Good but cheap B550 boards for Ryzen 5600X?

MR.B

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Requirements are: Under £150, with at least one NVMe slot and Ryzen 5xxx support.

But do any B550 boards even work out of the box with the new 5xxx CPU's? Or do they all require BIOS updates? If the BIOS needs updating then obviously my only options are boards with the ability to update the BIOS without a CPU in it.
 
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pcfarrar

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I got a MSI Tomahawk B550 for £150 to replace a 6 month old ROG Strix X570-F that failed (OcUK sent it back to ASUS for replacement). I had to do a BIOS flashback to get my 5800X working, but it was straightforward. It’s a decent board and should meet your needs. I’m quite happy with it and will probably sell my Strix when it returns instead of swapping back.
 

TheReflex

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MR.B said:
Requirements are: Under £150, with at least one NVMe slot and Ryzen 5xxx support.

But do any B550 boards even work out of the box with the new 5xxx CPU's? Or do they all require BIOS updates? If the BIOS needs updating then obviously my only options are boards with the ability to update the BIOS without a CPU in it.
Click to expand...

So there are mobos that need a CPU to flash, and mobos that don't?
 

VaderDSL

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TheReflex said:
How do I know if a B550 board has bios flashback? Been eyeing the Gigabyte B550 S2H which I believe needs a BIOS upgrade for a 5xxx, but I'm afraid of the hassle to upgrade it
Click to expand...

On the Gigabyte website it lists

  • Q-Flash Plus Update BIOS without Installing the CPU, Memory and Graphics Card
for that motherboard, so ther implementation of BIOS flashback looks like it woiuld work.
 

mickyflinn

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TheReflex said:
How do I know if a B550 board has bios flashback? Been eyeing the Gigabyte B550 S2H which I believe needs a BIOS upgrade for a 5xxx, but I'm afraid of the hassle to upgrade it
Click to expand...
It will say in the description and yhere will bd a button on the back or on ghe motherboard.

The Gigabyte B550 S2H does not have this feature

[USER=183234]@Minibiker[/USER] it does not have q flash plus.

The GIGABYTE B550M AORUS ELITE does have this feature called q flash plus.
 

TheReflex

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MR.B

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After giving it some more thought and considering it's looking like Zen 4 will need a new socket, that will mean these AM4 socket boards basically have no future upgrade potential, so might as well just get a proper cheap board. There might a Zen 3+ refresh later in 2021 but i'm sure that wont be worthwhile upgrade for anyone with a Ryzen 5xxx CPU.

So i was also looking at the Gigabyte B550 S2H that @TheReflex mentioned because it's really cheap, or the Gigabyte AMD B550M DS3H because it's almost the same price (~£90 but OCUK don't sell it) and both have Q-Flash Plus, so the BIOS can be updated without a CPU. The main difference with the DS3H is that it has 4 RAM slots and 2 NVMe slots instead of 2 and 1 respectively on the S2H.

The VRM's are pretty poor on both these cheap Gigabyte boards, and their heatsinks are far from great, but this is for a friend who just needs a 5600X and wont be doing any overclocking. Should be totally fine. Think i'll tell them to go for the DS3H.

TheReflex said:
but I'm afraid of the hassle to upgrade it
Click to expand...

Don't be afraid, it's very easy. Here's a video showing exactly what you'll need to do. It's for a different Gigabyte board but the steps are identical.
 
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