B450 or X370 For Ryzen 5 3600?

[10Terp]

Hi all. New poster here.

My existing system was an R5 1600 with an ASRock B450 Pro 4. I just bought a R5 3600 and put it in my ASRock board and it’s up and running fine. I also got a free Asus X370 Prime Pro board with the 3600. My question is, if you had these two boards available to you, which would you run in your main pc? I’m debating swapping the x370 board in for the b450 (the Asus x370 supports zen 2).

I’m honesty not much of an overclocker or tweaker. GPU is an RTX 2070 if that matters.

Thanks!!

 

[Iron Woode]

The B450 is my choice until the B550 boards come out next year.

 

[daveybrat]

I might have to lean towards the Asus board. The Asus X370 has much better Realtek 1220 audio chip and Intel lan over the cheaper Realtek audio and lan on the ASRock B450.

But they are both good choices, i just like Intel's lan and good audio.

 

[Iron Woode]

I might have to lean towards the Asus board. The Asus X370 has much better Realtek 1220 audio chip and Intel lan over the cheaper Realtek audio and lan on the ASRock B450.

But they are both good choices, i just like Intel's lan and good audio.

my Asrock B450 Fatality Gaming ITX/ac has both.

 

[Campy]

The X370 board is higher end, much better VRM. Will that matter much with a 3600? Probably not, but I'd still lean towards the higher end board.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I need to read better, comment removed.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Whichever board makes you happier, OP. I know that's a very non-technical answer, but the real answer is, they're both good boards, and if they both support the R5 3600 with a BIOS flash (or even better, pre-flashed from the store), then they'll both work. The R5 3600 shouldn't be too hard on VRMs, it's a 65W nominal TDP chip (mine does 80W+ package power under heavy loads), but still way within the capacity of any decent B450 or X370 board's VRM section. Granted, the X370, being originally a higher-end board, may have better VRMs, and thus, may be a better candidate longer-term, should you want to upgrade to a 3700X, 3900X, or 3950X even.

That being said, you know how it goes. You get an extra board, now it's your duty, to buy RAM for it, and a 3700X at least to plug into that empty AM4 socket, and build yourself a second rig. At least, that's how it usually goes with me, when I get an extra part.

 

[10Terp]

Whichever board makes you happier, OP. I know that's a very non-technical answer, but the real answer is, they're both good boards, and if they both support the R5 3600 with a BIOS flash (or even better, pre-flashed from the store), then they'll both work. The R5 3600 shouldn't be too hard on VRMs, it's a 65W nominal TDP chip (mine does 80W+ package power under heavy loads), but still way within the capacity of any decent B450 or X370 board's VRM section. Granted, the X370, being originally a higher-end board, may have better VRMs, and thus, may be a better candidate longer-term, should you want to upgrade to a 3700X, 3900X, or 3950X even.

That being said, you know how it goes. You get an extra board, now it's your duty, to buy RAM for it, and a 3700X at least to plug into that empty AM4 socket, and build yourself a second rig. At least, that's how it usually goes with me, when I get an extra part.

This is exactly what happened, haha. Bought some new ram for the 3600, got a free case and PSU from a buddy, and built a second computer out of the spare parts. It's got the R5 1600, Asus X370 board, 16 gigs of DDR2400, GTX 1060 6gb, I have been using it as my LAN party PC recently; it's nice to not have to unhook my main rig.

I may swap the X370 board in for the B450 board in my main rig at some point, but everything is running fine right now and I don't feel compelled to swap it out right now. I do want to get a Mini ITX board and build something, though...