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UK here. Based on my needs, an Asus Prime H610 board that'll take a 13700K is £85. The cheapest AM5 board is £175. (I'm checking one vendor here who I know has

by unxdfa 4y ago

UK here. Based on my needs, an Asus Prime H610 board that'll take a 13700K is £85. The cheapest AM5 board is £175. (I'm checking one vendor here who I know has a decent returns policy when your system integration goes to hell, another common AMD problem from much experience!)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sliken 4y ago
Ah, wasn't looking that low. That gets you half the memory channels, half the memory bandwidth, half the PCIe, and 40% of the ethernet bandwidth. They go for $100-$110 here, doesn't seem worth saving $50, at least if you plan to keep the system for 5-10 years. BTW, AM5 added the ability to upgrade BIOS without a CPU. So no more nightmares of having to beg a CPU, borrow a CPU from AMD, or RMA to get a compatible CPU<->BIOS setup.
- unxdfa 4y ago
  Yeah if I throw a B660 in there the price is closer. I would probably do that. Good to hear that about the CPU issue. I found that one out the hard way and had to scoot around to a friend's house and borrow his CPU for a few minutes. I bought MSI board after that as they had that built in anyway. AMD scare me on the reliability front. The 3700X and B450 combo I had before was a dick. It would come up 50% of the times with the fans cranking and have to be powered down and back up again a couple of times for it to boot. My Intel machines never did anything like that for the last 25 years or so but the last Athlon XP I had did the same damn thing.
  - sliken 4y ago
    Heh, I've been tracking desktops for quite some time, not noticed any significant reliability differences between AMD and Intel. My current desktop is a 2015 Xeon e3-1230 which was CHEAPER then the similar i7, but allowed ECC. I do like that the AMD motherboards allow ECC, it's a bit of a mess, but better then nothing. AMD doesn't guarantee/certify it until you upgrade to the Epyc. So you end up digging through motherboard docs, certification lists, and forums. My previous desktop was some early amd64, had no reliability problems with it. Before that I think it might have been an Celeron 300A that was overclocked to 450 MHz, same silicon as their non-celeron 450 MHz CPU, so overclocking was very common then. So far I've been switching between AMD and Intel every gen, and likely on my Xeon replacement.
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    Are you consistently buying bargain basement boards? I have a 3700X + X570 and I've never had the fans cranking and it fail to boot.
    - unxdfa 4y ago
      All of them are bargain basement. Some just have shiny things stuck to them and fancy lights. I tend to go for Asus Prime or MSI Pro boards these days.
      - goosedragons 4y ago
        No, some of them have better components too. It's not just shiny things and fancy lights.
        unxdfa 4y ago
        I was an EE for years. There isn't much in it between the economy boards, corp shitbox boards and really expensive ones despite the marketing garbage.
        jimbo9991 4y ago
        What do you think of the sabertooth/TUF series boards (if they still have them around)? I always purchased those because they seemed to advertise better components specifically, but maybe I was being bamboozled. Are there even quality grades for boards at all? Lets say I go into the super premium high price server space and start buying POWER 10s or something, would you say that the grade on those components (the basic stuff, not talking about anything design wise or the socket or whatever, just the base component quality) is also pretty similar to budget x86 boards? I'm basically asking if there is any reason I should care at all about motherboards outside of whatever IO/cpu socket/memory its got on it, and if that also applies outside of the consumer desktop space.
        unxdfa 4y ago
epolanski 4y ago
Sure, but AM5 is a platform you'll still have CPUs to upgrade few gen from now, while Intel keeps the same socket for no more than 2 generations of CPUs.

by unxdfa 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sliken 4y ago

Ah, wasn't looking that low. That gets you half the memory channels, half the memory bandwidth, half the PCIe, and 40% of the ethernet bandwidth. They go for $100-$110 here, doesn't seem worth saving $50, at least if you plan to keep the system for 5-10 years. BTW, AM5 added the ability to upgrade BIOS without a CPU. So no more nightmares of having to beg a CPU, borrow a CPU from AMD, or RMA to get a compatible CPU<->BIOS setup.

unxdfa 4y ago
Yeah if I throw a B660 in there the price is closer. I would probably do that. Good to hear that about the CPU issue. I found that one out the hard way and had to scoot around to a friend's house and borrow his CPU for a few minutes. I bought MSI board after that as they had that built in anyway. AMD scare me on the reliability front. The 3700X and B450 combo I had before was a dick. It would come up 50% of the times with the fans cranking and have to be powered down and back up again a couple of times for it to boot. My Intel machines never did anything like that for the last 25 years or so but the last Athlon XP I had did the same damn thing.
- sliken 4y ago
  Heh, I've been tracking desktops for quite some time, not noticed any significant reliability differences between AMD and Intel. My current desktop is a 2015 Xeon e3-1230 which was CHEAPER then the similar i7, but allowed ECC. I do like that the AMD motherboards allow ECC, it's a bit of a mess, but better then nothing. AMD doesn't guarantee/certify it until you upgrade to the Epyc. So you end up digging through motherboard docs, certification lists, and forums. My previous desktop was some early amd64, had no reliability problems with it. Before that I think it might have been an Celeron 300A that was overclocked to 450 MHz, same silicon as their non-celeron 450 MHz CPU, so overclocking was very common then. So far I've been switching between AMD and Intel every gen, and likely on my Xeon replacement.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  Are you consistently buying bargain basement boards? I have a 3700X + X570 and I've never had the fans cranking and it fail to boot.
  - unxdfa 4y ago
    All of them are bargain basement. Some just have shiny things stuck to them and fancy lights. I tend to go for Asus Prime or MSI Pro boards these days.
    - goosedragons 4y ago
      No, some of them have better components too. It's not just shiny things and fancy lights.
      - unxdfa 4y ago
        I was an EE for years. There isn't much in it between the economy boards, corp shitbox boards and really expensive ones despite the marketing garbage.
        jimbo9991 4y ago
        What do you think of the sabertooth/TUF series boards (if they still have them around)? I always purchased those because they seemed to advertise better components specifically, but maybe I was being bamboozled. Are there even quality grades for boards at all? Lets say I go into the super premium high price server space and start buying POWER 10s or something, would you say that the grade on those components (the basic stuff, not talking about anything design wise or the socket or whatever, just the base component quality) is also pretty similar to budget x86 boards? I'm basically asking if there is any reason I should care at all about motherboards outside of whatever IO/cpu socket/memory its got on it, and if that also applies outside of the consumer desktop space.
        unxdfa 4y ago

epolanski 4y ago

Sure, but AM5 is a platform you'll still have CPUs to upgrade few gen from now, while Intel keeps the same socket for no more than 2 generations of CPUs.