B450 all that's needed for zen3 😁

[pinky33]

Still a lot of detailed reviews and benchmarks need to be done to see how well this claim really holds true. But it seems a lot of money can be saved if you don't need features that b550 and x570 have.

ie: a decent lower cost b450 can still claim stock amd boost frequency with proper cooling and use SAM. In other words for gaming u can achieve same FPS with a zen 3 on b450 as you can on x570. Gen 4 pci is not bottlenecked yet.......


Discuss.

 

[bmwbaxter]

AFAIK asrock is the only vendor to release a bios for b450 with zen 3 support. More will likely come in the new year.

 

[EarthDog]

More will come out, but I think it's only going to be select boards from each vendor.

Pretty sure AMD said SAM is only for B550 and X570 chipsets and won't make its way to B450... but who knows. Surely that's a carrot AMD is dangling in front of B450 users to upgrade.

 

[pinky33]

Will try to find articles to link later. MSI, asrock and gigabyte have all announced most b450 will work with zen3 and some will also work with Sam. Again will wait to see it in action. There are some decent b450 boards that u can easily take cpu to max stock boosting (amd OCing) all day long with proper cooling. The savings on a b450 vs b550 can get you from 16gb ram to 32 or a slightly better gfx card or money in pocket.

If your buying anything over 5600x your not caring about saving a little in mobo anyway

 

[EarthDog]

Yeah, just googled a bit and saw rumblings about it going to B450/X470. Very cool! I wonder how AMD feels about that...lol! I'd just worry about running much more than the 5600X in some of these boards. B450 is the budget version for 2000 series chips. These would be a good choice for the 65W chip for sure. I worry about the 105W parts, especially with PBO going past their stock limits and the higher core count parts as well. A 5900X can pull 175W stress testing at stock, for example. That won't bode well for a lot of those boards. Be careful and make sure you get one with more robust VRMs, especially if you plan on a bigger chip or overclocking them. You'd be surprised how many choose inexpensive boards and put big chips in them... in fact, a Tom's hardware reviewer got dinged pretty hard earlier this year by Hardware Unboxed for making that same assumption (he was justifying why they used mid-range CPU for motherboard testing and got shredded). It surprised me but it seems a lot of people use budget boards and situations like this to upgrade to bigger chips down the road. Also, they are on the support list, but you'd be surprised how many boards can't handle a stock flagship CPU without some throttling. The 5950X would bog down on some cheapO B550 boards...enabling PBO or overclocking caused a shutdown.

Either way this will be great for those using B450 and upgrading to 5000 series!

 

[Zerileous]

Such a big jump from Zen2 to Zen3, I'll probably go there eventually. Plenty of headroom in the Taichi VRM. But yes B450 especially is famous for some low end VRM, even some of the x470 boards will struggle to OC 8 cores.

 

[stompah]

Gigabyte has released a BIOS for the B450 that offers Zen3 support. I have not tried it myself yet.

 

[Woomack]

Just a link after quick browsing as I couldn't find a direct link. There is a chance that Intel will support SAM soon - https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/a...bar-function-for-intel-z490-motherboards.html, so I assume it will work on everything, as long as motherboard vendors will add support in BIOS.

Personally, I wouldn't be so excited as B450 motherboards were so many times "adjusted" to work with higher series processors or RAM or anything else that you can expect various issues. There are already many threads with various issues on B450 motherboards.
On the other hand, if someone can afford 5900X or 5950X then I see no problem in upgrading the motherboard. It really isn't so big price difference and there are cheaper and good B550 motherboards in stores.

 

[Ben333]

In my opinion, the price of B550 is cheap enough for even non-enthusiast users to strongly consider. But yes, if you already have B450 and there is BIOS support, go for it. Otherwise for right around $100 you can grab a pretty nice B550 board and enjoy more benefits moving into the future. I think it'd be worth the extra $20 - $30 in all but the tightest of budgets.

 

[EarthDog]

Otherwise for right around $100 you can grab a B550 board

FTFY.

For $100, these are budget entries that, MOST (not all), will do the job (depending on what that job is). I reviewed four of the cheapest B550 mATX motherboards (ranging from $80 to $120) and some of these couldn't even PBO a 3900X none the less anything in the 105W 5000 series (5900X+ I'm looking at you!).

I would only grab a bargain budget board if you have to and don't plan on dropping in heavy chips or overclocking them. I agree with the sentiment, but these cheap B550 boards (and I'd assume B450 is worse) are truly, cheap. The $150 range is about the lowest I would go for B550 on all brands as this will give you more robust power delivery and other features that may not be found on the bottom dwellers.

Honestly, the best (for power delivery) B550 boards at $150 or less are the ITX options. You may lose an M.2 socket or max at 64GB, but outside of that, they are good enough for most.

 

[freeagent]

I think I read that too. But isn't it a one way trip? Meaning if you flash to run the new CPU, you cant go back to an old one? I don't like the sounds of that but if you flash why would you go back.. unless you had to for some reason. I was looking at B450 and X470 but didn't go that route because of that.