I have a 5800x hopefully on the way soon and I've spent the last few hours looking for a board, and can't quite make up my mind. I want to OC so I'd like to get a board that won't hold the chip back excessively (I can barely get my current 4790k stable with a 100 MHz OC and I'm not sure if it's the chip, board, or RAM - I'd prefer not to have to worry about the board). At the same time I don't need to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the chip, I won't be running benchmarks for competitions or anything like that, so I don't necessarily need a high end feature set. I also have one M.2 drive (and might get another in a year or two), 6 HDDs, and a blu ray drive that I'd prefer not to lose if possible, so I'd prefer 7-8 SATA headers. However, if the board has >6 rear USB ports, I could remove my current PCI-E-> USB card in favor of a PCI-E -> SATA. I'd also like to keep below $250 if possible. I also noticed the X570 boards have a chipset fan - ideally I'd prefer one that has a quiet or silent mode. Finally, the board needs to be natively compatible with the new Ryzen because I don't have an old chip to flash the BIOS with.
For connectivity, the Phantom Gaming 4 seems to have what I'm looking for but I'm not sure how well it would OC (10 phase VRM). There's also the PG Velocita which has 14 phase VRM, but it's a bit pricier. Then there's the TUF Gaming and TUF Gaming Pro which also have 14 phase VRM, 8x SATA headers, and are closer to my desired price point compared to the ASrock options, but I believe they need to be flashed to support the new 5xxx CPUs (although if I understand corretly the Pro can be flashed while chip-less?).
If I remove my 8x SATA requirement, I can get something like the oft-recommended Tomahawk - does this board offer a significant overclocking advantage over the others that would justify the (relative) headache of having to get a PCIe->SATA adapter?
I can't seem to settle on any of the options - if anyone has recommendations (or reasons to remove any of these boards from contention), I'd appreciate the input!
For connectivity, the Phantom Gaming 4 seems to have what I'm looking for but I'm not sure how well it would OC (10 phase VRM). There's also the PG Velocita which has 14 phase VRM, but it's a bit pricier. Then there's the TUF Gaming and TUF Gaming Pro which also have 14 phase VRM, 8x SATA headers, and are closer to my desired price point compared to the ASrock options, but I believe they need to be flashed to support the new 5xxx CPUs (although if I understand corretly the Pro can be flashed while chip-less?).
If I remove my 8x SATA requirement, I can get something like the oft-recommended Tomahawk - does this board offer a significant overclocking advantage over the others that would justify the (relative) headache of having to get a PCIe->SATA adapter?
I can't seem to settle on any of the options - if anyone has recommendations (or reasons to remove any of these boards from contention), I'd appreciate the input!
Last edited: