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B550m motherboard selection

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Greenhadouken

Registered
Joined
Jan 8, 2015
Location
Ohio
Hi all! I'm having trouble deciding between a few diffrent boards. Im looking at MSI MAG B550m Mortar, MSI MAG B550m bazooka, Gigabyte b550m aorus pro, and ASrock B550m steel legend. The board will be paired with a 3700x, RTX 2070, and 16 gigs of trident z 3000mhz ram. Im using a cooler master ml240r to cool the CPU. I want to do light to mid OC on the CPU( yes I know Ryzen do not oc good). I also have to stick to the mATX form factor because my case only supports mATX or ITX. I have watched a few videos, but I haven't seen to many real indeepth reviews. Any help would be appreciated.
 
Personally, I would go with the MSI MAG Mortar or the Bazooka. The difference between those two is just that the Mortar has Wifi. MSI has done a good job with memory compatibility in the Ryzen series.
 
Thanks for the response! So you would take the bazooka's 4+2+1 phase over the aorus pro 10+3 phase? Is the memory compatibility that bad on gigabytes boards that bad, or is the phase used in MSIs boards that much better? Im asking because I dont know. I want to get the best board without breaking the bank.
 
I will only add that I was recently testing the B550M Steel Legend and it was working fine with the 3900X. No problems at all. Memory works fine too and even though it has no big point, it OC up to declared 4733+.
I'm not sure what are you looking for as in general, all these motherboards will work about the same. Nearly every reply will be based on personal preferences to a favorite brand. The main difference makes additional controllers, mentioned WiFi and things like that.

Gigabyte had memory compatibility problems with early Ryzens. Right now all seems fine. Actually, all brands are fine with memory up to 3800 and it's maximum you can make if your CPU likes so high IF ratio. In most cases, you want 3600 and a bit tighter timings than standard. So the difference in memory OC is only above ~4500 when some motherboards go up to 4500-4600 and some will reach 5000+. Again, to match 3600 CL16 performance you need at least 4800 CL18 so it doesn't really matter how high memory OC past 3800.
 
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I really appreciate your comment. I was having hard time finding info on the mATX boards. Especially on the ones that were 130 or less.how have the temps been on the Steel legend?
 
As woo said, the deciding factor is likely feature set. Is that high power phase count on the Aorus accomplished with doublers?
 
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I have to say I'm not sure. I can't seem to find much about it. Buildzoid said in one of his videos that it would be fine with the 3600, but thats about the only thing I've seen. I also watched the video he put out about his first impressions of the line up from gigabyte, but he didn't really seem impressed by them.
 
I built a new media server last week using the MSI Mortar(see sig) and have had no issues at all with it so far

Encoding went from 8 hours on my i5-4690k HTPC down to 3 hours per movie so I havent even bothered with an OC yet
 
I really appreciate your comment. I was having hard time finding info on the mATX boards. Especially on the ones that were 130 or less.how have the temps been on the Steel legend?

Temps were fine. Actually about the same as on the B550 PG Velocita.

Re Buildzoid comment, as far as he is analyzing motherboards well then I can't agree with comments that some motherboards are too weak for some processors. For example, Z490 PG Velocita had a terrible review from him based almost only on visual inspection. On the same motherboard, I have no problems pushing my 10900K to the same clock or even higher than others do on the most expensive and in theory the best-designed motherboards. Even a pretty average design is good enough in most cases as long as the power section is not overheating. I wouldn't put 10+ core CPU on a 4-phase (4 for the CPU) motherboard but most 6-phase+ are already enough.
 
Ok. That makes sense. I was having a hard time really finding info on the mATX boards. Especially the 130 ones and lower. I know the mATX form factor dosent get a lot of love from manufacturers or reviewers, but it seems like the B550 line up is way better than previous generations. Thank you to everyone who has commented.
 
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