Vayra86Wow... so in the discussion on Intel / AMD and favoring the price cuts of AMD... and in the recent discussion on the cost of Z-boards and cooling for Intel 10th Gen....

This is reality, right here. Good luck with that 99 dollar board, you know what'll happen with 8c16t on it... FX all over again. So bottom line you're looking at similar price for the platform between both camps, where Intel has the good old distinction on the Z boards that guarantee strong VRM sections.

History repeats.

Another way of looking at it, and also one I agree with. Threads where people buy trash-tier B450 and plead for advice on how to make it overclock better (and/or complain about how it doesn't overclock well) are only entertaining the first dozen or so times.

We as enthusiasts despise market segmentation, but there is no denying it has an important place. It worries me that I can see this when AMD's supposed super-duper marketing team cannot.

AssimilatorAnother way of looking at it, and also one I agree with. Threads where people buy trash-tier B450 and plead for advice on how to make it overclock better (and/or complain about how it doesn't overclock well) are only entertaining the first dozen or so times.

We as enthusiasts despise market segmentation, but there is no denying it has an important place. It worries me that I can see this when AMD's supposed super-duper marketing team cannot.

Hopefully they learned and consider a well placed 'optimal for .... CPUs' sticker on each board. Not holding my breath...

Vayra86Wow... so in the discussion on Intel / AMD and favoring the price cuts of AMD... and in the recent discussion on the cost of Z-boards and cooling for Intel 10th Gen....

This is reality, right here. Good luck with that 99 dollar board, you know what'll happen with 8c16t on it... FX all over again. So bottom line you're looking at similar price for the platform between both camps, where Intel has the good old distinction on the Z boards that guarantee strong VRM sections.

History repeats.

MSI's $99 B450 had decent VRMs.
I've run 3900X in B450M Mortars without any issues. It's a known good board with decent VRMs and cooling. Buildzoid (one of the authorities on VRM quality and capability) tested one in depth with worst-case (high end CPU, PBO+, no VRM airflow in a closed case with an AIO) and it was fine. He was very positive about it, despite it not being a fancy 6-phase design.

Perhaps the issue is that $99 MSRP price point doesn't translate in all regions? I picked up one for a build about a month ago at £92 in the UK, which includes 20% sales tax so we're talking $95 in the US exluding tax.

Chrispy_MSI's $99 B450 had decent VRMs.
I've run 3900X in B450M Mortars without any issues. It's a known good board with decent VRMs and cooling. Buildzoid (one of the authorities on VRM quality and capability) tested one in depth with worst-case (high end CPU, PBO+, no VRM airflow in a closed case with an AIO) and it was fine. He was very positive about it, despite it not being a fancy 6-phase design.

Perhaps the issue is that $99 MSRP price point doesn't translate in all regions? I picked up one for a build about a month ago at £92 in the UK, which includes 20% sales tax so we're talking $95 in the US exluding tax.

The issue is that you have to resort to a review on each particular board for its end performance. That is not good, IMO. Not every customer is as keen as us to figure out which board is OK or not. Or simply not knowledgeable enough to even think of it.

The response to that will be that AMD once again suffers the perception of a platform that isn't super friendly like Intel has it. Uncertainty is not good.

Assimilator2.5G is a high-end feature and thus should only be available with high-end chipsets.

Pointless feature really. Feature fluff. I find it bizarre that no reviewer points out that consumer grade routers supporting anything above 1GbE are rare and expensive even in 2020. In fact your average "enthusiast" is not even using self-bought and configured routers or switches and most are using whatever modem/router/all-in-one their ISP provided. Usually substandard stuff to begin with and almost guaranteed to be 1GbE at very best. Some ISPs are still pushing hardware that has 10/100Mbps ports!

Heck, over at the ServeTheHome Forums, where the real networking geeks hang out, finding someone running a router/switch combo with 2.5GbE/5GbE/10GbE is not all that common. I mean, the most you will see an "enthusiast" doing is teaming with a couple 1GbE ports, and that's probably like 1-2 people out 300-400.

