New Year Upgrade!

[DanceswithUnix]

Ffs I'm sop stuck between the MSI B550M Bazooka, B550M Mortar, and the B550-A PRO . I have no idea which to go for and it's driving me insane. It's not easy trying to guess which one will last me 10 years. Plus all 3 are around the same price with only £10 difference.

I'm edging towards the Mortar though. Seems to be more for essentially the same price

I think you can take the Bazooka off your list, the Mortar just seems better.

The B550-A PRO is ATX which can be nice.

My vote would be for the Mortar. It seems the best spec, and gives you a bit of flexibility should you want to change cases at some point to something smaller. I say a bit, it wouldn't fit well in my wife's matx case as the sata ports mostly point horizontally which would go straight into a wall of metal, but it looks like two are usable which would be enough for her old hard drive and DVD drive (with C: being on NVMe). So get that board, just don't get a Silverstone shoebox style case for it

Definitely still compatible with everything?. Seems to be from what I can tell. My old graphics card etc

PCIe is very good for compatibility, I would be utterly stunned if your GPU didn't work.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It depends on whether you need the extra slots or not.

IMHO the Mortar looks a better board than the Bazooka.

If you've not already seen these on YouTube, both Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed round up the best (in their opinion) B550 boards. Both talk about the Mortar.

Gamers Nexus - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_FUe36jHaw
Hardware Unboxed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSY9rDsQgd4 (might have already been posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH)

I posted a different video from Hardware Unboxed!

Edit!!

OP,the Mortar has now gone back to £130. In this market,you really need to order parts when offers appear!

[Jager]

Thanks for the replies, all very helpful!. For the sake of only £7 more I'm going to try and get the Mortar

I don't think I be confident buying from AWD-IT anyway as their website reviews aren't quite as good as others. I've contacted CCL and Scan and they really do hate price matching don't they. CCL straight up say they only price match complete builds and not individual components, and Scan also say they don't but ask you to contact the sales department. I bet they'll just come back and say they can offer free delivery which I get anyway though my linked Hexus account

Edit// I've now ordered everything I need I've very excited

[Jager]

Just received the RAM today which was the final piece of the puzzle (kinda.... I haven't ordered the NVMe yet but I'll do that after it's all setup and working).

I will attempt to put it all together tomorrow and pray that it works. Anyone got any tips or reminders for me? . Obviously I know how it all goes together but just don't want to forget anything. Hopefully it'll all go well first time as I'm taking apart my only PC haha

[Pob255]

what cooler are you using?

did you pick up a new case or is this still going into your old antec p300?#]#

edit: it's turned into such a long tread with so many cross discussions on parts I'm not sure what you decided on on in the end

[DanceswithUnix]

Just received the RAM today which was the final piece of the puzzle (kinda.... I haven't ordered the NVMe yet but I'll do that after it's all setup and working).

I will attempt to put it all together tomorrow and pray that it works. Anyone got any tips or reminders for me? . Obviously I know how it all goes together but just don't want to forget anything. Hopefully it'll all go well first time as I'm taking apart my only PC haha

My tip would be that after you plug the GPU into the motherboard, remember to plug in its power cable. After all these years that's something I still forget

Was just looking back to check what the build ended up as. I see the SSD is currently out of stock on Amazon where you were linking to it, but it is in stock at the WD site and actually slightly cheaper:

https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-g...sd#WDS100T2B0C

Sent from the Netherlands, I think it recently took 5 days for my WD Black 750 to turn up. Sadly you don't get a free game with the Blue drive, but then the Black is £25 more so it wouldn't be a free game if you upgraded

[Zhaoman]

Just received the RAM today which was the final piece of the puzzle (kinda.... I haven't ordered the NVMe yet but I'll do that after it's all setup and working).

I will attempt to put it all together tomorrow and pray that it works. Anyone got any tips or reminders for me? . Obviously I know how it all goes together but just don't want to forget anything. Hopefully it'll all go well first time as I'm taking apart my only PC haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYYoCXh2gtw
Once you've got your windows and drivers and everything installed, just remember to set your memory to XMP/DOCP profiles in the BIOS so that it's running at its rated speeds. This should give you a measurable bump up in performance.

[Pob255]

JayzTwoCents also has some great simple build tips as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8LMML_EiMg
One thing you might want to do is a test build, basically put your pc together outside of the case just to check everything is working and booting up.
To turn on a pc without a power button, just locate the two power pins on the front panel header of the motherboard and touch them with a screwdriver point bridging them. (don't worry about damaging it bridging them is what the power button does, just make sure you have the right pins)

[Jager]

“There is no GOP (Graphics Output Protocil) support detected in this graphics card.
Recommend to replace with a GOP/UEFI compatible graphics card or using integrated graphics from COU for having normal function.”

Umm, help

I’m guessing if the graphics card doesn’t work and I don’t have integrated graphics then I can’t even get into the BIOS?. Not sure if I’m completely stuck?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

My mate recently upgraded to a Ryzen 5 3600XT,MSI B550 PRO-A and used their GTX660 for a while and it worked fine,so something seems off there. I would try updating the motherboard BIOS using the flashback feature and see if that helps.

However,it might be more likely to be the BIOS itself on the GPU:
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/co...w_msi_gtx_770/

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, I finally got it working. The physical install was fine, and it actually had nothing to do with the secure boot feature. I ended up flashing the firmware on the GTX 770 itself, which was a step I wasn't originally anticipating since I had never seen anyone mention it on here or anywhere else. For anyone else that may have this issue in the future, the fix can be found on the MSI forums, just a quick google search will find it. It involves creating a DOS bootstick and loading the vbios for the card onto it. Once again, I appreciate the help guys!

[Jager]

That’s certainly a possibility as I haven’t upgraded it in a very long time. It was working fine so i stopped updating. Guess I need the old system back setup to do that then

I have no idea how to do the GPU BIOs, let alone safely Lol

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That’s certainly a possibility as I haven’t upgraded it in a very long time. It was working fine so i stopped updating. Guess I need the old system back setup to do that then

I have no idea how to do the GPU BIOs, let alone safely Lol

It seems a few people had the same problem as you:
https://forums.evga.com/EVGA-GTX-660...-m3042596.aspx

If you look at that thread find the details for your GPU and e-mail EVGA.Then they should be able to give a UEFI BIOS and hopefully some instructions!

[Jager]

Took a picture of the cards stickers and sent off an email to them. I tried to register the card and submit a support ticket in their website but it doesn’t seem to recognise my cards serial number annoyingly and told me to email them instead. Never done a GPU BIOS update so that’ll be interesting to try and figure out without bricking the card

Knew doing it all in 1 day was going to be too good to be true haha. My whole rooms a dump now so guess it’d time to tidy up and wait a few days for a reply

[Jager]

I don’t suppose a driver update would do anything?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I don’t suppose a driver update would do anything?

Do you get any sort of display output??

[Jager]

Not sure what you’re asking,so I’m going to say no . It literally just says that message above in the screen when powered up, can’t even get into the motherboard BIOS

Someone said updating the motherboard BIOS may work as it might add a ‘legacy’ support option that I can turn on. No idea if that’ll work though, but if I can’t even turn the PC on besides seeing that error message I mentioned above, then I can’t update the BIOS