Small form factor MB for Ryzen 3600X / XT

Henlo my friends, the end of September is upon me a new term in university and that means I get some spare capital to buy new shiney PCS, I was told to hold off on buying but my FX8350 system is the best part of 6 years old, has been on a lot and needs to be put into the “this is a occasional lab pc” category.

I want to get the 3600 series processor as they seem to be spectacular for bang per buck per buck sort of thing. Crossair seem to have memory on offer !

I was just wondering as I am looking to scale down the size of my pc from a huge tower to something a bit more manageable, I am going to eek out some more life out of my GTX970 untill these crazy 30 series gcards cometh.

What sort of small form factor motherboard could you suggest? All I need is a PCI express slot, m.2 slot and 2 memory slots, pretty much once this pc is built it’s not getting overclocked it’s just staying as is.

Also bonus points for a case suggestion that is not insane money, I know people like to have swag pcs but I dislike RGB and I live in a rough area so I want my pc to look unassuming as possible.

Also is it worth getting a XT over an X or doesn’t it matter at this point?

Thank you in advance :slight_smile:

I did a build for my brother back in February? Or March? That used the MSI B450I mITX with a 3700X. I also use the same board in my over the road computer but with a 2600. Been solid and stable. His case was a fractal design define nano S and I use a fractal design node 202

Hello,
So basically… whoever told you this is right.

AMD keynote regarding their new processor Zen3 is on October 2nd and the RDNA2 keynote October 28th (if memory serves)

Don’t get me wrong the 3600 is a great value CPU, but the Zen3 is too close and for me personally it would feel like throwing away money.

Processors will improve a bit (likely 15 to 20%) but graphic cards will improve a lot, especially at top resolutions.

Nevertheless, if it has to be now, then a B550 motherboard is definitely the way to go as the power delivery headspace will give you a nice upgrade path and it would keep the 3600 very cool.
Hardware Unboxed did a superb review on this topic.
(All Boards Tested B550 Roundup)
See the screenshot here below.
Basicaly anything around 50-52ºC or lower will give you great performance.

You asked for a nice value case that is not too shiny
I would say that the P400A would be a good contender.
It’s not too expensive, has good build quality and is air-flow orientated.
RGBs are included but can be turned off.

Regarding GPUs, that’s a tougher topic, because 3080 are expensive and unavailable and the 3070 is not here yet and will likely be equally unavailable. It’s hard to say where RDNA2 will land in all of this exiting launching madness, nevertheless people speculate that their top product will be between 3070 and 3080.
In any case, there is no way that I would be buying a GPU right now, because either:

  • the next gen will oblitherate previous gens of both AMD and Nvidia for less money
  • the previous gen will drastically drop in price after the RDNA2 launch

So conclusion… just wait a bit longer, it has been running for 6 years, I am sure it will run another 2 months.

Hope this helped!

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Good old HWUB charts, deff a good place to get very wide benchmark comparisons

I would hold off on cpu buying, motherboard will be another matter as rumored new motherboards for March of next year not sure but speculatively speaking they will have usb 4, I am looking out to fir motherboards is price or anything else you’ll be need extra storage for things?

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