Asrock is king in this sort of stuff, the feature fluff. (anyone remember their built-in motherboard de-humidifier? :D) All of the manufacturers do it though. More shiny colorful badges on the motherboard box, the better. Having 2.5GbE or 5GbE or 10GbE or even all of them at the same time as some motherboards seem to do, is like having a toaster built into the motherboard PCB. You will never use it. And the random person out of a hundred (let's be honest here, out of a thousand) whos serious about networking in their home, well they are buying surplus enterprise grade networking stuff off of eBay or their local recycling plant, and running Cat7 through their walls. They are definitively not buying "gamer-cool" RGB overloaded motherboards.


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AddSubPointless feature really. Feature fluff. I find it bizarre that no reviewer points out that consumer grade routers supporting anything above 1GbE are rare and expensive even in 2020. In fact your average "enthusiast" is not even using self-bought and configured routers or switches and most are using whatever modem/router/all-in-one their ISP provided. Usually substandard stuff to begin with and almost guaranteed to be 1GbE at very best. Some ISPs are still pushing hardware that has 10/100Mbps ports!

Heck, over at the ServeTheHome Forums, where the real networking geeks hang out, finding someone running a router/switch combo with 2.5GbE/5GbE/10GbE is not all that common. I mean, the most you will see an "enthusiast" doing is teaming with a couple 1GbE ports, and that's probably like 1-2 people out 300-400.

Asrock is king in this sort of stuff, the feature fluff. (anyone remember their built-in motherboard de-humidifier? :D) All of the manufacturers do it though. More shiny colorful badges on the motherboard box, the better. Having 2.5GbE or 5GbE or 10GbE or even all of them at the same time as some motherboards seem to do, is like having a toaster built into the motherboard PCB. You will never use it. And the random person out of a hundred (let's be honest here, out of a thousand) whos serious about networking in their home, well they are buying surplus enterprise grade networking stuff off of eBay or their local recycling plant, and running Cat7 through their walls. They are definitively not buying "gamer-cool" RGB overloaded motherboards.


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Some good points you are right most don't have access to connections that fast.

I know of a few because my Fiber ISP actually offers a 1.5Gbps connections. Those speed will require either a PFsense built machine, or Enterprise grade hardware to handle the routing. If you stay to 1Gbps which is the plan I choose I can just use a Fiber to Ethernet converter then go directly into my Asus router.

Asus does have a new router that will support 10Gbps Wan speeds but its 10/1 only it doesn't support 2.5 or 5.

www.asus.com/Networking/RT-AX89X/

AssimilatorX370/B350 aren't supposed to support Zen 2 yet literally every motherboard manufacturer has released BIOSes that do. I can guarantee you that B550 will support Zen+ and possibly even Zen in the same way.

But not for every board. And those are clearly labeled as Beta. And if you believe B550 will support Zen+ or even Zen then i have some bad new for you. MSI who has been the best in this regard has all but confirmed not to support anything exept Zen2 and newer on B550:

TomorrowAnd those are clearly labeled as Beta.

Absolute nonsense. I'm currently typing this on an Asus X370 board with a 3600 using a BIOS that is not marked beta in any way shape or form.

AssimilatorAbsolute nonsense. I'm currently typing this on an Asus X370 board with a 3600 using a BIOS that is not marked beta in any way shape or form.

Well ok that's for MSI's board then. Obviously ASUS calls them stable.

Vayra86The response to that will be that AMD once again suffers the perception of a platform that isn't super friendly like Intel has it. Uncertainty is not good.

I think you've hit the nail on the head with that line.

It's not the percetion of an unfriendly platform - it is an unfriendly platform.

