Which mATX b350 is the best in terms of..

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downloadram

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May 21, 2017
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b350 like the title suggests. Not strictly mATX but preferably.It is to be used with a r5 1600, so the motherboard should have strong mosfets to support a 6 core and its OC.
I'd like to have those on the motherboard, first being first priority last being last.
1- good onboard audio,
2- good overclockability,
3- stable and long operation under high ambient temps
RGBs/aesthetics are not necessary for me.
Please don't suggest x370 unless it's within price range of b350 cards (which afaik is not)
Note:
I'd like to avoid 2 DIMM motherboards so I can add 2x4GB sticks later.

Any opinion/experience/suggestion is welcome

Some motherboards I've checked/read reviews/comments about so far:
Gigabyte AB350 gaming 3 ([strike]mATX[/strike]&ATX) : Bad mosfet and cooling, not much overclockability, ATX version is improved on those and has good audio which is a big plus for me, even though it is popular a lot of people seem to complain they can't go above 3.7-3.8 ghz (even with slicon lottery winning chips as they made further with different mobos.) Some claim they get good OC with increased SOC voltage, however mosfets on this board are appereantly more liable to wear from temperature as their max temps are 10-15 C lower than the standard which worries me as I have high ambient temps.

Asrock B350 pro 4 : ATX but seems to be a popular choice although with low availability, I like everything about this board EXCEPT audio which I have no clue about, if anyone could enlighten me about the quality of the audio on this board VS the others listed here, I'd be grateful.

MSI B350M mortar : overall decent mATX with probably better audio quality than prime judging by the caps, however seems to have worse cooling/mosfet quality and I have no info regarding overclocking.

Asus B350 prime plus : ATX with probably lower audio quality, decent overclocking for the price and good cooling.

MSI B350 tomahawk : Average in everything but ATX, has some audio software I'd likely not use other than speech related improvements for voice comm.
 
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Seanie280672
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Seanie280672

Seanie280672

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Out of the top 3 micro atx boards, asus, gigabyte and msi, and I've had all 3, the msi mortar was by far the best.

The gigabyte bios is crap to say the least, the board felt cheap, the whole thing just felt like an afterthought just to get into the matx sector.

The Asus has no heatsink on the vrms, even say overclock near it and it breaks into a sweat. Although the bios was way better than the gigabyte.

The msi mortar had it all, heatsink on the vrms, shielded slots, and a great bios.

Now onto the vrms, I have the mortar b350m but also have the x370 gaming pro carbon, the vrms get upto 115oC on the mortar, but only under full stress load, prime95 etc, my x370 board gets upto 105oC at the same speeds and volts, so there's not much in it, considering my x370 has twice the amount of vrms and chokes, and remember, nothing you ever do will get them this hot again, everyday use, including gaming, they don't go above 70oC on either board.

Also as a side note, the x370 doesn't overclock any better than my b350, both run my ram at 3200mhz and run my 1700 at 3.9ghz with ease.
 
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downloadram

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Great link!
I basically skipped the gigabytes in the video as the youtuber calls them out to have the worst VRM.I never heard anything positive from gaming 3 mATX users so I'll discard those.

Mortar vs Asrock b350m pro4 so far:
1- Same audio chip, though Asrock has ELNA claiming its better than the average caps.MSI seems to have a lot more caps there though, I really need some comparison audio-wise.

2- USB 3.1, Asrock lacks it. Though they both still have type C so I'm fine with that.

3- VRM-wise Asrock is only slightly worse than the MSI. The youtuber says that 3+3 on Asrock is better than Asus' VRM.Seanie probably had bad experience with asus mATX because that board AFAIK lacks heatsinks on VRMs. Mortar however lacks cooling on the set of VRMs above the CPU socket.

4- Mortar has 3x4 pin system fan headers.Asrock 1x3 pin and 1x4 pin.Although not important is a good addition.


At this point it's a lot more about audio quality difference between the two. I think Asrock's VRM gets the plus due to the added cooling however if mortar has superior audio I'd pick it over Asrock.There's no knowing if I'll win the silicon lottery with 1600 anyhow so it's possible I won't ever make use of Asrock's better VRM.
 
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Seanie280672

Seanie280672

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Answer to no3, the VRMs above the socket dont need a heatsink, they dont even get warm really, they are for the SoC voltage, which is basically the north bridge / uncore.

Answer to no4, you can plug 3 pin fans into 4 pin headers, the speed is just controlled by the voltage rather than PWM signal.

My bad experience was with the Gigabyte motherboard, the only thing that put me off the ASUS board was the lack of a heatsink on any of the VRMs at all, even the guy in the video above said avoid that ASUS board due to the lack of any heatsinks, and also, the very cheap looking south bridge heatsink, I know looks are not really that important, but they do count a bit.

As for the Audio, I cant really comment on it, sorry, I dont use on-board audio, I have a Creative Sound Blaster Z that I modded and use in all of my systems, ive also not tried the ASRock boards so cant comment on those either, I do know from helping other though, that there is one particular bios update you need to be careful of, hopefully asrock have pulled it by now, but it was bricking boards left, right and centre, I think if memory serves me right it was version 2.1 or 2.2, just google it and it should come up.
 
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Suztera

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It was the X370 Taichi v 2.1 and 2.2 but now it should have been fixed with 2.3, not sure it includes the other models.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HJwBMOr0g4
 
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downloadram

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As far as I've been able to search, people say Elna and chemi-con (mortar) are very similar and should almost be considered to have exact same quality.Seeing MSI has more of those (and some dedicated to front panel supposedly) I reckon it'd have slightly better quality if anything.
Pretty much every mATX has those capacitors/very similar onboard audio chips so it's no longer a filter for me.

Speaking of faulty UEFI update, I do hear a lot of failure rates from asrock/asus more than I do so from MSI and any review I've seen says that those 'naked' mosfets don't get hot enough to worry about and can easily be cooled sufficiently just from rear fan's airflow.Considering Mortar also has USB 3.1 I'll go for it. Checking some OC benchs on YT also, mortar seems to hold itself even above some x370 models with r5 1800x which is quite impressive for its price range.

Conclusion, mortar is the best pick for me.You guys have been helpful, thanks a lot for your time :)
 
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Seanie280672

Seanie280672

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Mar 19, 2017
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You are welcome, its been educational for me too with that video, you wont regret it, just make sure the first thing you do when you get the board set up is update the bios to the latest version if it doesnt ship with it.
 
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