Looking for the most stable B550/X570 board for 5600x based system

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arnemetis

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Hey everyone, I've lucked out and managed to get a 5600x order in so now I need a motherboard. This will be replacing my file server in my signature, a 1700x based system on Asus Prime X370-Pro motherboard. The single core performance is really the major upgrade for it. This is my work & Plex server so the most important feature is that it is rock solid stable with both system stability and network stability. I have some concern with most boards having the Realtek nic, but it seems that may not be a valid concern anymore. In fact several of the new 2.5gbit Intel nics are a bigger problem.

I am currently thinking the MSI B550 Tomahawk is a well received board that should fit the bill and has an acceptable price https://www.newegg.com/msi-mag-b550-tomahawk/p/N82E16813144326?Item=N82E16813144326 I need two 16x (physical) slots for my raid card and my 10gbit fiber card, and a 1x slot for the gpu. I need one nvme slot and 3-4 sata ports is fine. Pretty much every board has acceptable usb ports. I just need a solid 1gbit nic for internet connected traffic which can handle about 6-10TB/mo of traffic.

I will be using 2x 8gb of 3600mhz cl16 ram - https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-16gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820232195?Item=N82E16820232195 Also since this will be hidden behind a wall and it's on sale, I will probably pick up the Corsair A500 for $30 after rebate https://www.newegg.com/corsair-a500-ct-9010003-ww/p/N82E16835181193?Item=N82E16835181193

Please feel free to offer up any other suggestions for this setup, I'm hoping not to spend much more than $200 for the motherboard since most of the benefits of more expensive boards seem too be wasted on this situation.
 
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I'm using an Asrock X570 Taichi because at the time I got it, it was one of the only boards that had 8 SATA ports available. This is no longer the case. Guessing most of your HDDs are going through a RAID card so that's not a concern.
Anyway, I've gotten my system to be rock solid for weeks on end without any crashes, this is while hosting both a Plex Server and a Minecraft Server and doing a hell of a lot of transcoding.

I'd still reccomend going X570 for the more PCI-E 4.0 lanes in case you want to add in more M.2 or just make sure you aren't bandwidth limited at all.
 
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TheSlySyl said:
I'm using an Asrock X570 Taichi because at the time I got it, it was one of the only boards that had 8 SATA ports available. This is no longer the case. Guessing most of your HDDs are going through a RAID card so that's not a concern.
Anyway, I've gotten my system to be rock solid for weeks on end without any crashes, this is while hosting both a Plex Server and a Minecraft Server and doing a hell of a lot of transcoding.

I'd still reccomend going X570 for the more PCI-E 4.0 lanes in case you want to add in more M.2 or just make sure you aren't bandwidth limited at all.
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Hmm that's a hard sell at 300. Yes all my drives are on the raid card. I would be perfectly fine with no pcie 4.0 lanes, the single nvme I have is really there to avoid a sata connected drive. The raid card has way more bandwidth than I need for my spinning media, I have no need for anything faster than that. The only benefit here is an Intel nic, and I don't think that's enough for an extra $120.
 

I just built a new PC this summer with a ASUS B550-F ROG Strix Gaming and a 3900X chip and it has been rock solid after a bios update. The original bios was a little glitchy, but the current 1202 bios has been good. They just released 1401 which you may need for the 5xxx series support. For ram i have 32gb in 2x16gb of Ballistix 3600 at stock V and set it up with DOCP and 1800 on the infinity fab.​

It has the Intel 2.5gbit network chip and i have had no issues with it and my home router.
 
arnemetis said:
Hmm that's a hard sell at 300. Yes all my drives are on the raid card. I would be perfectly fine with no pcie 4.0 lanes, the single nvme I have is really there to avoid a sata connected drive. The raid card has way more bandwidth than I need for my spinning media, I have no need for anything faster than that. The only benefit here is an Intel nic, and I don't think that's enough for an extra $120.
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Oh yeah, i wasn't reccomending going for the X570 Taichi, i was thinking something closer to this:

https://www.newegg.com/asus-tuf-gaming-x570-plus/p/N82E16813119198?Description=x570 ryzen 5 ready&cm_re=x570_ryzen 5 ready-_-13-119-198-_-Product

Although for the price and your needs, this looks pretty tempting but i'd double check why it has so many bad reviews.

https://www.newegg.com/asus-pro-ws-x570-ace/p/N82E16813119194?Description=x570 ryzen 5 ready&cm_re=x570_ryzen 5 ready-_-13-119-194-_-Product
 
I'd go with the MSI B550-A Pro. It has everything you need and nothing you don't. I wouldn't worry about the Realtek; I run a small cluster with a bunch of B450 boards, most of which have Realtek ethernet, and (at least running linux) have no difficulties at all.
 
