M/B for quiet itx build (ryzen 3rd gen): x570, B450, x470 or wait for B550?

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echn111

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Looking for M/B recommendations for my new Ryzen 3rd gen (3700x/3900x) mini-ITX build. (edit)

Main priorities are 1440p gaming, low noise/silence, and having enough M.2 storage for normal use, perhaps between 2 to 4TB NVMe. Will probably buy a normal 12TB HDD as well just for slower storage... Ideally it'll have S/PDIF to connect to my 5.1 audio system without having to create a fake extended monitor (which is apparently the only way to do this if you use HDMI for 5.1 sound). Already bought my peripherals and have an RTX 2070 super (and a quiet 3rd party cooler) but my new ITX case should arrive within 5 weeks so I don't need to rush into a decison and can take my time....

And now I need to decide on the motherboard. I don't mind paying more for something, as long as I get something reasonable for it, such as increased quality, speed or features that I care about. But not going to waste money on things that aren't useful to me, so going to avoid thunderbolt and similar features. As for M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0, for twice the cost I'm not sure what "real world" advantage this gives me over PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives as they seem very fast already.... And x570 seems to be twice as expensive as B450...

Open to suggestions....
 
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echn111 said:
Looking for M/B recommendations for my new Ryzen 3 mini-ITX build.

Main priorities are 1440p gaming, low noise/silence, and having enough M.2 storage for normal use, perhaps between 2 to 4TB NVMe. Will probably buy a normal 12TB HDD as well just for slower storage... Ideally it'll have S/PDIF to connect to my 5.1 audio system without having to create a fake extended monitor (which is apparently the only way to do this if you use HDMI for 5.1 sound). Already bought my peripherals and have an RTX 2070 super (and a quiet 3rd party cooler) but my new ITX case should arrive within 5 weeks so I don't need to rush into a decison and can take my time....

And now I need to decide on the motherboard. I don't mind paying more for something, as long as I get something reasonable for it, such as increased quality, speed or features that I care about. But not going to waste money on things that aren't useful to me, so going to avoid thunderbolt and similar features. As for M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0, for twice the cost I'm not sure what "real world" advantage this gives me over PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives as they seem very fast already.... And x570 seems to be twice as expensive as B450...

Open to suggestions....
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For gaming you will not notice anything going with a 4.0 SSD over 3.0, use that money difference to get more storage. It's really hard to say as we don't know all the specs on the B550 year,. It seeing as they should be out in a month and you have 6 weeks to wait on the case, I would probably find the features you want and the board you want but hope off on purchasing until the B550s drop, then you compare what came out to what u liked and see if it compares feature/price wise. You said Ryzen 3, so that's a lower TDP than ryzen 5 or 7. I run a fatal1ty b450 itx in my personal box and it works fine for me. It only has 1gb/s Ethernet and some built in wifi which gets the job done. 2 ram slots so you can't buy 2 sticks now and 2 later. Which ryzen 3 are you looking at? 3300x?
 
TBH I don't think there is much difference real world between PCIe 3.0 and 4.0. You can look at my sig and I opted for PCIe 3.0. On the NVME front 3500Mbps vs 5000Mbps read, not a huge difference in real world usage unless you're doing some specific workloads. Price is a big factor too as storage is considerably cheaper. In terms of the x16 slot, well a 2080 Ti isn't bottlenecked by PCIe 3.0 so I'd expect the next gen of cards to not be bottlenecked either. At worst on the high end, like 3080 Ti maybe it will be just a few percentage points. Years down the road this number will start growing.

Depends on how soon you want to build. When you say Ryzen 3 are you talking the APUs? Like 2200G/3200G? In that case I would wait for next gen. The APUs always lag one generation behind. 2200G = Zen architecture, 2xxx desktop = Zen+. 3200G = Zen+ architecture, 3xxx desktop = Zen 2. When the 4xxxG APUs come out they will utilize Zen 2 architecture and Navi iGPU offering a good bit of performance on both the CPU and iGPU front. If you're going with a 3xxx non APU then building whenever is fine.

