Seems like a pretty good price for this motherboard. The previous lowest price as reported by PC part picker was $119. It's got one of the stronger VRMs for the B450 chipset with a decent feature set available as well as recommended by Gamers Nexus/Buildzoid.
Shipping ranges from $12-$15 so not the greatest and PCCG don't offer pick-up anymore as well unfortunately.
anything similar with Wifi?
MSI B550M Pro-VDH WIFI is a good option, feature set is similar to the Mortar and VRM runs slightly cooler from memory (check hardware unboxed's video).
It is quite a bit pricier, but you'd struggle to find a similar quality board with wifi for less as there were pretty few B450 mATX boards with wifi, so you're kind of forced to pay the B550 premium.
Will check it out. Thanks!
Using one now. Solid board has no WiFi but bought a cheap pcie card for that and Bluetooth.
Also runs great paired with my 3600 + 5600 xt.
Similar here, same board, 3800X and 5700XT. RAM is 32GB of 3200 and no issues with compatibility or tweaks needed to voltages, just auto XMP got me up and running.
What is a good pcie card for cheap? Or the one that u use? The one i have is so slow that even a cheap ebay usb wifi dongle is much faster than it! The one i got is a $20 asus pcie one but i had no idea it would be that trash!
A $30 generic one with Bluetooth should be fine. Got the same and no issues.
What is the difference between Max and older version?
I think Max meant it was compatible out of the box with 3000 series, the non Max ones were flip of a coin whether it had a compatible BIOS or not.
I believe the BIOS chip also got updated with more storage on the MAX boards (32 mb vs 16 mb) so that increased the support for the number of Ryzen CPUs it could support.The previous boards couldn't support all first 3 gens of ryzen CPUs concurrently or so I'm lead to believe?
I own the original version and I had 2nd and 3rd Gen running on it so far.
But yes,the Bios capacity is limited in the original version. If you update to support the 3rf gen, you will back to text version.
Are you a running man fan
Besides the excellent answer from Yoomes Bond, to make the NON max boards compatible with 3rd gen Ryzen MSI have made the bios a lot simpler and a lot less flashy. I do not think they removed anything but it looks way different compared to their previous Bios. I have a non Max version and you can clearly see the difference.
Thanks, that is right
not max has a smaller bios memory
Excellent board. Thanks op lodged another price protection claim (was 179$ originally during covid in May)
Which card, if you don’t mind me asking?
28degeees MasterCard, but I'm not sure they offer it to new customers.
Everything was well over priced during covid alright
dont buy this if you are planning to go 5000 series
Care to explain? It does support amd zen 3 with bios update
it works with 5000 series though
so? You are missing features like pcie gen 4 and locking yourself from future upgrades because this is the last gen for b450
also 3000 series isnt even that cheap right now, around $280-320 for 3600/3600x
There are no future upgrades for B550 either, Zen 3 is the end of the line for AM4. So if you don't take advantage of PCIE4.0 or anything else B550/X570 specific there's no point, assuming B450 gets at least a few AGESA updates.
Bought one of these on the last sale and built my sons gaming rig for Xmas with it. Chucked a R5 3100 and an RX580 and it runs like a dream at high 1080p for most games
Will Ryzen 5000 work with this board?
With a BIOS update, yes.
Best budget cpu and graphics card to pair with this board for 1440p gaming?
CPU you'll have to research but anything under 250$ new is a good start. For gpu, 1440p you'll want at least a gtx 1070 or greater gpu. Such as rtx 2060, amd rx 5600 xt
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 $280 at Amazon.
GPU: lol good luck
I got an rtx 2060 super, and a ryzen 7 3700x, goes great
Any deals anywhere on GPUs? The market is stagnant and inflated like hell or am I wrong?
The former
I bought a 1660 Super from CCPU for $370 last month, now the cheapest is $420
Can i fit my NZXT z63 Kraken cooler onto this mobo? What size case would i need to buy?
Been my main rig since late 2019. Hasn't skipped a beat.
This is my motherboard had it for 1 year. best budget micro ATX board you can buy for AMD CPUs and at this price it's most definitely worth it.
Is there an equivalent for an ATX size board? I checked the manual and putting in second M2 NVMe drive disables the PCIe 2.0 x16 slot. And only one PCIe 2.0 x1 slot can be used, as using one slot disables the other.
Only having one PCIe slot usable might restrict options such as adding both a wifi/Bluetooth card and a faster networking card. (Without residing to using usb ports).
The only thing I know of off the top of my head with similar VRM performance is the MSI B450 Tomahawk, you also get cooling for the SOC VRMs. However, there's only 1 M.2 slot on the board and you also lose USB ports for some inexplicable reason. (If it matters to you, you also lose optical audio out).
Another option could be the MSI B450 Gaming Plus which has the same VRM as the Tomohawk for worse VRM cooling (due to the smaller sinks) where you can gain additional PCI-E x1 slot compared to the Tomahawk (6 vs 5). However it also only has 1 M.2 slot if that matters. You also gain 1 additional USB-A port at the back but give up the USB-C port.
Another alternative could be the B450 Aorus Elite but that has worse VRM performance according to Buildzoid and it only has 4 PCI-E slots (2 16x, 2 1x) for some reason, though it does have a 2nd M.2 slot.
Thank you, I'll check them out. It's been almost a decade since I've upgraded my PC, so have to decide whether to spend $100 more and get more features, eg 2.5G LAN, more usb3 gen 2 on a B550 board. If I keep that for 10 years, it's only $10 a year more. But I'm probably only going to run a 3600x CPU, and not overclock so anything better than a B450 is likely be overkill.
Was browsing PCCG's sale section and came across the MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max which might be an option if you willing to go up in price a bit (It's currently $149 and normally sold for $169)? It's 4+2 phase with doublers on the vcore VRMs (so it seems like a slight upgrade compared to the B450 tomahawk tho sinks are again smaller). Tho the vrm temps on a buildzoid vid seemed to be ok but not amazing. It's got 2 M.2 slots, 6 PCI-E slots (3 16x and 3 1x) and also has quite a few USB ports as well.
great mobo
put one in a friends media centre, they didnt want a board with rgb on it.
So been using this board for a while and I can't figure out how to get my 5 Byski case fans to sync to mobo via Mystic Light. Doing my head in.
Deal has expired. Bummer, was looking to buy this morning
Solid board and great that it will support new CPU's. Runs great with my ryzen 5 3500x and rtx dirty80.