I've tested a number of X570 motherboards that were indistinguishable from each other in the stability department. They were all perfectly stable in my testing. Among these are:

ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula
ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero
GIGABYTE X570 Aorus Master
ASRock X570 Creator
MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE
ASUS TUF GAMING X570 PLUS WiFi
ASUS Prime X570 Pro
GIGABYTE X570 Gaming X
MSI MEG X570 Unify
 
Well after the thread died down I made my order, the board actually showed up today along with the cpu. I'll be doing basic testing tomorrow hopefully, will let everyone know how it goes. Going to test out both of the nics, see what kind of sustained speed I can get. Then maybe queue up a few terabytes to see if it craps out.
 
Shouldn't have cheaped out on this garbage. I've tried nearly a dozen different usb drives following directions very carefully (fat32, mbr only) I've tried the latest bios and the one before too with no luck. I don't have a 3k series cpu laying around either.

I'm tired of this game and in ready to just return everything and swear off msi and amd forever. I'll see if b&h will take the return. What boards work with the 5k series or if the box? Micro center is an hour away, don't have time to drive there and play games to see if they will update my board or not.
 
Technically none of the 500 chipsets support 5000 series out of the box, you'll either have to get lucky with one that is made recently with updated BIOS on it (like MSI B550 Unify), use a USB flash stick on one that supports that method or use a 3000 series CPU to update it.

What board did you get ? I didn't have any issues using USB flashback on my X570 godlike, worked the same as my other MSI boards.
 
D-EJ915 said:
Technically none of the 500 chipsets support 5000 series out of the box, you'll either have to get lucky with one that is made recently with updated BIOS on it (like MSI B550 Unify), use a USB flash stick on one that supports that method or use a 3000 series CPU to update it.

What board did you get ? I didn't have any issues using USB flashback on my X570 godlike, worked the same as my other MSI boards.
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I got the MSI B550 Tomahawk. I have just tried 7 more usb drives (all 2.0 from 4-16gb in size,) all following the exact same procedure formatting to far32 and using diskpart to convert to mbr to ensure gpt isn't the issue. They all give 100% the same result, the bios led flashed for a few seconds (about 9 flashes) and then it stops and nothing happens. While I suppose it's possible all 15 or so total usb drives I've tried are all incompatible, it is far more likely the board is dead. I suppose it is possible I got a dud, but what a kick in the junk that is. I have no choice but top waste a vacation day driving to microcenter to buy another board there and pay them to flash the bios with a 3k cpu.

A board like the godlike is so expensive it isn't even in the same universe for this conversation.
 
I have a ASUS TUF X570-Pro (~$220). BIOS flashback to v3001 and it supported my 5600X without issues.

Intel NIC is 3rd revision (B3), which does not suffer the issues of the earlier versions. A little overkill for your requirements, but not outside requested budget by much.

~1:33:25:




Edit:
One thing to note on BIOS Flashback is to use a USB2 (instead of USB3 thumbdrive) if possible to improve compatibility, and to ensure it's formatted to FAT32. I just used a 1GB drive I found in the bottom of some drawer (where it has probably resided for the last decade).
 
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arnemetis said:
I got the MSI B550 Tomahawk. I have just tried 7 more usb drives (all 2.0 from 4-16gb in size,) all following the exact same procedure formatting to far32 and using diskpart to convert to mbr to ensure gpt isn't the issue. They all give 100% the same result, the bios led flashed for a few seconds (about 9 flashes) and then it stops and nothing happens. While I suppose it's possible all 15 or so total usb drives I've tried are all incompatible, it is far more likely the board is dead. I suppose it is possible I got a dud, but what a kick in the junk that is. I have no choice but top waste a vacation day driving to microcenter to buy another board there and pay them to flash the bios with a 3k cpu.