X570 boards have chipset fans, not always advisable for a quiet build. If you're waiting for next gen CPU you might as well wait for B550 boards to start coming out to evaluate them. They will have PCIe 4.0 available on the primary X16 slot and m.2 NVME slot, and no chipset fan. Will be cheaper than X570 and probably more in line with B450 pricing. The slots are backwards compatible with PCIe3.0. I feel each AMD launch is getting more attention from motherboard manufacturers so hopefully we will see more and better mITX boards.

Lastly if you want to just get one now, nothing wrong with that. I would personally recommend GIGABYTE B450 I AORUS PRO WIFI, ASUS ROG STRIX B450-I GAMING or ASRock Fatal1ty B450 GAMING-ITX/AC (basically same as ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming-ITX/ac). I've had good luck with the Asrock boards. Running X370 Taichi in server, X470 Taichi Ultimate in my rig, X370 Killer SLI/ac for my gf and AB350M Pro4 for my mom. Some rocky BIOSes initially but everything seems ironed out. No LLC on the X370 Killer SLI/ac or AB350M Pro4 but that's probably expected because they're cheaper.
 
I'd wait and see what B550 brings to the table shortly. Most of the advantages of X570 are nullified in the smaller form factor as there just isn't physical room on the board for multiple PCIe connections, etc. If nothing else, I'd expect it to not have active cooling (which should help the quiet part of your needs) and should be somewhat cheaper. Hopefully sub-$150 for mITX.
 
Thanks all. I probably should have called the CPU as a "Ryzen 3rd generation" but didn't realise the AMD naming convention.... I'm not sure exactly what CPU I'm getting but it's between the Ryzen 3700x and the 3900x. Currently leaning towards the Ryzen 3700x as it has a low TDP and great price/performance and seems the sensible purchase. But if the price for the 3900x is reasonably close to the 3700x and I find a legit reason to get it, I'll get that...

Had a look at those x570 boards but they're really not aimed at quiet builds and really not keen on the small fans providing active cooling. I understand that's to keep the M.2 PCIe 4.0 storage cool - that's yet another reason to stick to PCIe 3 storage.... B450 are better value for money, but they have less features, many lack a second M.2. port....

Seems that the sensible thing to do is to wait for the B550, plan my build while avoiding impluse buying for the next 6 weeks....
 
echn111 said:
Thanks all. I probably should have called the CPU as a "Ryzen 3rd generation" but didn't realise the AMD naming convention.... I'm not sure exactly what CPU I'm getting but it's between the Ryzen 3700x and the 3900x. Currently leaning towards the Ryzen 3700x as it has a low TDP and great price/performance and seems the sensible purchase. But if the price for the 3900x is reasonably close to the 3700x and I find a legit reason to get it, I'll get that...

Had a look at those x570 boards but they're really not aimed at quiet builds and really not keen on the small fans providing active cooling. I understand that's to keep the M.2 PCIe 4.0 storage cool - that's yet another reason to stick to PCIe 3 storage.... B450 are better value for money, but they have less features, many lack a second M.2. port....

Seems that the sensible thing to do is to wait for the B550, plan my build while avoiding impluse buying for the next 6 weeks....
Click to expand...

Why not the X570 Tomahawk? Seems to be $200 and have great VRM's?
 
Jamie Marsala said:
Why not the X570 Tomahawk? Seems to be $200 and have great VRM's?
Click to expand...
Where can I buy it? Oh, I can't get and I don't believe it's an itx board either so won't help OP. A b450 or wait a month to see what 550's come out, but itx boards normally take a little longer than regular boards to come out so may have a bit of a wait (who knows though!)
 
I have the Gigabyte X570 ITX board and have been happy with it. It has dual m.2 slots which is a plus.

I do get some coil whine in my system, but that could be one of the PSU, GPU, or motherboard. Thought it was the chipset fan at first, but it's not.

NCASE M1
Gigabyte X570 Aurus I
G.Skill 2 x 16GB 3600Mhz 16-16-16-36
RTX 2080 Super
Corsair SF600
 
I don’t know that you’d want to run a 3900x on an itx b450 board. It might be fine but I don’t think there are any with the power delivery it would really need to do well.

it would also be really hard to keep it quiet with cooling that would fit in a small build.

to give you an idea, I just put together a 3700x / b450i (ASUS strix) setup in an SG13 case. I use a Noctua L12S for cooling, 120mm intake up front, 92mm side exhaust. cpu fan blows up to an SF450 platinum power supply with its fan facing down to help with exhaust. Powercolor AXRX Radeon 5700 (not XT).

it gets loud at load , not unbearable. It sits behind my monitor. Before I got the 5700 I had a small Radeon pro card in it and it still really got spun up when the processor was under load. Most larger cases have better airflow and allow for larger coolers or liquid cooling, so they’re not quite as noisy.

