Question Any good VRM AM4 boards available right now (May 6, 2020) at a reasonable price?

[EliteRetard]

Trying to help out a family member, looking at a 3700x based system. Need the system ASAP, since both their home computers have failed.

I'm specifically looking for known good VRMs and quality components. At this point the features don't really matter, even price is fairly flexible.

Been trying to find anything from an MSI B450 Tomahawk Max, all the way up near $300 X570 boards. Almost nothing is in stock.

Part of what's making it hard is trying to figure out the VRM and component quality on every AM4 board ever made, I can't find any recent readable list.

The few good motherboards I have found, don't appear to be in stock anywhere or are like $200+ over retail.

Does anyone have a list of the MOBOs with known good VRMs that are also Ryzen 3000 compatible out of the box? Then I can search for just those.

There doesn't appear to be many in the 400 series MOBO's, and even the X570s seems to have a lot of terrible options.

 

[Rigg]

Trying to help out a family member, looking at a 3700x based system. Need the system ASAP, since both their home computers have failed.

I'm specifically looking for known good VRMs and quality components. At this point the features don't really matter, even price is fairly flexible.

Been trying to find anything from an MSI B450 Tomahawk Max, all the way up near $300 X570 boards. Almost nothing is in stock.

Part of what's making it hard is trying to figure out the VRM and component quality on every AM4 board ever made, I can't find any recent readable list.

The few good motherboards I have found, don't appear to be in stock anywhere or are like $200+ over retail.

Does anyone have a list of the MOBOs with known good VRMs that are also Ryzen 3000 compatible out of the box? Then I can search for just those.

There doesn't appear to be many in the 400 series MOBO's, and even the X570s seems to have a lot of terrible options.

AM4 Vcore VRM Ratings v1.4 (2019-11-07)

docs.google.com

That should help.

Almost any AM4 board from a reputable vendor should ship with a compatible bios at this point. If worse came to worse you could buy an older CPU from amazon and return it after the update assuming you have prime. Many of the boards have bios flashback which means all you need is a PSU and USB stick to update the BIOS. The spreadsheet has this feature in the far right column.

If you are US based (and have one near by) Micro Center is far and away the best place to buy CPU's and motherboards. They'll even give bundle deals on open box boards. I've probably bought over 30 AM4 motherboards from them in the last 2 years.



A 3700x doesn't use much power and has almost no OC headroom. It will do fine on anything with 2 green checks on that spreadsheet. Unless you want the option to run a 12 or 16 core in the future I wouldn't sweat it too hard.

 

[JustMe21]

Here's a link to aa Google spreadsheet with AM4 motherboards that lists VRMs and other specs

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wmsTYK9Z3-jUX5LGRoFnsZYZiW1pfiDZnKCjaXyzd1o/htmlview?pru=AAABci1TfAY*6bqPbG0-I5YSR_JnlFnnxw#

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've managed to pick up a couple of MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX boards, in the last week or so, at MSRP ($79.99 + ship + tax). Those seem fairly impressive, for a micro-ATX board. They are "Ryzen 3000 Ready", and have a pretty decent heatsink over the primary VRM bank.

Granted, the Tomahawk MAX has heatsinks on BOTH VRM banks, and soon, there will be X570 and B550 Tomahawk MAX boards, which might be a better choice, given that AMD has "orphaned" the B450 as of late. (No Zen3 support.(*) But they'll happily support Zen2 CPUs, which should be enough for me for right now for builds for people.)

As far as CPUs go, still waiting on wide-spread availability of the 3300X and 3100. I bought two Athlon 3000G (*unlocked, even) 2C/4T as "place-holder" CPUs to get the system(s) built and up and running for people.

Hopefully, we will also sometime get some Desktop 4000-series APUs, with 8C/16T and Vega (2?) iGPUs. But I'm not holding my breath. Maybe by the end of the year?

(*) UPDATE: AMD relented, there WILL BE support fort Zen3 via a "beta BIOS" for B450 / X470!

 

[EliteRetard]

Thanks for all the input, managed to snag a usable MOBO.

A bit disappointing, knowing that it won't support Zen3/4000.

Right now is a horrible time to build a PC, but sometimes you can't wait.

 

[NobleX13]

Thanks for all the input, managed to snag a usable MOBO.

A bit disappointing, knowing that it won't support Zen3/4000.

Right now is a horrible time to build a PC, but sometimes you can't wait.

I share your sentiment. There is quite a bit of demand right now for, well, pretty much any functional hardware it seems. This is the first time since the Taiwan hard drive floods of 2010/2011 that I've seen the prices on used parts go up.

I remember seeing the ASUS AM4 TUF Gaming X570-Plus on sale for $150 or so back in January. I shrugged my shoulders and said "A better deal will come along". Oops! At least my MSI B350 Gaming Plus will supposedly work with the new 3300X. Good luck with your build.

 

[viivo]

It's tough to be in the market for hardware right now, but stock and prices can change instantly. I was able to grab an Asus TUF X570 from Newegg for 160 just a couple days ago, and in the past month a few Z390 boards from Amazon Warehouse for ludicrously low prices (all of which I will/am using - not a scumbag reseller-gouger.) You just have to keep checking and refreshing and don't rely on any of those sites which are supposed to report current stock.

 

[Iron Woode]

I still recommend the Asus Prime X570-P but I have no idea of it's availability in the US. It's is around $200-ish here in Canada.