I’m buying a new PC and I’ve been looking through a lot of forum posts and hardware recommendations and I somehow have the feeling to know less than before.
I’m doing a lot of different things with my PC, so the PC should be an jack-of-all-trades kind of PC. I want it to have good linux support, as this is going to be my main OS, but I also want it to be able to do virtualization and be able to handle some gaming. I’m not looking to squeeze out every last bit of performance, but rather want a sensible setup that does its job and is going to keep me going for the next few years.
So far I have decided to go with a Ryzen 7 3800x. But I am having trouble deciding for the right motherboard. They all seem to do the same thing, have the same features listed, but they seem to differ in the important details, such as IOMMU grouping, available BIOS upgrades and many other things. The “GIGABYTE X570 AORUS” comes in at least 5 different editions. Which one is the “right” one?
TL;DR:
By looking through Level1Tech videos and reading many guides, I have narrowed my search to the following boards that I think are good:
GIGABYTE X570 AORUS MASTER
ASRock X570 TAICHI
ASUS ROG STRIX X570-E GAMING
Which one is the best, and do they differ that much at all?
I would not go with Asus, since they are really slow at updating their BIOS.
Gigabyte seems to be really fast and responsive with their BIOS updates and will run cooler due to better VRMs. Currently best choice, but the Taichi is a decent budget option.
If you want to save a buck or two and do not need the PCIe 4.0 lanes the X570 offers, the B450 Tomahawk Max might be an alternative as well; just be sure to buy a beefy air cooler that blows air on the VRMs, since those will run hot with the 3800X. If you don’t plan to overclock, you should be fine. Do NOT go with watercooling with this motherboard.
Why? The Chips costs similar, the boards for TR are more expensive and you get similar performance for double the powerdraw (exagurated).
Unless you really need those PCIe Lanes or need more cores than Ryzen offers, i don’t see how TR is a benefit here.
I went and bought the Gigabyte x570 Aorus Master motherboard. After looking at some other reviews it became clear that it is a good board. The others weren’t bad, but they had some minor issues, such as the heat management on the VRMs and things like that. Nothing you cannot deal with, but I just didn’t want to have to put in that extra effort.
Treadripper would have been nice for his VM needs. They have enough PCI lanes for whatever passthrough he may have needed. CPUs are less the rage these days, its more GPU when you need power
36 PCIe 4.0 lanes should be plenty for now. I’d go threadripper if the system is going to be a dedicated virtualisation machine with passthroughs and bifurcation and atleast two full time VMs but until then the extra cost isn’t really worth it.
