AM4 motherboards are not really that great value!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Especially if you want to go mini-ITX! The B450 ones are £120 to £160,and seem worse specced than the B360 ones,and the B350 series ones will be quite variable on whether you can get out of the box support.

It seems companies making higher end AM4 boards seem to be quietly adding a premium to them compared to the Intel ones. One company which didn't do that was Biostar - their X470 mini-ITX board was £100ish and even had optical out too,but it seems Ebuyer does not sell it anymore,but in the US you can still get it.

So I am looking at the Asus ROG B450 board as I want a top mounted M2 slot,and the B360 one is just better specced(even has optical out and a much better rear panel) and costs £30 less:

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus...31-gen2-a-mini
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus...31-gen2-a-mini

The cheaper Gigabyte one has very poor VRM temperatures,and the ASRock B450 one has a 3+3+2 phase VRM which probably is fine for the Ryzen 5 2600 I am getting,but I am uncertain longterm how it will be if I choose a higher TDP CPU,and its a £120 to £130 board too.

The MSI B450 board looks good,but has pushed the front IO connectors to the rear(really?),apparently has conflicts with the stock cooler,and seems to not have proper voltage offset for PBO.

Sure the B450 can do overclocking but I don't really overclock anymore(outside enabling MCE or maybe PBO). In fact in general if you start going up the range AM4 boards are not really as cheap,which is utterly weird considering Intel still needs to use a traditional chipset,and AM4 chipsets for the most part are much more depreciated due to the SOC nature of Ryzen.

So now I am paying more for the motherboard than the CPU.

[MrRockliffe]

Yeah it's a bit pants - it's what stopped me going with Ryzen last year. I think at the time there was 1 Mini IXT motherboard available, and it was horrendously overpriced.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yeah it's a bit pants - it's what stopped me going with Ryzen last year. I think at the time there was 1 Mini IXT motherboard available, and it was horrendously overpriced.

I am kicking myself for not getting the Biostar X470 board for between £90 to £100. I just bought the Asus B450 ROG one for £148 due to the Ebay 10% off code which is the most I have ever spent on any motherboard.

[MrRockliffe]

I am kicking myself for not getting the Biostar X470 board for between £90 to £100. I just bought the Asus B450 ROG one for £148 due to the Ebay 10% off code which is the most I have ever spent on any motherboard.

Blimey, that's not too bad - I spent 170 on the Z270i Strix Way over the top pricing, but as I say, there wasn't anything available for AMD at the time.

[Hoonigan]

I am kicking myself for not getting the Biostar X470 board for between £90 to £100. I just bought the Asus B450 ROG one for £148 due to the Ebay 10% off code which is the most I have ever spent on any motherboard.

Biostar have sent me an X470 'board to test. I'm still waiting on a stable BIOS release for it.

[Firejack]

Motherboard prices have jumped a lot. Probably because of the weaker £ and US-China trade wars. My Asus Prime X470-Pro jumped from £130 at launch to £150 and is now £165. Normally early adopters pay a price premium but the way tech prices are going recently it seems best to buy as soon as possible.

Personally I wouldn't get too excited for PBO. The Ryzen 2600 doesn't support PBO. Only the "X" chips do. Even if you upgrade at a later date you'll need better cooling. With the stock cooler on my 2700X I hit the thermal limit almost instantly. Even with aftermarket coolers you only gain maybe 150Mhz. Doesn't seem worth it. instead of a fancy cooler you are better spending money on faster memory as that gives a bigger performance boost.

[kompukare]

Sort of looked at this earlier in the week when that Ebuyer deal with the Steam vouchers for those Gigabyte board was posted.
Mainly as sometimes CEX have had R5-2400G's in stock for £80. And for those it really makes a lot of sense to get ITX.
But I don't really have a use for another system and argue from the iGPU it wouldn't be much of an upgrade. Once I add up the price of an ITX board, case, RAM and so on, it would actually be close to one of the cheaper Ryzen laptops, and if I wanted the better stuff it comes close to the price of the Ryzen EliteBook 745 G5.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Blimey, that's not too bad - I spent 170 on the Z270i Strix Way over the top pricing, but as I say, there wasn't anything available for AMD at the time.

Well I remember during the Haswell era the Z97 mini-ITX boards could be had for under £100 as I did a build with one,and the Skylake ones started upping the price,so its not only AMD,but AMD seems unusually expensive.

Biostar have sent me an X470 'board to test. I'm still waiting on a stable BIOS release for it.

Not great news then,but the X470GTN didn't seem too bad from reviews,especially if you are not into overclocking,etc.

Motherboard prices have jumped a lot. Probably because of the weaker £ and US-China trade wars. My Asus Prime X470-Pro jumped from £130 at launch to £150 and is now £165. Normally early adopters pay a price premium but the way tech prices are going recently it seems best to buy as soon as possible.

Personally I wouldn't get too excited for PBO. The Ryzen 2600 doesn't support PBO. Only the "X" chips do. Even if you upgrade at a later date you'll need better cooling. With the stock cooler on my 2700X I hit the thermal limit almost instantly. Even with aftermarket coolers you only gain maybe 150Mhz. Doesn't seem worth it. instead of a fancy cooler you are better spending money on faster memory as that gives a bigger performance boost.

True,but I was comparing relative to the Intel boards - Ryzen in theory uses a chipset which acts as a port extender and Intel has a more traditional chipset,so I actually expected Ryzen mini-ITX boards to be cheaper. Yeah,I was wrong!

I nearly got the MSI but the weird header location and the fact its out of stock almost everywhere meant prices went up a lot!

Sort of looked at this earlier in the week when that Ebuyer deal with the Steam vouchers for those Gigabyte board was posted.
Mainly as sometimes CEX have had R5-2400G's in stock for £80. And for those it really makes a lot of sense to get ITX.
But I don't really have a use for another system and argue from the iGPU it wouldn't be much of an upgrade. Once I add up the price of an ITX board, case, RAM and so on, it would actually be close to one of the cheaper Ryzen laptops, and if I wanted the better stuff it comes close to the price of the Ryzen EliteBook 745 G5.

The lack of cheaper Ryzen mini-ITX boards seems really an own goal. You can get H310 ones for around £75,and the cheapest B350 one is more like around £100 to £110,but might not work out of the box with the 2400G.

The lack of A320 based mini-ITX boards is baffling!!

Edit!!

They exist but UK retailers are fail.

[Firejack]

There is a global shortage of A320 chipset motherboards, caused by huge Chinese demand, pairing them with A8-9600 APU's of all things. : https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd-asus-gi...shortage-china

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There is a global shortage of A320 chipset motherboards, caused by huge Chinese demand, pairing them with A8-9600 APU's of all things. : https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd-asus-gi...shortage-china

That is more recent but the A320 mini ITX boards have been out for a while in the US. An example is this one:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/A320M-ITX/#Overview
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16813157838

[DanceswithUnix]

Cute board. Perhaps if you asked a retailer they could get them in, they might not think there is a market (at £75 I could be tempted myself). A post in the Scan section on here would be an easy start.