New Year Upgrade!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Bargain!

I supposed it depends on how hard that £500 budget is.

£190 3600 CPU
£68 550W PSU
£64 Ballistix 3200 RAM
£98 1TB WD Blue SSD
Motherboard?

£420 total

That's a nice system right there, add an RX570 and that's about the spec of the PC I have downstairs to drive the VR headset. But leaves £80 for the motherboard. A B450 board is quite possible for that money, but to hit B550 something has to be cut back which I think you would feel as a definite immediate loss vs a potential improvement should you want to upgrade in the future.

Extra NVMe on B550?? Well, if you choose carefully. The only B550 board I have in the house has a second M.2 slot that can do 2 lanes of PCIe 3, so twice the speed of SATA. Not the biggest win.
Same as one of these B450 Pro-4 full ATX boards (about 50p more than the micro ATX version), which would fill out an ATX case quite nicely:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASRock-ATX-...dp/B07FVYKJHR/

In the scheme of things another £40 over 5~10 years is not a massive amount IMHO. Also WRT to SSDs,500GB is fine for a boot drive - its only really a limitation if you intend to install lots of big modern games with 100GB install sizes!

BTW on the Ebuyer Ebay store the MSI B450 Gaming Plus is around £75,and its very similar to the B450 Tomahawk on the VRM side.

[Zhaoman]

I would agree with DanceswithUnix on the B450 vs B550 and even then I would still be wary of over specifying this build. OP's rig is over 10 years old and even a 3100 or 10100F would be a massive upgrade. With a B450 board OP can drop in a 5000 series CPU as an upgrade path and I doubt OP will be upgrading the main boot drive or GPU to the latest and greatest having been on a 660 and HDDs for the last rig so what advantage does B550 buy at this point in time?

If I was OP I would just look at maximising value for money which for me would be:

£150 2600 CPU
£68 550W PSU
£64 16GB Ballistix 3200 RAM
£98 1TB WD Blue SSD
£70 B450M Mobo

£450 total which gives an upgrade path to 5900 CPU and covers mid-range GPUs over the next few years before PCIe 4.0 becomes relevant for mainstream. That should easily last another 10 years for general home use imo. You could even double the RAM to 32GB and still be thereabouts in terms of budget.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The issue its not really overspecifying though. The issue is they overspecified their last motherboard and it lasted 10 years. It was the same with some of my mates builds with Phenom II X6 and FX CPUs - even though they didn't overclock,I did push for them to get better motherboards,and these lasted nearly 10 years.

Also another thing is the newer/better motherboards will get priority for BIOS updates,especially security patches.

I don't overclock either,but when I got my B450 mini-ITX motherboard two years ago,I went for which was overspecified for this reason.

Another issue is the Zen+ CPUs and even B450 motherboards should be cheaper by now. The Ryzen 5 2600/1600AF were close to £100 earlier in the year. The Ryzen 5 3600 was generally between £155~£175. £180 ~ £190 is not too far off that price.I paid £137 for my Ryzen 5 2600 two years ago,and after upgrading from a Ryzen 5 2600 to a Ryzen 7 3700X,in some of my CPU limited games based on older engines,there was a large difference.

I would say from my experience of Zen+ and Zen2,£40 extra for a Ryzen 5 3600 is worth it over a Ryzen 5 2600,because the latter should be between £100~£120 now. In Fallout 4 I was seeing a 10~12 FPS change in minimums with the same RAM,and this is a game capped to 60FPS. It equated to a 30~40% improvement in the worst minimums! The game only uses 4~6 cores.

In the scheme of things,a Ryzen 5 3600 and B550 will add another £70~£80 to the total price. If you don't intend to upgrade for 5~10 years it really isn't a huge amount IMHO. If its 3 years or so maybe not so much.

Its one thing if you already have had a few years use out of a B450 motherboard like I have,because you are likely to replace it a few years earlier.

Edit!!

Also the OP does mention they are doing some video encoding with Sony Vegas.

[Zhaoman]

In terms of prices and where they should be, the 3600 was £150 earlier in the year too so it's not just the 2600. That's just what we're working with today. Also quality mobos are not exclusive to B550, there are plenty of cheap B450 mobos with quality VRMs.

