and dual boot with Ubuntu.

I was not really expecting it to game at 4k but it plays WOT REAL nice at 4k with everything set on ultra, I average ~35-~42 ish frames per second and butter smooth.

Have no regrets at all, its the first MSI board that I have purchased and I highly recommend it.
 
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Patriot

Moderator
Apr 18, 2011
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Correct. I was just using NVMe as a shortcut.
Your earlier statement
I'm not aware of any PCIe NVMe drives available.
Made it seem as if you were confusing form factor with fabric... so I tried to gently inform as its a common misunderstanding.

Were you just saying you were not aware of any gen4 drives being available?
They are a dime a dozen, all m.2 and on the same phison controller. You can get an inland one, corsair, adata, etc etc, all 5GB/s read and 4.2Gb/s write.

If you want a 1TB drive it doesn't make sense to buy the current evo plus as it costs more than a gen4 drive that has a higher endurance rating.

Samsung is making some brutish PM1733 in the U.2 and card formats as wells as NF1 but no m.2.
Those are going to be huge drives and pricey but can do 8GB/s reads at 1.5M iops... :D writes not advertised in the original press release and from what I have gathered are only 3.5GB/s.