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Choice between budget B450s

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etre

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Discussion starter · #1 ·
I plan to switch to 3600 or 3600X and I have a choice between the following boards:

Asrock B450M Pro4, 3 phases 2Hi+2Low mosfets per phase, good heatsinks
Asrock B450M Steel Legend, 4 phases, 1Hi+2Low, heatsinks looking doubtful and partially covered by a shroud (I suppose it can be removed)
MSI B450M Gaming Plus, 4 phases 2Hi+2Low, one heatsink
Gigabyte B450M Aorus, 4 phases, 1Hi+2Low, one heatsink

I like the Asrock bios, better audio with steel legend, more USB ports, more fan connectors.
MSI Gaming Plus supposedly has the best vrms (mortar is not in store) and bios updates without cpu but is lacking otherwise.

I wonder which one should I get considering the vrms and the bios updates.
I'm not planing to OC but I like my PC to be cool and silent.
 
#2 ·
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#3 · (Edited)
I used to think the Steel Legend series was good for the price point. Can't unsee those VRM heatsinks. But it might work well for Ryzen 5 3600. They aren't very power hungry.


ASRock B450M PRO4 does have two M.2 slots. As I don't replace drives as my system ages but rather add drives.

Buildzoid video on the MSI B450 Tomahawk was before the ASRock released the B450M Steel Legend. And before Ryzen 3000-series was released.

MSI B450 Tomahawk latest BIOS is still on AGESA 1.0.0.3ab. Just something to keep in mind. ASRock has many boards on 1.0.0.3abb - https://www.asrock.com/support/index.asp?cat=BIOS

All of Gigabyte X470, B450, X370 and B350 boards have latest AGESA.




MSI B450 Tomahawk or ASRock B450M Steel Legend might be good choices depending budget and feature set needed. Make sure plenty of airflow over the VRMs. Top down CPU cooler or having a fan pointed at the VRM should help


B450 tomahawk like the B45- Steel Legend have VRM heatsinks with very little surface area [just a bar of metal with almost no fins on them]. Hence I stress airflow over the VRM heatsinks.


Edit: forgot to include a picture of the tomahawk heatsink fins
 

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#4 ·
The B450 Tomahawk can get away with less fin area (although the extended heatsink is far larger) because the onsemi 4C024N low side fet is more efficient than the Sinopower on Asrock B450 boards as well as the Onsemi 4C06N on Asus/Gigabyte B450 boards. Additionally having 8 high side fets instead of 4 of them means each has half the current going through it even if you have more parasitic losses.
 
Discussion starter · #5 · (Edited)
The problem is that Tomahawk and Mortar are not in stock. Is like anything MSI worth buying has vanished from every store. I only managed to find MSI B450 Gaming plus.

If I'm willing to spend 200+ euro on a board, yeah, there are options.

Beside, I need mATX format.

Anyway, thanks for answering.

Edit: Why Steel Legend's vrms are bad ?
I see mixed reviews saying it reaches almost 100C, but that yes city guy is a proven idiot, I won't trust anything he says. Other reviews put the temps in mid 60s.
 
#6 · (Edited)
etre said:
I'm not planing to OC but I like my PC to be cool and silent.
Click to expand...
For a 3600X, any of the boards you mentioned will be fine. For the MSI boards, look for the MAX version as that has the larger BIOS chips. The older non-MAX versions have stripped down BIOS functionality.

One thing I liked about the Asrock B450M Pro4 is that it doesn't have any LED's, and thus doesn't require software to control or disable them.

[edit] Also, for Asrock, be aware that you'll need to use Tctrl when using a custom fan curve: http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts...ID=46625-74d1a37aez4ezaa9d1a49432986111&title=x370-taichi-fan-pwm-problem#35883
 
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#8 ·
Heuchler said:
MSI B450m Mortar Titanium $118 (listing says ships to Europe)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-Mortar.../MSI-Mortar-Titanium-AM4-AMD-B450-Micro-ATX-DDR4-SDRAM-Motherboard/333276843442

MSI B450M GAMING PLUS looks to be the same board with a slightly worse heatsink (not as extended as the Mortar Titanium)

I read that MSI discontinued the Mortar series. So, some place are charging $150-ish for it.
Click to expand...
MSI are making the Mortor MAX series so i dont think they have stopped making it yet.
 
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#9 ·
Be aware of some of the issues MSI B450 boards w/ Ryzen 3000 have been having. You can check out the MSI_GAMING reddit. Posting issues, etc. I went with the B450 Tomahawk and had some issues myself (thankfully not as bad as many on the reddit).

Going with a Max board (at least from MSI) is potentially a good precaution.
 
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Discussion starter · #10 ·
steelbom said:
Be aware of some of the issues MSI B450 boards w/ Ryzen 3000 have been having. You can check out the MSI_GAMING reddit. Posting issues, etc. I went with the B450 Tomahawk and had some issues myself (thankfully not as bad as many on the reddit).

