Would it be worth it to upgrade to a B550/X570 motherboard from a B450 motherboard?

[Chrispy_]

Ok so I did buy a new board (ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING WIFI II)
<snip>
If you have a decent B450, stay on B450, but I imagine that was clear on this thread.

Definitely a huge upgrade going from entry-level barebones board to a premium board.

When the TUF series first appeared, they were decent quality but I've stopped buying anything TUF now because it's all just a different colour of the lowest-tier ASUS make. Arguably, their PRIME stuff which is supposed to be the bottom of their range, is actually better made than TUF now. ASUS have just cashed in on that TUF reputation their early products earned, and people are wising up to their scam - no doubt they're doing the same with STRIX but at present the STRIX stuff is generally still very good.

 

[Kodehawa]

Yeah the -F Wi-Fi II is a nice board. Doesn't have Intel Lan or Wi-Fi, and has a TB header. I was going to buy it, but was like 320 beaver bucks at the time. I ended up snagging the XE locally on sale for just a little more than that board was at the time. The XE a sweet board, kind of like the -E but better. I have the first gen -F running as my sons rig. Its been solid for me as I ran the piss out of it, now it lives a boring life playing Roblox driving a 5600X with some really crap Adatas.

It does have Intel LAN, but WiFi chipset is an AMD-branded MTK chip. Sad part about the latter is that Windows doesn't have drivers for it by default, so if you need it on installation... tough luck.

Hopefully those drives don't hear you, they'll fail if they do hehe /j.

'Twas 170 bucks (not including import taxes and shipping, but still cheaper than any local option) here.

Definitely a huge upgrade going from entry-level barebones board to a premium board.

When the TUF series first appeared, they were decent quality but I've stopped buying anything TUF now because it's all just a different colour of the lowest-tier ASUS make. Arguably, their PRIME stuff which is supposed to be the bottom of their range, is actually better made than TUF now. ASUS have just cashed in on that TUF reputation their early products earned, and people are wising up to their scam - no doubt they're doing the same with STRIX but at present the STRIX stuff is generally still very good.

I realized. The B550 TUF stuff looks even cheaper and has worse VRM configurations than the B450 motherboards. Ugh, that's a pain for consumers.

Honestly I didn't expect the audio to be the standout part of the upgrade. It has so much less latency that I'm playing osu! better and don't need to adjust global offset anymore, lol.

 

[Mussels]

When the TUF series first appeared

The B550 TUF stuff looks even cheaper and has worse VRM configurations than the B450 motherboards.

TUF and PRIME from asus are now code for "as bad as MSI's worst boards" - usually with extremely bad VRM and chipset cooling

I just went through fighting to get AMD wifi drivers for someone else as well, how odd they're not on windows update yet