I am in the process of building an AM4 system with Ryzen 5600x. In the future i might or might not upgrade to more cores, but certanly not for the first 2 years.
I will do some very light gaming, 1080p, always sub 60fps. I dont need wifi. I wont use any super special SSD’s nor any fancy internet related equipment. Most i will do is some very light Topaz AI, x265 vid encoding maybe.
Mostly i would like to have idle power consumption as low as possible, though i know AM4 is not very good in this regard. But if there is a chipset that uses less energy than the other, i will pick that. It would be good if it was as new as possible to hopefuly have some software updates for longer, i plan to stay on this system for 5 years.
Can u help me in deciding between chipsets. They all seem overkill compared to i5 2500k i run now. But looking into the future, maybe there are some things that are good to have that i might need in years to come. Any good candidates ?
Honestly it sounds like you could just buy whatever is the cheapest. I don’t have any personal knowledge of the power draw but I find it hard to believe there will be a significant difference just from the chipset. I have B550 board running my 5600x right now. The whole package idles at about 150w, with PBO and EXPO enabled, several drives and fans, peripherals, etc.
I would think A520 would have lowest power draw, but I think as long as it’s not X570(7~10w), it shouldn’t be much. Rather, what might save you on idle power is going with one of the mobile-based monolithic designs, rather than a chiplet-based design. The chiplet designs have very high idle power draw compared to previous generation CPUs, due to the I/O die, extra trace length in the cpu package, and generally not being designed to favor low idle power draw.
The desktop APUs are all laptop chips in a desktop package, so the idle power draw is very low relative to the mainline desktop CPUs. You do lose a fair bit of performance though, something like 12~15% on avg?
Anything around 50W or lower is good enough for me. I will plug just what i need, 1x M.2, and maybe 2x 2.5" hdds. Yeah, 5600G looks very good. I lose about 10% performance and its more expensive. Since i can expect around 50W idle consumption thats good enough for me.
New E520 MB’s start at like 59€ which is very cheap. Only 2 ram slots though it should be plenty, will start at 2x8gb and if ever need can go to 2x16gb, 2x32gb … Only 1 M.2 slot, should be enough for me. I can still have sata ssd’s, plus i see 2 mini pci-e slots, those can be used for faster disks too, with a converter ?
Ok, tnx. Before i buy i will check reviews to see that VRMs can handle more cores in future.
If anyone has any other ideas, please do share so i can start looking.
R5 5600 will be harder to find than a MB. The cheapest i found so far is new for 128€ or second hand R5 5600x for 120€. R5 3600 is 60€ second hand and it’s not 100% slower.
I think anything not x570 is fine. B450/B550 are much better chipsets in terms of features, and the power draw difference between the budget E-*20 boards is going to be something like 0.5~1w kind of difference. It’s just that X570, and the chiplet-based 3000X/5000X CPUs have abnormally high idle power draw.
X570 was designed by AMD, and is essentially just an I/O die, whereas the other AMD chipsets are ASMedia-designed chipsets. X570 chipset is around 7w or so I think? And the on-chip I/O die is around 10~15w, on top of the design problems with chiplet based CPUs adding another few watts of minimum power draw.
Any of the B-*50 or X-470 boards are fine, 2~3w or so. Probably avoid 300 series just because they were generally cheaper, less good boards typically. G series CPUs idle around 15~20w instead of 40~50w.
My goto these days are the $100-$130 B550 boards, unless you go with a CPU that does not support PCIe 4.0 - 5500, 5600G and 5700G to name a few.
If you care about VFIO or full PCIe 4.0, then you really should upgrade to AM5. If you do not care, A520 has no PCIe 4.0 lanes only 3.0. There is no reason to go A520 if you have the money to spare.
Im fine with like 50W idle power consumption. Im looking at some comparisons between chipsets:
I have to say i am a bit confused regarding the lanes, i hear Wendell mention them a lot. But looking at B550, considering i plan to use a midrange gpu and 1 budget nvme drive, it seems i got more lanes than i will ever need. And even so i will only use nvme because it’s actualy cheaper than normal sata SSD’s. Faster too i heard. For starters i plan to have 512gb or 1tb nvme and 1x 2.5" 2tb hdd. When prices drop i might replace the hdd for another nvme or something similar.
A quick check and i found Gigabyte B550M K for 83$/€. It has 4 memory slots. I see 2 slots for that nvme (or is it called m.2 ?). 1x pci-e for graphics card and another pci-e 1x, though not sure what u can plug into it. It has 1G ethernet, which is plenty for me. 4 times SATA, which is enough for me. 8x usb on the back, which is great, have 6 now and need 8.
I heard Steve talking about some bad boards with weak VRM’s, which hinder the processors with more cores. Is that a thing on B550 also? Can i for instance expect any problems if i decide to put 5950x into this board down the line ? And i am not talking about VRM temperature, thats not a problem, i usualy modify MB cooling anyway. Im more worried if they are able to supply the higher wattage that 5950x uses ?
