Ryzen 3700x and B450

I'm planning to update my system in the next months and I am really struggling with the ideea that x570 are very expensive.
What am I really loosing if I go for a B450 board , besides PCIex 4.0 ?
Not really into overclocking and I don't really have any use of Nvme SSDs for PCIEx 4.0.

 

You are "losing" the opportunity to waste moiney.






Bang For The Buck :
MSI B450 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard

 

i had the exact dilema, running MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX as we speak. Save your money.

 

Thanks for the answers.
I really want 3700x and watched alot of videos, many reviewers complaining of how bad VRM is on lower priced x570. Seems this concern is new since x570 , that's why I was doubting B450 since their price is even lower.

 

I made PC for buddy and it was b450 tomahawk max, 3200ddr cl14 16gb, 256gb name ssd and regular 1tb data ssd, plus 3700x and saphire pulse 5700xt.
All runs flawlessly. Ram runs 3766 cl15. CPU is little offset on vcore, -0.1v . So it is not so hot as on default, and boosts little higher.
Cooler is noctua 15s.
Just made some pbo change, ryzen plan installed and all runs, no complaints from his side.
So y, Vrms may be a problem, when u oc, but really, there is no point for oc this CPU.

 

x570 is about bandwidth. And other than PCIe 4.0 SSD speed that's all it's got...at this point in time.

The x570 is AMD's first "enthusiast" chipset according to an article I read. It was MSI's CEO talking about the x570's.

I bought the x570 Asus TUF because I don't have a crystal ball and what might be done with it in the next 5 years. Gambling on the future is what the x570 is right now?

If budget is an issue the B450's are a great choice until we see what the 550's are going to bring to the table.

 

I recently replaced a B450 board with an X570. I had a lowend board. Had a couple of weird issues that I could not explain so I decided to replace the board. It ran fine with my 3700X for almost 4 months before the weird problems started. It could have just been the board but it wasn't that old so who knows.

 

save your cash, used an x470 with my 3700x since it came out, runs great, and nothing really "needs" pci4 right now.

All you lose is full speed dual m2 drives.

 

Asus strix-f gaming and 3700x works like a champ also the bios is great.

 

3800X and Asus B450M Pro Gaming here, runs just fine.
It is all watercooled though, VRMs included.

B450 is just fine

 

The x570 has 128gb RAM max. All the notation I can find for b450 / x470 and the 3xx series says they max out at 64gb. Not sure how that works seeing as the IMC is on the CPU, but maybe it's in the BIOS limitations for all I know. You also get more fancy USB ports on x570.
That is why I bought x570, as when I build a PC I always want the newest mainstream/enthusiast platform* I can get, as I keep the PC for 4~5 years.
If you're going to game on it, the MSI *MAX* series of motherboards offer drop-in Ryzen 3xxx capability, and are fairly decent / trouble free. You will not notice a difference until we get more devices using PCI-express 4.0.
I can vouch for my Asrock x570 Phantom Gaming 4, it was the cheapest x570 board in the store, it has an intel network port, 8 sata ports on the board, PCI-E 4.0, Open-ended PCI-express slots (a must!), and was solid enough. It also has had no boosting issues with release days BIOS (it tends to stay boosted and never want to clock down fully, but I don't care as I'm always at it, if you update the BIOS, it'll clock down more). The on-board x570 chipset fan also is inaudible in my full tower Fractal (windowless, sound-deadened) case. No pesky LED's to blind you either. I don't need my PC puking rainbows at me 24/7. I do content creation here so this gets a lot of hard use, no watercooling stuff either, all air, as I can't afford a leak in a production system.
So unless you get a killer combo deal or buy one open-box, go for the MSI MAX series (there's a couple, at-least 2 or 3) b450 boards and save some cash. DO buy RAM that is KNOWN WORKING. Ryzen 3xxx does like MICRON RAM better than Hynix, so avoid the Hynix.

*from above: I go for the newest platform when I buy, even if the CPU isn't the newest or best. If I wanted an older platform I would have bought said platform when it came out.

 

The only Issue with MSI Tomahawk is that while it has a good VRM it's lacking in ports/features (older Audio chip, Realtek LAN). Might not be a big difference from the latest Realtek Audio and Intel lan, but I wonder as a non-overclocker if good VRM is going to be better than the added features.
Guess you can't have both

 

Recently bought Gigabyte x570 UD. Audio and LAN is average, but VRM part is strong, so if you can buy it for a decent price, go for it.

 

That was the compromise I had to make when purchased MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX. But I thought: I'll get a dedicated sound card and an Intel NIC and will be just perfect. But added cards adds to the total cost, so in the end as you well said, choose 2 can't have all 3.

 

going to wait a bit. maybe B550 boards will pop-up in the wild. It's nice to be future proof...what if 2-3 years from now GPUs will take advantage of PCIe 4.0.
and from what I see getting a cheaper x570 boad like MSI MPG Gaming Plus should be no problem for 3700x. Not interested in OC, just stock plus boost speeds and from all the reviews it seem to handle it normally as it should.