• XMP - does your Intel XMP kit work with Ryzen at the claimed speeds and timings? Is the review of that kit even relevant any more or has it changed from Samsung to Hynix since then?
• BIOS support for newer CPUs in older boards. Are they flashed to support the latest CPUs, and if not can the board flash itself without a CPU?
• VRM quality - which seems to be widely variable from "unsuitable for some supported CPUs" to "overkill in a good way"

I really want Ryzen to be a stable, friendly platform, but it's not like Intel where you just drop in the CPU to any board and it POSTs, XMPs, and boosts as expected first time, every time - provided it's not actually broken and needing an RMA.

so b550 has pce gen 4 now, well some of them but not others? so what does x570 have now that b550 doesn't? just more usb ports and sata drives?

lynx29so b550 has pce gen 4 now, well some of them but not others? so what does x570 have now that b550 doesn't? just more usb ports and sata drives?

PCIe 4.0 is only enabled from the CPU on B550. Meaning the first x16 slot and the first M.2 slot will get it but the chipset still output 3.0 to the rest of the board.

So X570's advantage is full 4.0 support both from the CPU and the Chipset. And thanks to that more USB, SATA and even M.2
Not to mention that unlike B550 the X570 also supports 2000 series Ryzen CPU's and depending on the board also select first gen Ryzen models.
B550 only supports 3000 and future models.

Let's see them dump PGA socket with AM5 since AMD will no longer be the budget option. It makes no sense to charge than much on a lowly PGA socket.

TomorrowPCIe 4.0 is only enabled from the CPU on B550. Meaning the first x16 slot and the first M.2 slot will get it but the chipset still output 3.0 to the rest of the board.

So X570's advantage is full 4.0 support both from the CPU and the Chipset. And thanks to that more USB, SATA and even M.2
Not to mention that unlike B550 the X570 also supports 2000 series Ryzen CPU's and depending on the board also select first gen Ryzen models.
B550 only supports 3000 and future models.

99% of people only need 1 gen4 m.2 and gen 4 video card. so b550 sounds good to me.

dicktracyLet's see them dump PGA socket with AM5 since AMD will no longer be the budget option. It makes no sense to charge than much on a lowly PGA socket.

They already did...with Threadripper.
Honestly i kinda like PGA compared to LGA. The pins on the CPU are thicker than the pins on the LGA socket. And given the choice i would rather have damaged pins on the CPU than on the motherboard - easier to replace the CPU compared to the motherboard. Tho almost alweays CPU is more expensive than the motherboard.

TomorrowPCIe 4.0 is only enabled from the CPU on B550. Meaning the first x16 slot and the first M.2 slot will get it but the chipset still output 3.0 to the rest of the board.

So X570's advantage is full 4.0 support both from the CPU and the Chipset. And thanks to that more USB, SATA and even M.2
Not to mention that unlike B550 the X570 also supports 2000 series Ryzen CPU's and depending on the board also select first gen Ryzen models.
B550 only supports 3000 and future models.

Unless there are changes to AMD's CPU roadmap, the B550 is likely going to end up supporting existing Zen 2 and upcoming Zen 3 processors. All existing B550 boards are for AM4 chips, and with Zen 4 expected to be using a new socket, the B550 is unlikely to have a long upgrade path.

AddSubPointless feature really. Feature fluff. I find it bizarre that no reviewer points out that consumer grade routers supporting anything above 1GbE are rare and expensive even in 2020. In fact your average "enthusiast" is not even using self-bought and configured routers or switches and most are using whatever modem/router/all-in-one their ISP provided. Usually substandard stuff to begin with and almost guaranteed to be 1GbE at very best. Some ISPs are still pushing hardware that has 10/100Mbps ports!

Heck, over at the ServeTheHome Forums, where the real networking geeks hang out, finding someone running a router/switch combo with 2.5GbE/5GbE/10GbE is not all that common. I mean, the most you will see an "enthusiast" doing is teaming with a couple 1GbE ports, and that's probably like 1-2 people out 300-400.

