Intel vs AMD
My Team Red vs Team Blue decision was made quite quickly, and despite avoiding AMD in the past in favour of Intel, my research boiled down to two points, AMD isn’t crap anymore since the Ryzen chips came out and AMD gives you more for your money… and more for your money is something I can get behind!
But Which AMD AM4 Board?
Picking the right board was quite a task for me, initially I was thinking a B550 chipset, but my frugal mindset was overridden by a a few factors;
- X570 Supports Dual PCIe 4.0 M.2 Slots
The addition of an SSD was probably the single most contributing factor for me keeping my current computer so long, the speed difference booting from the SSD over a traditional drive is huge, however my current system having only SATA2 isn’t getting the most out of the drive speed, so if I’m able to have 2 drives, I want them to be as quick as they can be. - X570 Can Support More SATA and USB 3.2 Gen 2 Ports
I have a lot of USB stuff and a love hate relationship with usb hubs, and I want to know I don’t have to stop using a sata drive if I run out of storage and want to add a new drive.
Initially I was looking at the MSI X570-A PRO board, but I guess I was put off when it was described as “the worst X570 board out” so the hunt continued, The ASUS TUF X570 Plus was almost the one, however I ended up getting the MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk WIFI, the selling points for the MSI over the ASUS for me are:
- Support for more USB ports out of the box
- Newer and quicker network capabilities
- My case was MSI and keeping the same brand would be nice
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