No need to delay the B550 purchase.
No need to delay the B550 purchase.
Simple question: Is there ANY reason whatsoever that the common enthusiast should put off buying a B450 board in order to wait for the B550 launch? I was considering the Asrock B450m Steel Legend but I've recently seen leaks of potential gigabyte B550 boards dropping in the near future. Is there anything other than PCIe gen4 that the B550 chipset would be better for than B450?
It really didn't change much for the game beyond Gen 4, and some really bad boards don't matter much. You could argue it's future-proofing, but most GPUs don't even use the full PCIe 3.0 bandwidth—so 4.0 seems unnecessary. (And AMD seems aware of that too.) Unless you're dealing with a lot of PCIe cards or need super-fast storage, it's probably not worth it. I've heard AMD is planning new sockets for the next generation of Ryzens, so it might not be very forward-thinking. They could even skip the B550 entirely.
I recently purchased a Gigabyte Aorus B450 mini-ITX for around 110€ and paired it with a 3600X using the included cooler. It functions properly, offering single-core speeds up to 4.325GHz right out of the box—possibly due to a silicone lottery. I haven’t attempted any upgrades yet, but based on my first impressions and the articles I’ve read, the B450 is adequate for now. Unless you’re missing key features such as PCIe 4.0, it seems to be a solid choice.