Question Im looking for some pointers

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Jan 13, 2020
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I strongly advise getting an x570 MB instead of a B450, especially at that price point.

I built a new system in November with a 3600 on an MSI B450m Gaming Plus. Assuming you don't have an older Ryzen CPU to work with, and your MB doesn't come with the updated BIOS, you'll have to deal with using the BIOS flashback feature. For my MB, it took about 6 tries before it finally successfully updated.

After all of this, the system randomly fails to POST and indicates an issue with the CPU. It happens about 25% of the time when waking from hibernation. Power-cycling generally fixes it, but it's enough of an annoyance that I've ordered an x570 board to replace the B450.

Another fun thing is I tried updating to a newer version of the BIOS to correct the posting issue (since I landed on a slightly older one during my multiple attempts at doing the BIOS flashback initially). I initiated the update from BIOS itself, and wouldn't you know it, instead of rebooting and installing the update, it failed to POST with the CPU light. It kept failing until I once again went through the BIOS flashback process to get it running again.

Just some food for thought. I'm sure for every horror story there's 10 people saying "it works for me".
 
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Zoid

Community Contributor
I strongly advise getting an x570 MB instead of a B450, especially at that price point.

I built a new system in November with a 3600 on an MSI B450m Gaming Plus. Assuming you don't have an older Ryzen CPU to work with, and your MB doesn't come with the updated BIOS, you'll have to deal with using the BIOS flashback feature. For my MB, it took about 6 tries before it finally successfully updated.

After all of this, the system randomly fails to POST and indicates an issue with the CPU. It happens about 25% of the time when waking from hibernation. Power-cycling generally fixes it, but it's enough of an annoyance that I've ordered an x570 board to replace the B450.

Another fun thing is I tried updating to a newer version of the BIOS to correct the posting issue (since I landed on a slightly older one during my multiple attempts at doing the BIOS flashback initially). I initiated the update from BIOS itself, and wouldn't you know it, instead of rebooting and installing the update, it failed to POST with the CPU light. It kept failing until I once again went through the BIOS flashback process to get it running again.

Just some food for thought. I'm sure for every horror story there's 10 people saying "it works for me".
@Jpmwell it is definitely worth noting whether or not your chosen motherboard will ship updated for Ryzen 3000 series. There are no inherent problems with the B450 chipset, but rather with some specific motherboards. I have a B450 board that was up to date from the factory and has been perfect, but some of the older stock of boards might need updates. At the $150 price point it's true that you can get into X570 boards. I tend to be of the opinion that if you really don't need the X570 features (I don't), it's better to get a higher-end B450 than a lower-end X570 board for the same price, but that's entirely up to your needs.
 
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Jan 26, 2020
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@Jpmwell it is definitely worth noting whether or not your chosen motherboard will ship updated for Ryzen 3000 series. There are no inherent problems with the B450 chipset, but rather with some specific motherboards. I have a B450 board that was up to date from the factory and has been perfect, but some of the older stock of boards might need updates. At the $150 price point it's true that you can get into X570 boards. I tend to be of the opinion that if you really don't need the X570 features (I don't), it's better to get a higher-end B450 than a lower-end X570 board for the same price, but that's entirely up to your needs.

I decided on the B450 tomahawk max, ryzen 3600x and sapphire nitro+ as the main parts for my
build.
I actually started it this evening after work and successfully completed it first time with a little help from some friends, booted it up to make sure all was well and thanfully is.
Now just need to wait until one of my mates gets windows 10 popped on to a usb for me, i only paid £95 for the b450 tomahawk and according to the packaging it says on the front its ryzen 3000 desktop ready so im assuming that im good to go?
Fingers crossed i don’t run in to any issues that Kaizer came across.
 
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Zoid

Community Contributor
i only paid £95 for the b450 tomahawk and according to the packaging it says on the front its ryzen 3000 desktop ready so im assuming that im good to go?
Congrats on completing the build, and good price on the board! If it says Ryzen 3000 ready then you should have no problems at all. Once you get it set up I would still recommend checking your BIOS version though, because since Ryzen 3000 series CPUs are still relatively new there are continuing performance enhancements being made. If your board shipped before November then you may not have the most recent BIOS that supports AMD AGESA 1.0.0.4. Your computer will run perfectly fine without it, but the update can give you about a 100MHz all-core boost, so check your BIOS version and compare it with this list here.
Im totally new to all of the stuff ive gotta do to get up and running.
Could you tell me how to go about that if you dont mind?
He's saying to get your computer running Linux just for fun while you wait. Play around with that if you want to but that is unrelated to the Windows setup process ;)
 
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