The extra features of X570 aren’t going to get you anything in an itx build, so I’d recommend b450 now or b550 later. I didn’t see what case you said you were going to use, but if it’s small form factor and you want that kind of power and low noise, I hope it’s a big case. Otherwise look at the ryzen 5 3600 instead of the 3700x.
 
deruberhanyok said:
I didn’t see what case you said you were going to use, but if it’s small form factor and you want that kind of power and low noise, I hope it’s a big case. Otherwise look at the ryzen 5 3600 instead of the 3700x.
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As long as some thought is put into the cooling setup 3900X or 3700X is very doable in ITX without much noise. My case is 12.6 liters and I'm running a 3900X on air. My graphics card is the loudest part of my system in its current state. With a custom loop, or for less work an AIO or hybrid card, I think noise levels can be great.
 
deruberhanyok said:
I don’t know that you’d want to run a 3900x on an itx b450 board. It might be fine but I don’t think there are any with the power delivery it would really need to do well.
Click to expand...

Can I get some clarification on this? Are you saying that the 3900x will not operate at its advertised performance levels on a MiniITX board?
 
criccio we're talking about B450 boards here, keep in mind. The few X570 ITX boards I think all have beefy enough power delivery circuitry that they should be fine.

A lot of the the ITX B450 boards will probably run it but I don't expect you'll get a lot of high boosting out of it, or have much if any OC headroom.

There was a spreadsheet floating around for a while that had a comparison of the various VRM configs on AM4 boards, with some general ratings for which processors they could run and what kind of airflow the board might need to keep from overheating:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...TJFqqVxdCR9daIVNyMatydkpFA/edit#gid=611478281

If you're considering putting a 3900X on an ITX B450 board I would highly recommend reviewing the list and looking up info on the power delivery of the board you're considering.
 
deruberhanyok said:
criccio we're talking about B450 boards here, keep in mind. The few X570 ITX boards I think all have beefy enough power delivery circuitry that they should be fine.

A lot of the the ITX B450 boards will probably run it but I don't expect you'll get a lot of high boosting out of it, or have much if any OC headroom.

There was a spreadsheet floating around for a while that had a comparison of the various VRM configs on AM4 boards, with some general ratings for which processors they could run and what kind of airflow the board might need to keep from overheating:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...TJFqqVxdCR9daIVNyMatydkpFA/edit#gid=611478281

If you're considering putting a 3900X on an ITX B450 board I would highly recommend reviewing the list and looking up info on the power delivery of the board you're considering.
Click to expand...
Yeah, supposedly, they can run the 3900 series chips at stock.
I am only interested in running the am4 chips at stock. You can't get the OC very high anyway and it's not worth the trouble, on the amd side. Cooling is even more of a challenge on an itx build and the trade-off is noise as fans need to run faster to cool it all.

I think the msi b450 gaming plus itx and asus b450 strix itx are good choices from the b450 chipset. It's currently unknown what b550 itx will offer but I am concerned about the prices. Going by what Asus b550 releases, it's going to be overpriced.

Hopefully, Asrock, Msi and Gigabyte won't do that.

On some of the X570 boards, you can control the pch fan. Gigabyte and Msi provide bios control.
 
echn111 said:
Looking for M/B recommendations for my new Ryzen 3rd gen (3700x/3900x) mini-ITX build. (edit)

Main priorities are 1440p gaming, low noise/silence, and having enough M.2 storage for normal use, perhaps between 2 to 4TB NVMe. Will probably buy a normal 12TB HDD as well just for slower storage... Ideally it'll have S/PDIF to connect to my 5.1 audio system without having to create a fake extended monitor (which is apparently the only way to do this if you use HDMI for 5.1 sound). Already bought my peripherals and have an RTX 2070 super (and a quiet 3rd party cooler) but my new ITX case should arrive within 5 weeks so I don't need to rush into a decison and can take my time....