Asrock is king in this sort of stuff, the feature fluff. (anyone remember their built-in motherboard de-humidifier? :D) All of the manufacturers do it though. More shiny colorful badges on the motherboard box, the better. Having 2.5GbE or 5GbE or 10GbE or even all of them at the same time as some motherboards seem to do, is like having a toaster built into the motherboard PCB. You will never use it. And the random person out of a hundred (let's be honest here, out of a thousand) whos serious about networking in their home, well they are buying surplus enterprise grade networking stuff off of eBay or their local recycling plant, and running Cat7 through their walls. They are definitively not buying "gamer-cool" RGB overloaded motherboards.


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Agreed. 2.5GbE is rare among the average users. When I speak to someone about "CATx cabling at home, patch panel, etc.", most of the time the answer I get is "I'm using WiFi. Why the hell you're still using network cables?". If manufacturers need feature fluff, I believe a decent 11ac or even ax chip built in would probably work better.

Asrock is indeed the king of this sort of stuff. They claimed their 890FX boards supported Vishera FX, but in practice it's so unstable it's not usable.

Chrispy_I really want Ryzen to be a stable, friendly platform, but it's not like Intel where you just drop in the CPU to any board and it POSTs, XMPs, and boosts as expected first time, every time - provided it's not actually broken and needing an RMA.

Actually we have like 3 revisions of Coffee Lake CPUs out there and not all are supported on the same BIOS version, not on B360 and Z390 boards at least. So you can go buy a 9400/9400F and have a no POST...

ParnAgreed. 2.5GbE is rare among the average users. When I speak to someone about "CATx cabling at home, patch panel, etc.", most of the time the answer I get is "I'm using WiFi. Why the hell you're still using network cables?".

The obvious answer is speed and reliability of cable over wireless.
A salesman with good product knowledge would know that and convince the customer requiring a system for productivity to go that route.

sutyiActually we have like 3 revisions of Coffee Lake CPUs out there and not all are supported on the same BIOS version, not on B360 and Z390 boards at least. So you can go buy a 9400/9400F and have a no POST...

TIL something!
Haven't built much Coffee Lake, AMD were already the obvious choice for rendering workstations at that point.

Caring1The obvious answer is speed and reliability of cable over wireless.
A salesman with good product knowledge would know that and convince the customer requiring a system for productivity to go that route.

First of all I'm not a salesman. I was merely telling about my general experience whenever I got into a conversation with someone about cabled network.

Whenever "speed and reliability" is mentioned, it will always be countered with "inconvenience" by those who support WiFi over cabled network.

Caring1The obvious answer is speed and reliability of cable over wireless.
A salesman with good product knowledge would know that and convince the customer requiring a system for productivity to go that route.

Problem is that most commercial routers (that don't cost a couple hundred bucks) are stuck with 1GbE ports on the back. So having 2.5GbE on a budget chipset is mostly bling at this point sadly.

I'm not really seeing workstations built around B550 boards to be honest...

sutyiProblem is that most commercial routers (that don't cost a couple hundred bucks) are stuck with 1GbE ports on the back. So having 2.5GbE on a budget chipset is mostly bling at this point sadly.

I'm not really seeing workstations built around B550 boards to be honest...

Nobody making money off of their machines or even being remotely serious about a hobby relating to their workstations is going to get a "gamer-cool" motherboard with blinding RGB and heatsinks shaped like skulls or swords. Definitely not something that amounts to a beyoooond over-priced entry level chipset like B550. Most folks either source workstations from their employer which are usually are extremely boring looking but ridiculously powerful Z series HP XEON workstations or they get those same workstations 2nd hand from ebay or similar. (I did, entire thing has 48 XEON cores and 128GB of RAM for the price of a Ryzen 3800x or something ).