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with what you're saying and 3600 with B550 Mobo would probably be my choice if I was building today but it does take it over-budget so have to tread carefully. Maybe downgrading the SSD to 500GB and finding some good deals will get you there. A 2600 and quality B450 mobo will easily be in budget though and still give OP similar longevity and upgrade options for the future imo. I would value a 1TB SSD today rather than a better mobo that allows me to upgrade my 500GB SSD to a faster one in future. I don't know many people who upgrade their boot drives unless they're doing a bit of an overhaul! We're at the stage of nitpicking though, I feel OP's priorities will help decide which way to go £450 vs £550.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The thing is even those £120 B550 motherboards have VRMs,etc which were closer to the X470/X570 motherboards in 2019. That is why I linked that HUB video. To put in context the £120 to £130 B550 mini-ITX motherboards has better VRMs than my B450 mini-ITX motherboard which was considered one of the best B450 motherboards in general. The thing is they say they "dabble in video editing" so I am also not only going by gaming too,and with gaming Zen2 is the basis of the consoles,so I would think it should be a good baseline. Interestingly enough the Intel option would be more viable as a cheaper option if they hadn't locked down XMP,and been vague in their promise of Rocketlake and PCI-E 4.0 compatibility(I suspect only the Z490 will get it). I am just thinking if they do intend to do more video editing in a few years time,what will give them more options.

The issue with the SSDs,is that prices and capacities follow a downwards trend. I have an MX500 1TB which I got in February for just over £100. Now Crucial have it for £65. This is despite more demands for computers and consoles. For me I value feature set and upgrade options in the motherboard over a larger SSD. It's one of the components like the PSU which I would rather leave alone in a rig then muck around with. Also the fact the newer motherboards will probably receive BIOS updates for longer especially security related ones.

Edit!!

The B450 motherboards can support PCI-E 4.0 as the OEM B550A supports it(rebadged B450). AMD decided to remove the ability to use PCI-E 4.0 from consumer B450 motherboards with later AGESA updates.

[DanceswithUnix]

In the scheme of things another £40 over 5~10 years is not a massive amount IMHO. Also WRT to SSDs,500GB is fine for a boot drive - its only really a limitation if you intend to install lots of big modern games with 100GB install sizes!

BTW on the Ebuyer Ebay store the MSI B450 Gaming Plus is around £75,and its very similar to the B450 Tomahawk on the VRM side.

Yes, a 500GB drive is fine for now, but in 10 years time those 100GB games will be retro
That "boot drive" is going to make many operations on hard disk feel painful. So it won't be a boot drive, it will simply be the main drive and it will end up with lots of things installed on it. Double the capacity means more faster operation and a higher TBW rating for better longevity.

The MSI is a nice motherboard, but it doesn't seem to have the second NVMe slot you were insisting on unlike the Asrock I linked.

In the scheme of things,a Ryzen 5 3600 and B550 will add another £70~£80 to the total price. If you don't intend to upgrade for 5~10 years it really isn't a huge amount IMHO.

See costings above, there is £80 for a motherboard if you go with nice but sane components elsewhere. An Asrock Phantom Gaming 4 board, cheapest B550 I could find on a very quick look, is £105, so that blows the budget by £25. Personally, I wouldn't flinch at 5% over budget, but I'm not the OP.

The motherboard is the only component with almost no immediate benefit. With the amount of airflow through an Antec 300 (assuming it still has the 140mm fans working, I did have to replace mine) and a 65W 3600 CPU I don't see VRM reliability problems being an issue.

OFC the case is a bit dated now, I do find the lack of USB 3 ports on the front a bit annoying these days. Thankfully my monitor has a hub which helps.

[DanceswithUnix]

I don't know many people who upgrade their boot drives unless they're doing a bit of an overhaul!

IME usually because they run out of room

[Pob255]

Look if we want to talk past prices back in jan/feb 2020 I put together a new pc for my other half, I had to buy case, cpu, mb, ram all 2nd hand for about £250
more specifically
Ryzen 5 2600
Gigabyte B450 AORUS M (unused)
2x8gb ddr4 (not sure the speed I think it was 3000mhz, might of been 2400mhz)
Corsair Air 240 matx case
If I remember right the case was £40, so mb+ram+cpu was only £210 a year ago
a quick look on ebay used sold listings
Gigabyte B450 AORUS M £55.00
Ryzen 5 2600 £120
2x8gb 3000mhz £50


EDIT: with discipline a 120gb ssd is fine for OS drive, make that the fastest drive and then get a 2nd ssd or hdd for software
or go to 240gb and put a few bits of software on there, stuff you use most eg web browser, steam (not the library but the software) be careful with the user profile, make sure you move stuff & default location onto a 2nd storage drive (eg default download folder) ans keep an eye out for stuff that want to install into user app data (any programmer who does this should be shot)

[DanceswithUnix]

EDIT: with discipline a 120gb ssd is fine for OS drive, make that the fastest drive and then get a 2nd ssd or hdd for software
or go to 240gb and put a few bits of software on there, stuff you use most eg web browser, steam (not the library but the software) be careful with the user profile, make sure you move stuff & default location onto a 2nd storage drive (eg default download folder) ans keep an eye out for stuff that want to install into user app data (any programmer who does this should be shot)

It is amazing that these days you can get a new 120GB SSD for just over £15, and it is tempting to sprinkle them around liberally. But £25 gets you 256GB where you don't have to be careful as a boot drive, and £40 gets you 500GB at which point you can just use it as a main drive and not worry about whether an application is installing to C or D.

