I am considering getting the
MSI B450 GAMING PRO CARBON AC Mother board, but I don't have the guts to buy anything before consulting in here :D
I want to pair the mb with a Ryzen 5 3600x and 16gb of 3200 mhz RAM.
I know I can get cheaper mother boards with the b450 architecture, but I really like the RGB lighting on this model. Is it a decent/good mb or should I consider something else?
thanks in advance! :)
Posted Jan 28, 2020, 7:46 AM UTC
This is the only msi b450 board that has an argb header, but the current price of this board is a bit too much imo
A tad expensive indeed (but if it fits your needs you're good, otherwise consider B450 Tomahawk Max or something similar) and you may need a BIOS upgrade to get it to work with Ryzen 3000 series processors.
I found one of them with 8% off going for 1000 DKK => 147,42USD. I think that's not too bad. But if something like the tomahawk has exactly the same performance, I probably should reconsider.
I doubt that you'll notice the difference in performance (if any), though 147 USD is not too bad if you're willing to spend the money on 'bling' :)
As long as there aren't any widely known issues with the board, I won't mind spending a little extra for the bling
What are your thoughts on instead getting the tomahawk/b-450-a pro max, and then getting rgb for your ram?
I think the extra cost for the RGB ram would be about equal to the difference between the two motherboards.
Pretty much. Which do you picture yourself liking more? RGB Mobo, or RGB Ram? I wanna add the more I look at the pro carbon, the more I like how it looks. Even without RGB the all black is sort of a cool look.
Exactly! I think I will probably end up going with RGB RAM and the Carbon MB
I don't mind spending a little extra for something I will find more visually pleasing. But I also don't want to go for a mb solely for the "bling"-factor, if it has significant issues associated with it.
As long as you have the means to flash the bios you shouldn't have any issues.
I have the exact same combo (I overclocked my 3200 Ballistix ram to 3600 MHz). Everything is working perfectly. My board came Ryzen 3000 ready in September, so yours will be too most likely. Either way, updating the BIOS is very easy on MSI B450.
In general, MSI has very good VRMs on their B450 boards. So unless you want an X570 feature (PCIE 4.0), there's no reason not to get an MSI.
I don't think PCIE 4.0 will be relevant for my setup for quite some time, so I decided to save the money and get the B450 board. It just so good! I'm thinking about getting 3000 mhz ram and overclocking those to 3200mhz.
B450 motherboards, unless it’s the MAX boards from MSI or explicitly stated in the box itself that it is Ryzen 3000 ready (and not just compatible), would need a bios update. This means that in most cases, you would need a previous gen Ryzen CPU to update the bios so it can take a Ryzen 3000 CPU.
If you know that already, apologies for being redundant.
Edit: As u/vikusz123 have pointed out, motherboards that have BIOS Flashback (or Q-Flash Plus or Flash Bios Button) functionality can have their BIOS updated without a CPU. Please consult your motherboard manual to confirm.
Not true. All MSI B450 boards support updating BIOS without a cpu installed.
I think what you meant to say was, my above statement is not entirely true but I do get what you mean. I’ll update the post above as to avoid confusion.
Yes, what you wrote is right in general. Didn't mean to be harsh, sorry.
No harm done. I actually prefer it if people correct me if I mis-state something or ask for clarification if something doesn’t sound right.
yeah, I saw that already. I don't mind flashing the bios with a usb-drive. In general I like fiddling with these things - it's why I build myself :-D