My 2019 video editing/gaming rig is almost ready the only part that is missing is the motherboard. Im confused between b350 and x370 currently. I wont be overclocking, what should I go for? https://appuals.com/best-motherboards-for-amd-ryzen-7-1800x/ found this article as well, they’ve listed x370 and on the top and b350 below them, is their any performance benefit between both of these?
First of all, I hope you’re aware that the 1800x belongs to the first generation Zen CPus and so do the x370/b350. Both chipsets and CPUs were updated last year, and within most likely about 4 months the next version will be out which will take a fairly decent leap in performance etc.
So the question you should ask yourself is if you want to save your money by buying first-gen Ryzen gear or get 2nd gen from last year or even wait for the coming generation.
Regarding b versus x-series:
You get 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes straight from the CPU in both, but they can be split on the x370 chipset. So if you check with the boards you’re looking at you might find that an x370 has two slots for PCIe 3.0 where both slots are physically x16 and if you use one of them you get that one at a full x16 bandwidth and if you use both you get x8/x8. I think that the b350 does not allow that, and you only get a single PCIe 3.0 x16 slot.
The rest of the slots in both cases are then PCIe 2.0 (and/or legacy PCI). Difference then is that x370 has 8 available and the b350 6. All of those go through the chipset itself and not straight to the CPU, so they all have an x4 bandwidth bottleneck.
(The total amount of lanes on those CPUs are 24. 4 often go to an NVME m.2 slot. 16 were mentioned above, and so were the remaining 4 to the chipset from the CPU (and from there to the PCIe 2.0 slots)).
In addition 6 versus 2 USB 3.0 connections, and 6 versus 4 SATA.
So, ignoring overclocking you can simply look at the motherboards you’re considering and see if you get the amount of ‘stuff’ you need with the speeds you need. Just write down what you will need to connect, what the physical lane-requirement is for PCIe, and what the actual bandwidth needs to be and then compare to motherboard specs.
The differences off the top of my head between generations are from gen 1 to gen 2:
- Slightly faster clock speeds
- Slightly lower CPU latencies
- Better memory compatibility out of the box
- Support for StoreMI
I think that the 3- and 4-series motherboards are backwards/forwards compatible with the first two generations of CPUs. The difference is maybe that some features in the 4xx motherboards won’t be available with a first gen CPU. You’d have to check.
From gen 2 to gen 3 (mostly rumors/speculation):
- More cores per CPU
- Faster CPUs
- Performance equal to or beyond Intel 9900K
(not sure about motherboards, but it could be that it’ll provide more bandwidth in total to slots… as far as I know that’s possible…)
Not entirely sure about compatibility between motherboards / CPUs here. I suspect that as earlier it depends on having a correct BIOS and then the generations will play nicely together, but getting that BIOS update to happen might be a bit of a hassle.
Either way, I think you should seriously consider how long you want to use this computer and if you will want to upgrade it at some point. I’m personally on a first-gen 1700 with an x370 mobo. My bet was that if I’ll need anything in the near future it’ll likely be a better performing CPU which I think should be fine. In other words I should be able to get the latest CPU this year if I need to - if I remember and understand correctly.
On the other hand, if you plant to make some money off of this you might get a lot out of a first-gen setup and simply rebuild with a new CPU/mobo in the future and basically have your revenue from work pay for that.