A board like the godlike is so expensive it isn't even in the same universe for this conversation.
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The bios flash should work the same, it really shouldn't make a difference but you're renaming the file to MSI.ROM all caps? If it's just flashing for a few sec it sounds like it's not finding the file or it's corrupted. It might be worthwhile to try downloading the bios again. I've got some old usb drives that blink when they are being accessed, looks like it is the bottom usb port below the PS/2 so the one that is closest to the button with atx and cpu power connected.
 
D-EJ915 said:
The bios flash should work the same, it really shouldn't make a difference but you're renaming the file to MSI.ROM all caps? If it's just flashing for a few sec it sounds like it's not finding the file or it's corrupted. It might be worthwhile to try downloading the bios again. I've got some old usb drives that blink when they are being accessed, looks like it is the bottom usb port below the PS/2 so the one that is closest to the button with atx and cpu power connected.
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Yes I renamed it, all caps. I did download it again, on multiple pcs, and of course tried a few different versions as well. Yes I plugged it into the port with the gray box surrounding it, any other port and it just sits at a solid red led. B&H have approved my rma for a defective board, I will be returning it for a refund.
 
arnemetis said:
Yes I renamed it, all caps. I did download it again, on multiple pcs, and of course tried a few different versions as well. Yes I plugged it into the port with the gray box surrounding it, any other port and it just sits at a solid red led. B&H have approved my rma for a defective board, I will be returning it for a refund.
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Yeah that sucks man, hope your next board you go with is a better experience and actually works lol.
 
D-EJ915 said:
Yeah that sucks man, hope your next board you go with is a better experience and actually works lol.
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I'm probably going to go to micro center and make them update the bios for me. Can't believe I'm going to be paying for such a noob service but considering how far of a drive it is I can't justify the risk.
 
Yeah, I mean the board could be bad. You can't tell unless you have a working bios. Sucks because of the hassle.
 
Dan_D said:
I've tested a number of X570 motherboards that were indistinguishable from each other in the stability department. They were all perfectly stable in my testing. Among these are:

ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula
ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero
GIGABYTE X570 Aorus Master
ASRock X570 Creator
MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE
ASUS TUF GAMING X570 PLUS WiFi
ASUS Prime X570 Pro
GIGABYTE X570 Gaming X
MSI MEG X570 Unify
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Dan_D For a 3900XT, would you choose any other another?
 
Since this thread came alive again, thought I would post again. After having Micro Center flash the board before I left (they insisted flashing a board without cpu was 100% impossible and I was completely wrong, and was misunderstanding the box) it fired up when I got home. They put the last stable version on, but I flashed it with the latest beta version. On a fresh test install it ran great and tested fine. Slapping it into the server (with the same windows install) has been problematic. I've had to disable the fiber card as that has been extremely unstable, and I cannot remote or locally use the machine for long before the display driver crashes and recovers seemingly randomly. Enough of these and the system will reboot from a bugcheck. However if I leave the system alone, it runs fine for days and days without issue. I tried removing the display driver and reinstalling a new one, to no effect. I highly suspect it's driver/windows issues that won't be resolved without a fresh install, which I cannot afford the time to do right now.
 
Yeah well Microcenter employees rarely know what they are doing. For every one you find has some idea what they are talking about, there are a good half dozen or more spewing bullshit. You can't flash every motherboard without a CPU or RAM installed. It's dependent on whether or not the motherboard has a specialized IC onboard that allows for it. Typically, it's only on higher end motherboards that you see this.
 
Dan_D said:
Yeah well Microcenter employees rarely know what they are doing. For every one you find has some idea what they are talking about, there are a good half dozen or more spewing bullshit. You can't flash every motherboard without a CPU or RAM installed. It's dependent on whether or not the motherboard has a specialized IC onboard that allows for it. Typically, it's only on higher end motherboards that you see this.
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Yeah I figured as much, I just didn't want to drive back after all I had already gone through with yet another outdated board I couldn't update!
 
I paid $280 for an Asus Strix X570-E to go with a 5600x. Not exactly the smartest purchase, but I wanted a solid motherboard since this is going to be my setup for the next 4-5 years. I had to USB flash to get it to post, and had to do the cmd prompt format to get it to work and the only file you could have on the drive was the properly named bios update. Since then it's been smooth sailing.

My dad's build has the MSI 550 tomahawk with a 3800+ and it's had issues booting every time with 4x sticks of 3600 ram, fwiw. Otherwise a great board.
 
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