Upgrading from Ivy Bridge - sanity check!

[[GSV]Trig]

Never had Asrock before, they any good? I tend to buy a decent board that I know will last me

[Apex]

[Domestic_Ginger]

Asrock are quite good imo. I have had a number of boards which worked but I'm not much of an expert.

The MSI 'Max' line are ryzen 3000 compatible. wrt to my queries for the MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX. It is the same board as the plus which seems to have some bad press.

Hardwareluxx has a vrm list for AM4 motherboards but it does not have the 570s on it.

[adidan]

Don't regret buying the B450M Mortar Max for one second. Buildzoids review of AM4 boards swayed me, for mATXs he was annoyed they were hard to get a hold off in North America.

MSI Max boards take 3000 series out of the box btw and the BIOS has seen regular updates.

Edit: I did the upgrade from an i7 3770, night and day.

[GamingLexus]

I'm just starting to look into this a bit deeper in view of upgrading from Ivy Bridge, like OP. Seems to me that the (selection of) B450 boards I've looked at on Scan are Crossfire compatible, but not SLI... is this a limitation of the 450 chipset?

For SLI, seems as though I'm going to have to enter the performance/enthusiast mobo market?

FWIW, ASRock Z77 mobo here currently and would recommend the manafacturer to others.

[DanceswithUnix]

Traditionally SLI motherboards needed some sort of Nvidia blessing and a licence fee paid. Those costs aren't welcome on a budget board. I assume from what you are saying that is still the case.

[Apex]

So a 3950X and a B450M MORTAR MAX with either 16GB of 32GB of 3200/3600 spec DDR4 and no need to change my case....hmm that is defo one way to go.

<3900X rather then the 3950x to reduce cost by 50%, that basically pays for the ram>

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor (£449.00 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI B450M MORTAR MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£84.95 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory (£76.90 @ More Computers)
Total: £610.85
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-01-04 23:09 GMT+0000

[[GSV]Trig]

I'm not going to be overclocking, but at some point, I'd be looking to upgrade again so would like a board that can take the 39xx CPU, even if I start off with something a lot cheaper (as long as its faster than the i7-3770)..
Still running SATA SSD and GPU's are touching PCI-E 4 so thats not an issue, although I'm starting to read about the B550 boards coming soon, so maybe waiting a few months might be a better idea

[Apex]

Think i'll wait till after CES to see what pops up; then plan out from there.

[philehidiot]

Think i'll wait till after CES to see what pops up; then plan out from there.

I'm running a similar set up to yours. I've just applied "last gasp" overclocking to the CPU as it was causing significant bottlenecking. Last gasp mean overclocking all cores to the limit of stability, not giving a flying fornicating flamingo about the temps or longevity.

The upgrade was put off for years due to AMD not being competitive and Intel sandbagging. Now I'm seeing some significant issues, noticeable improvements from the overclock and so it's time to upgrade as there's something to go to.

I was seriously considering a 39xx system. I've bought a PCI-e 4 SSD as I needed more space and it was about £20 more for the extra speed in future. Therefore I need an X570 mobo but I'll also not be wanting a chipset that needs active cooling as it's a point of failure. I've had actively cooled chipsets in the past and I'm not eager to return.

I've got a 240mm AIO cooler which is either going to have the rad taken off it and repurposed and/or or be replaced totally. The risk of pump faiilure is now getting into the exponential phase from what I can tell and it's a sealed unit so I can't assess for permeation and evaporation.

I'm going to wait for the B series and see what it has. X570 is pricey which I don't mind normally, but the extra point of failure and that it has to run so damned hot is concerning to me.

EDIT: I also have a sound card I want to transfer and it's on PCI. That being said, I didn't get rid of my ISA SB AWE32 until a few years ago because.... well... I dunno. I don't particularly want to spend £300 on a sound card which meets my needs when my current one works just fine. I might end up taping the card to the side of the case and popping into a PCI slot on a ribbon cable that goes into a PCI-e slot and see what happens. That said, that my current sound card uses a floppy drive power connector that's falling off probably means it's not long for this world.....

[Apex]

Well CES was a letdown, looks like I'll be hanging onto this for some more time now :/ Might chuck in a screen update and a gpu update but that looks about the lot.

[[GSV]Trig]

Yeah I was thinking that tbh, got a bit of an itch the last few months, then thought about waiting for the CES stuff to drop, now it could be a case of waiting for AM4+ or whatever's next...

[Domestic_Ginger]

Did they announce AM4+?

I have been so tempted to try and pick up a ram offer. At leas I can scratch the itch without buying the rest!

I've done quite a lot of reading and seems the Mortar and tomahawk are much better than the other offers for B450. The Steel Legend gets pretty hot VRMs.

[DanceswithUnix]

Did they announce AM4+?

No, there is still talk of Zen 3 which ISTR originally was roadmapped to be on DDR5 which would mean socket AM5, but they can't adopt that socket until you can actually buy consumer DDR5 of which there is no sign.

Heck, we still haven't seen B550 yet (supposedly pushed back to second half of 2020). Chipsets are moving slow atm for AMD.

[Domestic_Ginger]

AFAIK Zen3 or Zen2+ is coming later this year. AMD seem to be meeting their deadlines so reviewer expectation is there is no reason not to expect it.

The 550 is a little slow but they are probably going to milk the 570s for a while.

[[GSV]Trig]

Did they announce AM4+?

Nope that was just my expecting what the next socket will be...