In terms of supplying power, it’s not really much of an issue if you aren’t overclocking, outside of VRM thermal performance. The board officially supports 5950x, so vrm thermal performance is about all that matters, as that’s what determines the safety features that cap performance to prevent damage.
If you do plan on overclocking a 5950x at some point, for whatever reason… Well, probably best not, but if you insist, I’d get a beefier board. Not because of the VRMs necessarily, but because the board design it’s self can have better or worse isolation, which can improve stability, especially of memory overclocking, which will net you a lot more performance than core overclocking anyway.
Actually Hardcore Overclocking channel on youtube has a lot of ranting videos about various motherboards that might be worth looking into, if you’re into that.
M.2 is the just shape of the slot/drive, NVME is the language it speaks. So, you can have 2.5" NVME SSDs, and M.2 SATA SSDs.
For that you need to look at mobos’ CPU power delivery implementations, not the chipset. There’s very little actual data but the bits I’m aware of suggest manufacturer compatibility claims on lower end boards are likely to be optimistic even at 145 W PPT, so either plan for good VRM airflow and checking temperatures or selecting boards more capable than the B550M K.
For AM4 mATX I’d suggest the ASRock B550M Steel Legend (or Pro RS or MSI Mortar at fewer rear USBs) and avoiding Gigabyte and Asus. mATX boards are pretty much always quad DIMM but do mind whether it’s single or dual 2280 M.2 and if the chipset 2280’s 3.0 x2 or x4.
Yes, compare PCIe 4.0 x4 and 3.0 x4 to SATA III. However, relatively little software exceeds 1-2 GB/s sequential, effectively uses the additional IOPS, or benefits from the latency shaving. If you do have IO bound workloads which utilize the additional benefits can be dramatic, albeit likely subject to substantially diminishing returns on the drive sizes and capabilities you mention.
No, 150 is correct. That’s at the wall (as measured by my UPS) under non-gaming/desktop usage, so some browser windows or other DT apps open. Includes monitor and everything but the speakers.
Well, here i thought the choice will be easy and i just said i will smoke 1 cigarette while checking mb’s online and 1 hour passed. Every mb i found either something was wrong with it or i found a better one for 3€ more. I wanted to take asus just because i have asus now and got used to bios/uefi. But their mb’s all have max 6 usb-a on the back which is a big no no for me. I need 8 and i dont wanna use expansion slots like i do now.
Gigabyte 550M-K for 85€ was fine but only 2 fan headers, i need at least 3 separate. So i was looking at Gigabyte 550M DS3H for 100€, 2x m.2, 3xfan header and 8x USB-A at the rear. But then i saw Gigabyte 550M Auorus elite for 106€. Damnit, more fan headers, faster USB-A at the rear and that nice behind shroud for the outputs. I ordered it and will feel sorry later when i find a better deal for less money. But if i dont oder now i never will. Been wanting to upgrade my system for last 2-3 years and was putting it off.
So, what do u think ? Also im thinking of getting a 3300x or 3600x for 30-50€ and replace it later. 5600x prices are still nuts. Cheapest 5600 i could find is like 128€. And thats 3-4x more money for not 2x the speed
Sorry for double post. Wanted to buy a processor and in the end the cheapest i could find was ryzen 5600 box for 129€. But it was listed with 16MB of cache, no gpu. 100-100000927BOX code. Same store had ryzen 5600 box for 137€ but different code. Multiple stores sell processor with this code, some list 16MB, some 32MB. It irritated me to the point that i just ordered a freakin 5600X BOX for 132€. Its from reputable store and at least i wont have to wonder if i actualy got 5600 vermeer or some strange chinese like 5600 cezaane with disabled GPU, 16MB and wrong name.
Not bad at all. However, stretching just a liiiiiiittle more, to $160:
For your use cases the 5600X should be good enough though, no need to send back. This is mostly for other people stumbling onto this thread And do not forget the cooler!
IF you’re concerned on futureproofing*, then the 550_ is minimum route
550+, will support PCIe 4.0 peripherals [which the Ryzen 5xxx series has]
550M typically can be had, with 4x DIMM slots and some with a PCIe x4 slot
Yeah, i surprised myself for ordering 2 new parts, i never buy new. But second market is s*** right now, not a single 5600(X). 5700x is way to much for my needs heh. I took 5600x because its basicaly the cheapest good single thread processor i could find for AM4. If they had the one with 4 vermeer cores i would pick that. Im playing supreme commander and its largely a single thread game that tends to slow down on my i5 2500k. As for multithreading, considering like i said im coming from i5 2500k which serves me well, i think 6c/12t will make me more than happy for a long long LONG time. And if i ever need more (doubtfull, but hey !), i got plenty of stronger CPU’s for AM4 for which pricess will drop in time. Tnx for your help guys.
I took 550M but that M only means size if i understand correctly. So i should be ok, right ?
With AM4 being last gen, you can probably find some incredible deals. I don’t know if you live near a Microcenter, but their motherboards section usually has an area of stuff that they don’t advertise stock on, but for which they sell at a steep discount.
And do not forget the cooler!