Small SSDs are naturally slower than big SSDs as they have either older or fewer (or both) flash chips to write to. In the days of hard disk drives, it made sense to have a boot/OS disk as the OS could do things like swap to one disk whilst reading application data from the other. Now we have cheap 90K IOPs SSDs (as long as you haven't gone for the bargain 120GB models) it doesn't noticeably help. I think boot disks is just a dated concept these days unless you are doing something like video editing in which case you probably want a big NAS for you data rather than a secondary disk anyway.

Can you Windows fit on a 120GB boot drive these days? I would want swap on there, which with 16GB as standard RAM size is going to be a quarter of your storage gone. Add operating system and the comedy size of things like modern video drivers and you will need to be *so* careful.

The kid's MInecraft server runs on an old 120GB SSD so they are useful, but that's a Linux box so easier to keep under control.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yes, a 500GB drive is fine for now, but in 10 years time those 100GB games will be retro
That "boot drive" is going to make many operations on hard disk feel painful. So it won't be a boot drive, it will simply be the main drive and it will end up with lots of things installed on it. Double the capacity means more faster operation and a higher TBW rating for better longevity.

The MSI is a nice motherboard, but it doesn't seem to have the second NVMe slot you were insisting on unlike the Asrock I linked.

Two slots. First one has the heatsink,the second does not.

See costings above, there is £80 for a motherboard if you go with nice but sane components elsewhere. An Asrock Phantom Gaming 4 board, cheapest B550 I could find on a very quick look, is £105, so that blows the budget by £25. Personally, I wouldn't flinch at 5% over budget, but I'm not the OP.

The motherboard is the only component with almost no immediate benefit. With the amount of airflow through an Antec 300 (assuming it still has the 140mm fans working, I did have to replace mine) and a 65W 3600 CPU I don't see VRM reliability problems being an issue.

OFC the case is a bit dated now, I do find the lack of USB 3 ports on the front a bit annoying these days. Thankfully my monitor has a hub which helps.

The issue is with the budget they have they can easily fit in a B550 motherboard - its not like the budget isn't enough and storage is easy to add later down the line. Like I said my 1TB MX500 SATA is now significantly cheaper less than a year later(Crucial had them for £65 instead of the £100ish I paid at the start of 2020).

The motherboard has the most longterm benefit and the OP is keeping the system for years. SSDs also are going to drop massively in price over time anyway,whereas a motherboard which is already hobbled will limit options a few years down the line.

Even now you can get a 2TB PCI-E 4.0 NVME SSD for not much more than a PCI-E 3.0 one. So a few years down the line we will be probably looking at at PCI-E 3.0 SSDs like they are SATA ones!

The fact is the B550 motherboards will get security updates and other updates longer than for B450/X470.

Now what happens if AMD releases another AM4 update or makes Zen4 in both DDR4 and DDR5 variants,B450/X470 motherboards will be way down the list for updates. The same goes for any potential CPU upgrades - the issue is that the B450/X470 limits options down the line,and when you keep a build for 5~10 years you want to have options.

The B450/X470 is great for the cheapest argument today but with even Intel standardising on PCI-E 4.0 this year,I don't really think its a great idea spending too much on B450/X470 motherboards. £70 is the most I would consider one is worth.

If you honestly think the OP isn't going to upgrade anything then you might as well get a laptop,as there are better deals available. Laptops are totally viable in todays market if you are the kind of user who won't upgrade a build.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Also if the OP is really not going to update their system as many thing they won't,ie,B450 is fine,etc,then why bother with a desktop??

You can get this Ryzen 5 4600H 6C/12T laptop with an RX5600M GPU and 144HZ screen for around £600:
https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/del...t-dell-3643513

Launch reviews were a tad hit and miss,because Dell screw up the BIOS implementation of Smartshift so the CPU ran at an unlocked TDP,but it has had newer BIOSes which apparently fixed the problems.

