I have a spare Ryzen 5 3600, Ripjaws 32 GB RAM faulty kit and a Segotep GP600 PSU since I replaced those in my desktop PC.
I wanted to deploy a home-server for various stuff like media server (no transcoding), web server and other non-demanding stuff. So I want as minimal power comsumption as possible.
I have a GT 720 that I would use to setup and troubleshoot if necessary. Ideally, the PC should boot without it installed.
What I need now is a motherboard. I don’t want to spend a lot on it.
These are what I can get locally that are in a similar price range:
MSI A520M-A Pro
ASRock A520M HDV
Gigabyte A520M K or B450M DS3H
Biostar A520MH or B450MH/MHP
Which of these would be suitable for this? Importantly, what chipset? If it does any difference.
I know that the PSU is important here for low power but it’s what I have now.
I understand the A520 series mobo is your target but at least consider something with an Intel LAN instead. The problem is those are usually found on the more expensive models. Maybe see if they have somethung like ASRock A520M-ITX/ac? Sorry that was a wrong mobo recommendation.
Intel Gigabit LAN is anecdotally better than its Realtek counterparts and while Realtek LAN will work, it might have stability issues (according to Reddit/TrueNAS forums).
Personally, I’ve ran TrueNAS Scale on a mobo with Realtek and it randomly spits out some error (even though it works fine) every few seconds, making it quite hard to wade through error logs when troubleshooting. If the mobo was gotten for free/real cheap, it would be acceptable but save yourself some future headache with Intel LAN, especially if you have spare budget.
I fully agree with @regulareel and what you also should have in mind is that a cheaper board usually also have less filtering so decent PSU will likely be needed.
Out of the mentioned boards Gigabyte B450M DS3H seems to be the best one, you can pop in a PCIe NIC in one of the 1x PCIe slots but that would also increase the overall cost.
I do have an ASRock B550M, that has a Realtek chip on my main PC and never had issues with it. I ran a Proxmox server for weeks and worked great but wanted to use the PC for gaming so I stopped using it.