Which, and this is off topic, if you are serious about gaming or really like overclocking (I built a 9600k machine purely out of nostalgia for tweaking and got a 41% OC out of it, and with Ryzen's you are tweaking for stability out of the box, not for the extra MHz which Ryzens can't do anyway, not 40% at least!) you ARE going to go Intel, and if you are serious about rendering or general creative work, you ARE going to get a boring Z series HP workstation with a XEON and the entire thing that looks like it was put together in the 1990s, from your employer or otherwise, it's the standard. (Threadripper is exceedingly rare with OEMs). Everybody else is going by hype or wallet.

So people screaming about Ryzen's CPUs like the popular 3600X for "workloads" (I purely got a Ryzen to tweak and do some gaming) make me laugh. NOBODY other than some Fornite playing 17 year old posting Gimp made doodles on DeviantArt is using a off the shelf Ryzen for $170 for "productivity". How this buy "off-the-shelf-AMD-Ryzens-for-real-work" meme got started is nothing but fanboys doing their thing and guerilla Reddit marketing by AMD.


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What, 48-core Xeon for the price of a 3800X? That configuration starts at about $7K from Dell, almost $8K from HP and there really isn't much on the ex-corporate market with 48 threads yet. That stuff is too new to be remotely worth looking at for the moment.
I believe you are trolling sir.

I am the person at work(s) responsible for buying and selling our workstations across 3 premises and whilst I do deal with Dell and HP for places that don't have onsite IT departments, our main office uses own-built machines because they're better than than pre-built workstations and certainly ahead of the used market.

Used, you can pick up a 2x12 core E5-2690 V3 workstation with 128GB RAM for around €2300 but that's not 48-core, that's a couple of twelve core processors from 2014 complete with 2014 IPC and 2.6GHz clockspeeds. $2300 is a lot of money compared to a 3800X which is the comparison you just made, but more importantly - if you're going to spend $800 on RAM, you should probably get a 3950X instead of a 3800X to make the most of it.

Our focus is on rendering which means that cores x clockspeed x IPC matters the most, and for two years we've been replacing Xeon farms with Threadripper farms, and now the 3950X has replaced threadripper. If money was no object we'd be installing racks full of 1P Rome servers (probably EPYC 7702P). Money is always important though, and 16C/32 running at 4GHz+ with a single massive 64GB L3 cache seems to get the best results for the money.

Chrispy_What, 48-core Xeon for the price of a 3800X? That configuration starts at about $7K from Dell, almost $8K from HP and there really isn't much on the ex-corporate market with 48 threads yet. That stuff is too new to be remotely worth looking at for the moment.
I believe you are trolling sir.

I am the person at work(s) responsible for buying and selling our workstations across 3 premises and whilst I do deal with Dell and HP for places that don't have onsite IT departments, our main office uses own-built machines because they're better than than pre-built workstations and certainly ahead of the used market.

Used, you can pick up a 2x12 core E5-2690 V3 workstation with 128GB RAM for around €2300 but that's not 48-core, that's a couple of twelve core processors from 2014 complete with 2014 IPC and 2.6GHz clockspeeds. $2300 is a lot of money compared to a 3800X which is the comparison you just made, but more importantly - if you're going to spend $800 on RAM, you should probably get a 3950X instead of a 3800X to make the most of it.

Our focus is on rendering which means that cores x clockspeed x IPC matters the most, and for two years we've been replacing Xeon farms with Threadripper farms, and now the 3950X has replaced threadripper. If money was no object we'd be installing racks full of 1P Rome servers (probably EPYC 7702P). Money is always important though, and 16C/32 running at 4GHz+ with a single massive 64GB L3 cache seems to get the best results for the money.

48-core Xeon that is based on the Sandybridge or Westmere cores that won't be a modern architecture for that price.

And then the line about tweaking for Stability out of the box on Ryzen is nonsense. Ryzen system are very stable and I know this because i've been one for the last 6 months and have not had single BSOD. The only tweaking to be done is with the ryzen Dram caluclator + PBO + Making sure you don't by cheap memory.

I'm glad someone posted that knows what they are talking about.