Going with a Max board (at least from MSI) is potentially a good precaution.
Click to expand...

I did that and seeing people complaining about the release of max version and slow bios updates for the old versions, I dropped MSI. Btw, max versions are nowhere to see in shops around here.

I wanted Asrock Pro4 jus because of the heatsinks and having more hi mosfets than gigabyte but had a longer delivery time.

I ended up with Gigabyte B450M Aorus. The only decent budget board readily available (although that's not a good sign), and with up to date bios. I hope I won't regret it.
 
#11 ·
etre said:
I did that and seeing people complaining about the release of max version and slow bios updates for the old versions, I dropped MSI. Btw, max versions are nowhere to see in shops around here.

I wanted Asrock Pro4 jus because of the heatsinks and having more hi mosfets than gigabyte but had a longer delivery time.

I ended up with Gigabyte B450M Aorus. The only decent budget board readily available (although that's not a good sign), and with up to date bios. I hope I won't regret it.
Click to expand...
Fingers crossed, good luck!
 
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#12 ·
You guys acting like drawing 95w max needs some super-duper VRM. I have a Phenom II X6 that will draw more than a 3900X.... pumped 155w through 4-phase mobo's for years with no issue.
 
Discussion starter · #13 · (Edited)
Redwoodz said:
You guys acting like drawing 95w max needs some super-duper VRM. I have a Phenom II X6 that will draw more than a 3900X.... pumped 155w through 4-phase mobo's for years with no issue.
Click to expand...
Well, for some reason ryzen runs hard on vrms.
For example this board I'm buying, the case is heating up noticeable around i-o and behind the cpu/vrms, with ryzen 3 2200g and a discrete gpu. That is from someone I know.

But I have better cooling, so I'll see. Maybe sell this MB later and buy something more suited once the things settle a bit.
 
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Discussion starter · #16 ·
Ownedj00 said:
Nice mate. subscribe to buildzoid on YT and watch his stuff as no one does reviews like he does.
Click to expand...
You know, watching reviews on internet, I got really paranoid about vrm temps and so on. Buldzoid had one of those videos.

The other was:

I can tell you now, those videos are nothing but garbage. Sorry, maybe garbage is a harsh word but that's the truth. I don't contest the knowledge of those reviewers but treating some budget boards like it should perform as well under OC as 300 euro boards is ... lets say wrong.

"You need top down cooler, to cool the vrms" another advice that's totally wrong. I tested both. Temps are definitely better with a normal cooler. You don't cool the vrms , you heat them with stock coolers or wraith max.

In the screenshot you can see the temps with a proper cooler on cpu, Gammax 400 dual fan, after a few hours of gaming. A bit hot in the room because is summer but the case is cool to touch and the air evacuated in the back is not even warm.


I would say that Asrock Steel Legend, Pro 4, Gigabyte Aorus, Asus Tuf Pro, all are excelent choices and perform within 1-2% of the more expensive x570 boards.
 

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#17 · (Edited)
@ etre, there's a difference between a $200 board and a $300+ board but for normal users it's usually featureset.

If you aren't using a R9 3900X/R9 3950X (and in AVX loads) buying anything more than an Aorus Elite is mostly for quality of life features such as dual BIOS with switch , EC temp external sensors, or more fan headers.

A R9 3900X is literally 2x the cores and dies of the R5 3600 so if they're at the same all core clocks , given the same chip quality (generally R9 is better binned) the R9 3900X will consume nearly double the current and power.

Voltage scaling is less insane as the current scaling, because these chips require more current for a given power due to lower voltages. For a given powerstage the jump from 1.2V to 1.4V is 1.1x the power loss, which is far less than the proportion of voltage. However the low side fet losses with current scale exponentially since conduction loss is I^2*R.


In addition , due to the way Ryzen clock scaling works polling 1000 times a second (1ms) the power delivery has more constraints on time to respond.
 
#18 ·
Buildzoid's reviews are worse case scenario but he will tell you way more then your average reviewer like HU,Bitwit, Jayz2cents and thats why i watch his reviews. Don't even get me started on HU youtube channel, hes Australian and doesnt even address his ozzie viewers. i can watch anyone on YT and see the same stuff HU does.
 
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#19 ·
I recently moved "down" from an MSI x370 titanium to a gigabyte b450 aorus pro wifi, and transferred over my 1800x and phanteks cooler, and g.skill fortis ram. I also had g.skill trident z rgb ram 3200, but it was failed with the msi board.

To make this short, I am having zero temp issues even when running the 1800x quite hard up against it's overclock limit.
The fortis ram is running @ 3000 mhz which is faster than I ever got from the 3200 rated trident z.

I have thrown a lot of stress testing at it, and it's rock solid. vrm temps never exceeded 73 degrees celcius, and that was running it for about 8 hours steady.

I too respect the knowledge and testing of buildzoid, but I think for a lot of people these b450 boards are going to be just fine.
 
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