Buying Motherboard: X370 vs B350

I was just about to order a mobo, cpu, ram and case but noticed the BIOSTAR X370GT5 is out of stock. I'm going for a black & white build. I'm might order the BIOSTAR B350GT5 instead, would just like to know what the main deference's are besides 6x sata and 2x usb 3.1 headers vs 4x sata and 1x usb 3.1 header. Will one overclock better than the other? Also, i have a m2 and 3 & 4TB sata drives, will 4 sata ports be enough? I thought multiple sata ports disabled when using m.2s?

New Build:

BIOSTAR X370GT5
AMD RYZEN 7 1700
Night Hawk 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3000
Corsair Tempered Glass Crystal Series 460X RGB

Already have:

Supernova 1000 p2
1080 w/ hybrid water cooler
m2 xp941, 3TB and 4TB sata drives
40" 4k samsung tv

Normally you'd expect an X370 board to have more rubust power phase circuitry than the B350, but Biostar's boards appear to have identical configurations. So you'd be losing 2 chipset-provided PCIe 2.0 lanes and XFire/SLI capability. So get the B350 if it suits your needs.

If you're looking for an X370, get one with a more robost power setup like the budget ASRock X370 Killer SLI/ac which also has a black/white color scheme.

So far other than the differences you listed, the B350 boards appear to have a less robust power delivery section. Most of them at least. Unfortunately, with the current supply, and the barely released platform, there doesn't appear to be much analysis on if the power delivery section on those boards is sufficient to hit max OC on ambient. IIRC, there are two users who have reported having a B350 board in the Ryzen discussion thread, DaveB and another whom I forgot his name.

As for the SATA ports, that is entirely up to what you plan to use the machine for. I can get away with only 4 SATA ports, but then again, my case only has 4 legitimate drive slots, with an odd 5th possible but it sits in the area used to hide cables in my case.

Edit: also, the B350 chipset does not support multi GPUs iirc.

Thanks for the info. I think I'll go with the x370 series. I'm kind of irritated, I knew the build i wanted a couple days ago, it was in stock, now everything's back-ordered or sold out. I'll buy the case an cpu today and wait on the mobo and ram.

Edit: Does anyone know how often newegg restocks?

unilx said:

Thanks for the info. I think I'll go with the x370 series. I'm kind of irritated, I knew the build i wanted a couple days ago, it was in stock, now everything's back-ordered or sold out. I'll buy the case an cpu today and wait on the mobo and ram.

Edit: Does anyone know how often newegg restocks?

Click to expand...

I'm actually contemplating getting the B350 [emoji14] and a 1700x. The overclocking on these guys aren't crazy amazing, but a 1700x should perform fine at stock for what I want.

unilx said:

Thanks for the info. I think I'll go with the x370 series. I'm kind of irritated, I knew the build i wanted a couple days ago, it was in stock, now everything's back-ordered or sold out. I'll buy the case an cpu today and wait on the mobo and ram.

Edit: Does anyone know how often newegg restocks?

Click to expand...

Look below if you're thinking of that ASRock X370.

Dave how has that MSI B350 treated you?

I'm really not that excited about it. When I run stress tests at 4 GHz, the system will just suddenly shut down, which makes me think of the VRMs overheating or overloading. And I'm using the 65W 1700, not the 95W 1700X (of course setting the Vcore at 1.4V will up that a bit). All the B350s seem to have the same 4 + 2 phase setup, which is not ideal for overclocking, while the better X370s are either 8 + 2 or 12 phase (8 + 2 + 2?). And it could use a BIOS upgrade for memory compatibility, since my G.Skill couldn't run at 2933, just 2400, but none is currently available. I would only consider these boards for running at or near stock.

DaveB said:

I'm really not that excited about it. When I run stress tests at 4 GHz, the system will just suddenly shut down, which makes me think of the VRMs overheating or overloading. And I'm using the 65W 1700, not the 95W 1700X (of course setting the Vcore at 1.4V will up that a bit). All the B350s seem to have the same 4 + 2 phase setup, which is not ideal for overclocking, while the better X370s are either 8 + 2 or 12 phase (8 + 2 + 2?). And it could use a BIOS upgrade for memory compatibility, since my G.Skill couldn't run at 2933, just 2400, but none is currently available. I would only consider these boards for running at or near stock.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback. If inventory doesn't improve on the x370, I may just change my plan from a 1700+prime x370 to a 1700x+b350.