AM4 MOBO's a Sh*tshow

Looking at doing a AM4 build and there are alot of Mobo Complaints in the reviews. Ive been Gigabyte the whole way and ya even they have an iffy record.

Whats up with that?

Hard to please everyone, and typically you only hear from a tiny few with problems vs thousands with no issues.

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Personally I’ve done two Ryzen build, both B450 itx, and I’ve got no problem. I just regret having gone with the Gigabyte mobo for my mom’s build has the bios is kinda shit and the one fan header that was missing made me bought a fan splitter.

Well not sure what this topic´s real goal is?

But not every issue that people complaining about,
can be blamed to the product.
Because allot of the complaints people are ranting about,
are often issues that are caused by human error.
Or lack of proper knowledge.
Sure electronics can fail, and firmware has bugs.
That will generally be ironed out over time.
But still there are plenty of great boards out there.

Pretty much every brand has great and crap boards.
It’s just a matter of knowing what to look out for.
And what you use case scenario is.
A bit of research asking questions around, can help allot.

Stating that am4 mobo´s are a shit show, is just rubbish.
People should just do proper research first.
Same counts for certain tech tubers as well.

Don´t cheap out on a motherboard is my advice. :wink:
Because it´s the most important part of the system afterall.

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agreed
Find out what features you want. After your 2nd motherboard you kinda know what you need

  • integrated wifi
  • good VRM/Power delivery
  • pci lane organization
  • fits in your case
  • good bios
  • usb bios flashback (don’t need a cpu to update bios)
  • integrated ioshield
  • IOMMU support

Look around all the techtubers, some catch things others don’t. IE: Paul’s hardware, bitwitt, tech deals for features; Gamers Nexus and Buildzoid for power delivery with deeper dives in the hardwared; L1 for virtualization and general features.

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I’ve seen so many “reviews” complaining about costs of boards…after they bought the board :innocent:

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Yup also plenty of very knowledgeable people,
on tech forums like ours are willing to help novice people,
with questions regarding motherboards.
At least i´m always willing to help, with questions in regards,
to vrm´s features etc.

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Although it is also true that MSI effed up their budget X570 offerings, so that might weigh down X570 boards’ “standing”.

Yeah.

Or those who complain that their 3900X,
system is causing allot of issues.
Because they put that on one of the cheapest pieces of trash,
boards out there.

Such kind of things…

X570 isn’t worth it. The only reason to get it is for PCI 4.0 and not needing to flash a bios. The active cooling is a huge turn off as it adds an extra point of failure.

I recommend B450 to everyone, and only suggest x570 to people who actually need pci 4.0. AMD annouced B550 coming soon, so I will be recommending b550 soon (assuming there’s good boards)

I wouldn’t go so far. X570 supporting PCIe 4.0 will soon come to fruition when the good 4.0 ssds and Nvidia’s Turing successors hit the market. I recommend B450 to people who don’t plan to upgrade their major components very much., ie. gpu and cpu.

Eg. If someone buys a 3600 and uses it with a GTX1660 Super, they probably won’t upgrade to a 4950x and RTX3080Ti vs. someone who bought a 3800x and an RTX2080 Super.

Well this is a statement i read allot.
And that is something i totally disagree with it.

Because when it comes to B450 boards in general.
The choice of the boards to pair with Ryzen 3000 series cpu´s,
are pretty limited.
Because only certain msi models support bios flash back.
So that is one negative point.

Another issue is that non of the B-series chipset boards really,
have a decent vrm implementation.
There is of course a reason why those boards are generally cheap.
Still most B450 boards will be fine for Ryzen 5 cpu´s.

But i also see people recommending 3900X / 3950X cpu´s,
with a B450 board.
Which is just a very stupid thing to do.
Because the vrm’s of those cheap boards are simply not,
up for the job.

B450 is nice for Ryzen 5.

Nice, i going with a AMD RYZEN 7 3700X 8-Core 3.6 GHz (4.4 GHz Max Boost) Socket AM4 65W 100-100000071BOX Desktop Processor

But the only matx board on newegg is out of stock

Also note, not all x570 boards have a great vrm either.
If you want to go with a 3900x or 3950x,
there are also boards to stay away from.

X570 boards with a pretty poor vrm.
Not suitable for a 3900X / 3950X!!!

  • Asrock X570 Pro4.
  • Asrock X570M pro 4.
  • Asrock X570 Phantom Gaming 4.
  • Gigabyte X570 Aorus Gaming X.
  • Gigabyte X570 UD.
  • Msi X570-A pro.
  • Msi MPG X570 Gaming plus.
  • Msi MPG X570 Gaming Edge Wifi.

This list of boards are boards that i would generally avoid,
Because the vrm on those are just not great really.
Those boards will be fine for something like a Ryzen 5 3600X or Ryzen 7 3700X.

But that’s about it.

In general they just kinda suck. :slight_smile:

are the b450s out?

Well matx and AMD Ryzen is not really a thing unfortunatelly.
I mean there are some m-atx boards out there.
But non of them are really great.

I would say if desk space is an issue for you.
Then itx will give you a better more decent board options.
M-atx unfortunately does not really get allot of love on the amd side of things.
On intel there is a bit more choice.

So if it really has to be m-atx.
Then intel is your best bet.

Although a 3700x with a Asrock X570M pro4 should be fine.

I think that now pretty much the majority of B450 for sale has bios compatible with Ryzen 3000 right out of the box. Was the case with both that I bought.

Well yeah still a gamble.
You don´t really know how long the board,
they send you has been sit on their shelfs.

You can ask for the shop to pre flash the bios.
Most shops offer that as a service which they,
ask a fee for.
But of course you could also be lucky as well.

ehhhhhhhhhh /s

I will concede there, good 4.0 ssds are coming soon. The launch of X570 and pci 4.0 ssds really soured my perception of gen 4

maybe, it’s going to take a good time, amd’s gpu division isn’t kind of a mess right now. The 5600 and 5700 is good, but plagued with bad drivers

That’s the types of parts I’d suggest, swap out the 1660 super with a 5600/5700 if they aren’t doing any streaming.

Context of people I help out

A lot of people I help generally want high graphics high refresh at 1080p in esports titles. I don’t like selling people the idea to invest in a future upgrade. It really annoys me (because it happens a everytime) when people suggest x570 with a ryzen 5/7 to new builders on discord and forums with a $1000 budget that just want to play high quality graphics on esports titles. I’d rather have them spend more on a gpu and get a good monitor and better peripherals.

Up until the leaks of the new amd/nvidia gpus. The logic for me is that by the time we see good implementation of pci 4.0 (and will take advantage of the full bandwidth, it would be worth a full system upgrade. If someone needed a system today just to game and do light content creation, I would suggest from the 400 series boards.

You might be right and I will need to eat my words if Nvidia and AMD make good pci 4.0 GPUs this generation. AMD’s handling of 5500, drivers, and lack of stream encoders innovation has really disappointed me it really feels bad to suggest nvidia when anyone tells me they want to stream at a good resolution and bitrate. AMD is making some big bets that cpu encoding of livestreams is the future so the gpu encoders are no where near the level of nvidia’s. I think I am a bit disillusioned with the lack of competition in the gpu space.

agreed

yeah those people are bonkers

if we are talking about someone running stock, a good B450 board with a ryzen 7 can work.