 

I deliberately bought the cheapest x570 board they had in the Micro Center store with my 3700x.
Why? Because spending more on a motherboard to run at or near stock settings WILL NOT make the computer any faster. Spend it on a GPU or buy the next higher up CPU unless a certain board has features you NEED. The whole point of upgrading the computer is to make it faster. So why would you waste money on something that's NOT making it faster?
I do content creation, so I wanted the higher memory max limit and didn't want overclocking, nor did I want my PC to look like a disco or 'the town's alternative night club' - as I likely said above.
It runs fine, I can happily buy 2 or 4 32gb sticks and put them in further down the road (should I need to) and know I won't have an issue; and know that my board was validated using a 3950x and hence will have no issue upgrading to it (eventually I will).
That being said, if you're making a gaming system and not content creation, regardless how long you keep your PC, the B450 won't be any slower, and will actually be a hair less power hungry.
B550 chipsets and A520 chipsets are now being sent to motherboard vendors. Expect low-end and mid-range 5xx series boards to come out in whatever time it takes vendors to validate their designs and put them through paces. This is an edit. @apoklyps3 . You might be holding your breath for a long time there - but - if your old PC still works and does what is required of it, what's the harm in waiting a little longer I suppose? When I say a while, it's because they won't be as cheap as B450 series boards, and hence, there's not really room in the market for them (as PCI-E 4.0 adds cost). Gamer's Nexus covered this last month or so sometime, but you'd have to look it up. He also did a review on the B550A (Asrock B550-AM board) chipset/board recently, which is just B450 with PCI-E 4.0 on the x16 top slot and x4 NVME slot, with the rest being older PCI-E version(s).
So, if it seems like it's just around the corner, it's likely not. Of course, I'd love to be wrong, too; as I could use to build some more-future-proof web surfing machines out of those, where x570 isn't warranted!

The only time GPU's really can take advantage of PCI-express 4.0 is when you're using system RAM as part of the frame buffer / VRAM. This only happens when you exceed the amount of VRAM on the video card, and hence the video driver will request an amount of system RAM be allotted to it. Otherwise, most times, it's hard to even see a reduction much more than 2~3 FPS max even when using pci-express 3.0 x8 vs x16.

You won't have any issue with any of the x570 motherboards; they were all validated using the 3950x 16-core 32-thread processor. If something does happen, that is what warranty is for.
There will always be something newer, something better just over the horizon, in the tech world. So just make sure not to spend too long waiting, when you could be spending more time enjoying.
EDIT: Changed statement of B550 to reflect boards are now being manufactured, but are not yet on the market.

 

I'm on a i7 4790k.
Don't really mind waiting, but the urge to upgrade is there
wonder how much time will it it be until b550 boards will be released. there where some gigabyte mobos listed somewhere.
I hope not long. the way I see it they will replace b450 in the price range and b450 will drop to b350 prices, while b350 will be phased out.
After studying the market a bit it even feels like ryzen 3600 makes more sense to me. I'd be saving alot for basicaly the same gaming performance.

 

I was on a pretty tight budget and got an ASRock b450 Pro 4, 16gb pc3200 G Skill, and Ryzen 5 1600AF all for $250 which I thought was a great value. After researching a lot this build made the most sense for me since it has 4 memory slots, plenty of sata/usb/m.2, decent audio, and it supports Ryzen 3000 outta the box. I got over 5 years out of my previous 990FX board with the same CPU, so this board is gonna last me forever. I do like to overclock as much as I can even on stock coolers, but unfortunately I didn't win the silicon lottery with this chip. It refuses to go past 3.8ghz with cool temps even though I'm sure the board is perfectly capable.

 

B550 chipsets are now being supplied to motherboard vendors as we speak.
Videocardz has a scoop on it as does wccftech. I won't link due to site rules, but you can just google it quickly.
I came from a 4790k all-core 4.4ghz delidded with liquid metal that barely kept sane temps on a 100$ air cooler, with 2400mhz 32gb ddr-3 cas-11 memory, on a Z97 Asus Max Hero motherboard.
I replaced the whole entire machine, Ryzen 3700x, Asrock Phantom Gaming 4, 32gb 3000mhz ddr4 (dual rank 2x 16gb sticks) cas-15 memory *cough* bargain bin memory *cough* *hack*.
Stock cooler, no overclocking or PBO, only XMP profile enabled for RAM speeds. 3600mhz ~ 3200mhz CL14 memory if you can afford it and it's not a big jump from 3000mhz CL15 / 3200mhz CL16 (same effective speed mostly aside of infinity fabric speeds), as you'll rake in an extra 5% or so on processor performance (you'll want that coming from a 4790k).
I would wholly recommend getting an NVME drive for the new setup when you update, even if it's a paltry size like 250gb~500gb, you can use other SSD's or a hard drive for games depending on budget. Sata VS NVME doesn't make much difference for games, but it does make Windows / general use performance a little better. Not worth spending double the price of a sata drive though.

While single threaded speeds aren't a big jump, you'll see a definitive increase in performance on absolutely anything that can use multiple cores more than a quad core chip.
Wholly recommend an 8-core as a minimum. Do not need water cooling and do not need to overclock. Stock cooler is good enough but spending 30~50$ on a decent air cooler isn't necessarily a waste. I would sooner get a better processor and use the stock cooler vs spending money on a cooler and getting a lesser CPU due to budget constraints.
Rimworld went from a slow crawl on my 4790k to everyone running at the speed of cars. It was mind-blowing the difference. Zipping/unzipping files was some 2.5~5x better (WOW), I was blown away by the difference (some is due to NVME vs sata for IOPS on lots of little files, too, this is where NVME shines).
My BeamNG Drive driving simulator went from just about able to run 8~10 vehicles in the simulation in real time, to easily handling 16~21 vehicles in real time on the new machine.

So please know that while I said B550 wouldn't be out for a bit before, evidently maybe AMD heard the community or just is now getting around to it. Hooray.
I will edit my previous post, too.
Happy Computering!

 

I saw that article, but i don't buy it entirely.
What would be the downside of B550 if it will still give you PCIex 4.0 on all slots?
We will see. I won't rush into things, but one thing is for sure: AMD is the way in the next period of time.

LE: seems MSI is still releasing B450 boards into the wild. doubt B550 is just around the corner.