25 B-450 Boards Analyzed

My Pro Carbon Board should arrive tomorrow so I can get a closer look at the layout and plan my build. I am simple when it comes to storage. I like just having one drive that's plenty big and fast that I can periodically backup with the ol clonezilla/Acronis combo and call it a day. I don't bother with mechanical drives. I have an external 3TB mech if I need bulk storage space. My old GTX 960 will hold me down for now as far as graphics. I'm waiting to see if the 2300x & 2500x come out with the new Threadrippers on Monday before ordering a CPU. I like the boost clocks on them and I don't care about SMT just like I didn't care for Intels HT. That said I am most likely also gonna go with 2600 or 2600x like you pavel.

I ordered a 1TB EVO NVME M.2 for my sole source of internal storage. I still believe for my needs a SATA M.2 drive would have been just fine, but I'm treating myself with this build and splurging a bit. Also going to NVME to force myself to deal with the hurdles of cloning and backing up such drives. I'm sure that's all pounded out now but for a while cloning NVME drives required a tad more effort. Just like I'm going Windows 10 Pro 64 for the same reason, it's not necessary but I want to stay a little up to date with the latest.

Nice thing about the non NVME M.2 drives if there are caddies/converters to USB for those guys. The M-key NVME guys are only accessible on a boards M.2 slot as far as I know. Although NVME is stupid fast I still think SATA SSDs are fast enough if you aren't constantly shuffling around huge amounts of data.

Edit: Also Those new Ryzen 3 parts had better be soldered or I won't even look at them. I like my PCs fast yet cool and quiet. If I had my way all CPUs would be direct to die cooling like the old days before IHS.
 
I really haven't had a chance to play with it that much. I have the command center installed and still haven't figured out the LEDs. XFR is pretty aggressive on all cores, I need to tweak my fan settings because it will go from idle to full out and spike temps by 10c. Hopefully I can get time in and try to OC without XFR.
 
Thinking about the MSI B450M Gaming Plus for a gaming setup, but haven't bought MSI in ages.

How frequent are MSI BIOS updates?

No OC and will use a Xonar sound card. Looking for stability above all.


Thanks!
 
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Thinking about the MSI B40M Gaming Plus for a gaming setup, but haven't bought MSI in ages.

How frequent are MSI BIOS updates?

No OC and will use a Xonar sound card. Looking for stability above all.


Thanks!

I think you missed a digit in there, but MSI seems to be leading the way for updates and stability at the moment.

MSI has turned themselves around with the AM4 socket, I have had several MSI products in the past and all died/sucked, its scary thinking they're now my go to...
 
Thinking about the MSI B40M Gaming Plus for a gaming setup, but haven't bought MSI in ages.

How frequent are MSI BIOS updates?

No OC and will use a Xonar sound card. Looking for stability above all.


Thanks!

early with the 300 series MSI's bios were god awful but after about 7-8 months they got much more stable and their 400 series boards are a whole lot better.
 
Soda, I've had my eyes on that board (MSI B450 Pro Carbon) for a good while, and now that it's out I'm going to get one when they are back in stock at a decent price. I'm old school and haven't updated my systems in quite a while and am a little hesitant wondering if the RGB will annoy me and I absolutely despise having unnecessary processes running. Can you PLEASE let me know if the UEFI on your MSI B450 Pro Carbon gives you flexibility to deal with the Mystic Lights RGB stuff? Like can you just turn it off from the UEFI if you wanted to? Or are you limited to controlling RGB from within the OS with the MSI Gaming App (god I hate that everything has gaming in the name).

I'm sure the lights are nice, but that would suck if the RGB just autopilots outside the Windows OS or if you do not have the MSI RGB control software installed. BTW you are doing the right thing dumping that Gigabyte board, I ran an MSI nforce 3 Ultra board for years with a 400mhz OC on an old socket 939 and a heavily BIOS overclocked NGREEDIA card for years without a hiccup. I see some folks rip on MSI but all their stuff that I've used at work and at home and for friends has been pretty good.

Thanks in advance if you are able to comb through your spankin' new boards BIOS to see if you have any control over RGB at all from there (fingers crossed B450 boards won't need lots of BIOS hotfix love!)
Being old school I am assuming you don't have a window on your case? In that case you won't have to worry about the RGB. It is literally baked into most boards these days, as essentially a power-on light. Quite unoffensive. No need to install a app for this stuff if you don't want to use it. Close the case side and forget it. I don't install much board maker apps unless it is somehow special and has a need or purpose. They are usually gimmicky shit that does a half-assed job.
 
Thanks for the replies sirmonkey and Sodapop.

I'm going to read up not he MSI boards more, but looks like a good choice thus far.
 
The ASRock may only be a 3+2 but it does actually have the mosfets and chokes for a 6+2, just driven in parallel so the control isn't as fine. I have the B350 one and it overclocks my 1800X just as well as my high end X370 boards (and surprisingly does better on memory as well).

For sure, also Asrock has better history when comes to overclocking. I wouldn't have any problem running a high end CPU on a B450 from asrock, while some others I might not think the same.
 
Installed a 2400G in the ASRock B450 ITX over the weekend. Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000 C15 was running at correct speeds using XMP with no issues.
 
If you really want ECC I'm not sure I would trust the MSI specs. The Tomahawk says it doesn't support ECC: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/B450-TOMAHAWK/Specification
I don't know why some of the B450 MSI boards would support ECC and some not. It just doesn't make sense to me. Maybe it's a typo.

Asrock seems to be much more consistent in terms of support. I checked the B450 Pro4 for example, and the memory QVL. Search for ECC and there are 3 listed. Then google search those and read reviews. There are several people in the reviews saying that they have the ECC RAM working on an Asrock board.

There is also some Kingston ECC I found on newegg where 2 reviews say they are using it in Asrock boards: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820242276
 
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