The RX5600M is basically a downclocked desktop RX5600XT with the same amount of shaders,same memory bus,etc. So probably around desktop GTX1660/GTX1660 Super level?

It has dual RAM slots,and another 8GB of SODIMM RAM can be added later at not much cost. It even has dual NVME M2 slots:
https://egpu.io/2020-15-dell-g5-se-5...-2-egpu-build/

Yes,someone ran an external GPU off one!!

[DanceswithUnix]

You are the one insisting it has only one NVME slot when even looking at the pictures,show 2.

Sorry, bad and lazy quoting on my part. You mentioned a £75 B450 Gaming Plus (post #33). That doesn't have a second NVMe. The B550M board, well for that price it damned well should have two slots.

I did mention laptops right at the start, the OP didn't seem thrilled with the idea.

Was kind of hoping the OP would pop up and say "Yeah, an extra £40 for B550 sounds worth it" and make all this go away. Arguing over how you hit a £500 budget when we don't know if that is a hard limit is just silly.

Edit: Actually, the OP could always not buy any SSD at all and stick with existing hard drives for now. That saving allows a decent spec on all other components, no potential for wasting any money on low end bits. An SSD could be added later as funds allow.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Sorry, bad and lazy quoting on my part. You mentioned a £75 B450 Gaming Plus (post #33). That doesn't have a second NVMe. The B550M board, well for that price it damned well should have two slots.

I did mention laptops right at the start, the OP didn't seem thrilled with the idea.

Was kind of hoping the OP would pop up and say "Yeah, an extra £40 for B550 sounds worth it" and make all this go away. Arguing over how you hit a £500 budget when we don't know if that is a hard limit is just silly.

Edit: Actually, the OP could always not buy any SSD at all and stick with existing hard drives for now. That saving allows a decent spec on all other components, no potential for wasting any money on low end bits. An SSD could be added later as funds allow.

I changed the wording of my answer - sounded too abrupt! I was talking about the B550 and the OP already put the B450 Gaming Plus in their tentative build list - I only pointed out instead of paying over £90 for one,they could pay nearly £70 for it.

The issue here,is if say you could spend the £50 extra and get a Ryzen 7 over a Ryzen 5,it might be worth considering a B450 in that case,but ATM the cheapest I can find a Ryzen 7 3700X is closer to £260. I am quite happy I got mine for just under £220 due to a damaged box.

Also I do wonder with CES near,will AMD announce a Ryzen 5 5600 non-X and Ryzen 7 5700X??

[DanceswithUnix]

I changed the wording of my answer - sounded too abrupt! I was talking about the B550 and the OP already put the B450 Gaming Plus in their tentative build list - I only pointed out instead of paying over £90 for one,they could pay nearly £70 for it.

The issue here,is if say you could spend the £50 extra and get a Ryzen 7 over a Ryzen 5,it might be worth considering a B450 in that case,but ATM the cheapest I can find a Ryzen 7 3700X is closer to £260. I am quite happy I got mine for just under £220 due to a damaged box.

Also I do wonder with CES near,will AMD announce a Ryzen 5 5600 non-X and Ryzen 7 5700X??

The OP has a machine that is failing right now. That makes choices rather limited, and I can't imagine waiting is an option.

Amazon will sell you a retail 3600 (so with heatsink) for £189. It isn't the bargain it was 9 months ago, but that isn't horrific, and I think is the best that can be had within budget.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The OP has a machine that is failing right now. That makes choices rather limited, and I can't imagine waiting is an option.

Amazon will sell you a retail 3600 (so with heatsink) for £189. It isn't the bargain it was 9 months ago, but that isn't horrific, and I think is the best that can be had within budget.

CES is in 5 days - AMD does have a massive gap in its line-up currently. Unless OFC they intend to just use Zen2 under £250??

Having said that supply is looking slightly better now. AMD-IT seemed to have stock of the Ryzen 9 3900 non-X and an X470 motherboard for £425 yesterday. Even an OEM Ryzen 9 3900X from Scan costs nearly £400,so a CPU bundle for not much more is not a bad deal in the current climate if you need 12C.

[DanceswithUnix]

Having said that supply is looking slightly better now. AMD-IT seemed to have stock of the Ryzen 9 3900 non-X and an X470 motherboard for £425 yesterday. Even an OEM Ryzen 9 3900X from Scan costs nearly £400,so an X470 motherboard for not much more is not a bad deal in the current climate if you need 12C.

Indeed, I notice that Currys have the 3600 for a quid less than Amazon. Bring on the price war!