And now I need to decide on the motherboard. I don't mind paying more for something, as long as I get something reasonable for it, such as increased quality, speed or features that I care about. But not going to waste money on things that aren't useful to me, so going to avoid thunderbolt and similar features. As for M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0, for twice the cost I'm not sure what "real world" advantage this gives me over PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives as they seem very fast already.... And x570 seems to be twice as expensive as B450...

Open to suggestions....
Click to expand...
For a good feel for VRM capability per virtually any AM4 motherboard, use this database:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...TJFqqVxdCR9daIVNyMatydkpFA/edit#gid=611478281

If you want a quiet and quite capable iTX B450 motherboard that will actually support a 3950 (stock no problem) then the MSI B450i Gaming Plus AC could be something to look at. Guru3d data with an OC 2700 to 4.2ghz and 1.44v which would pull more than current 3800x at that speed and voltage:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-b450i-gaming-plus-ac-review,19.html

The MSI bios for the B450i now has CPU offset voltage which was a concern for Buildzoid at time of video for using PBO, VRM is 6+2 with 60a power stages and will handle a 3950 just fine and is on MSI compatibility CPU list.

Nothing fancy about this motherboard but I definitely like it, it is stable, OCs my 2700 well and runs my DDR4 3200 Cas 14 ram at 3466 without issue. Only thing I hear is my Vega FE if I game (since I OC it is the main reason there), The Vega FE is rather quiet at stock settings. The downside is only 1 M.2 slot, so if SATA is not an issue to supplement a NVME drive, I have a 2TB Sabrient Rocket:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0829DZH2W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Since MSI promised next gen CPU support with their B450's they are probably most likely to support Zen 3 with this motherboard to preclude too many lawsuits.
 
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MSI confirms that they will support next gen Ryzen on all of their B450 motherboards which makes them very applicable for a longer term buy and potential upgrade path later:
 
There looks to be several B550 mini iTX boards coming in a few weeks time. I like the look of the MSI B550i Gaming Edge WiFi myself.
 
noko said:
MSI confirms that they will support next gen Ryzen on all of their B450 motherboards which makes them very applicable for a longer term buy and potential upgrade path later:
Click to expand...


Yes but I've been having to run Dragon Center to adjust fan curves on their cut down bios. That irks me bc you don't need a fancy interface to manually punch in digits.
 
somebrains said:
Yes but I've been having to run Dragon Center to adjust fan curves on their cut down bios. That irks me bc you don't need a fancy interface to manually punch in digits.
Click to expand...
Bios fan control for me on the B450i works as expected, controls fan speed based off of what you select to monitor. No need for any software fan control. Using most up to date bios for motherboard. So you have this same motherboard? What CPU you using?
 
noko said:
Bios fan control for me on the B450i works as expected, controls fan speed based off of what you select to monitor. No need for any software fan control. Using most up to date bios for motherboard. So you have this same motherboard? What CPU you using?
Click to expand...

This is a 2600 on a b450 tomahawk non Max.
The mini bios on this board has static rpm pts when you set a fan to PWM and smart monitoring.

I can change them thru Dragon Center.

Specifically aio cooled gpu workaround was to run a mini pwm to dual pwm and set aio fan and gpu chipset fan to a unified curve defined in Afterburner bc there's no gpu target in this bios.
 
noko said:
Bios fan control for me on the B450i works as expected, controls fan speed based off of what you select to monitor. No need for any software fan control. Using most up to date bios for motherboard. So you have this same motherboard? What CPU you using?
Click to expand...
I am not seeing fixed point fan speeds but an interpolation of the four values set. Fan speed varies and is controlled between the points. Now if one wanted more control points then four, yes you would need software but the MSI B450i is using a curve defined by four points in behavior by looking at fan speed over time with CPU load going up to 100%.
 
The point of me chiming in is for those Hers that haven't been thru the mini bios discovery yet to do some research rather than assume all is the same in 1 brand or chipset family.
 
somebrains said:
The point of me chiming in is for those Hers that haven't been thru the mini bios discovery yet to do some research rather than assume all is the same in 1 brand or chipset family.
Click to expand...
Good bet is to check the gigabyte forums, as long as they haven't cleaned them recently. They usually have useful info regarding any bios quirks or other board issues, and sometimes beta fw is posted.
 
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