While I don't have any personal experience with that ASRock AB450M Pro4 board, it doesn't look too bad for the money. I initially chose the ASRock AB350M Pro4 (B350, the prior gen) for my Ryzen R5 1600 CPUs, that I bought two years ago when I moved to Ryzen. At least with the 1st-gen Ryzen CPUs, they worked pretty-much fine, although there was a lot of memory compatibility issues with faster DDR4 RAM back then. Also, those boards didn't work very well at all for the Ryzen R3 2200G APUs, when I tried to re-purpose them. They ended up with Athlon 200GE APUs, because of the lower demand on the Vsoc VRM plane because they only have Vega 3 graphics. But I digress.
I think that board is fine, although I've used also some Gigabyte AX370-Gaming ATX (somewhat outdated), and right now my main rig has a Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro Wifi board. It has GREAT RAM compatibility, compared to those older B350 ASRock boards.
I don't have any experience with ASRock B450 boards, but I would
assume that memory compatibility is better than their older boards. But this Gigabyte board is like a dream. I paid $110 for it at Newegg, it was on sale at the time, normal price is $130. I personally think it's worth it, and it includes Intel GigE LAN, as well as Intel AC wifi and BT. (I don't have room for the antenna stand when my PC sits, so I'm actually using a USB3.0 hub on top of my desk with a USB AC wifi + BT dongle.)
As far as M.2 PCI-E NVMe drives, look for "NVMe" in the title, instead of "SATA". "M.2 SATA" is basically the same interface, in a different form-factor, as a standard SATA 2.5" SSD, and does not perform any better. "M.2 PCI-E NVMe" is what you want. Also, some drives are "x2" (two PCI-E lanes), and some drives are "x4" (four PCI-E lanes). The slot can have x2 or x4 lanes wired to it, and it also depends on whether you use a Ryzen APU or CPU.
For budget drives, I'm a fan of the Patriot Scorch 256GB M.2 PCI-E x2 NVMe drives, for APU builds. They are only x2 lanes, but perform well. (The Athlon 200GE only support x2 NVMe lanes.) These go on ShellShocker at Newegg occasionally for $36-38 for the 256GB size, and they also sell out often, even when not on SS.
For more performance-oriented rigs, I would probably go with an HP EX920 (older model) or EX950 (newest model, has a price premium, competitive with the Samsung 970 EVO/PRO performance-wise), probably 512GB.
Also consider the WD Black and WD Blue NVMe SSDs, when they are on sale too. The EX900 may seem notably cheaper, but be aware that those drives use NVMe HMB (host memory buffer), they are effectively DRAM-less, they use the host PC's DRAM for a buffer, which isn't quite as fast or low-latency as those M.2 NVMe SSDs with their own onboard DRAM buffer. They may run slightly cooler because of that, however.
For a more storage-over-performance build, Intel has some great pricing on their QLC (quad-level, 4 bits per cell) 660p NVMe SSDs. Newegg currently has their 1TB model for $102.99 after promo. That's basically as cheap as a SATA SSD, for mid-range PCI-E NVMe performance.
And last but certainly not least, glad to see you around too!
Edit: One thing, if you get a B450 / X470 board, you can use AMD's StoreMI feature, which is basically tiered storage, allowing you to merge a "fast" and "slow" drive, and it will automatically optimize placement of files on the "fast" and "slow" tiers. StoreMI is limited to a 256GB sized "fast tier". If you pay for the upgraded FuzeDrive software, I believe that limitation is removed.
Also, watch Newegg's AM4 motherboard section, for refurb / open-box, or even "open-box refurb" mobos. I've been able to pick up several Gigabyte ATX X370 boards, for roughly $50-60 ea., around half or less than new. I have yet to test them, however. Hopefully they work.
You have to be quick though, stock is usually pretty limited, and they last on the order of minutes, rather than hours. At least the $50-ish ones. Some of the MSI ones around $60-75 last for a few days.
Facebook
Twitter