If you’re going with AMD, here’s something to consider:
X570 has support for PCIe Gen4. B550 uses Gen3.
You can pick up an X570 board for $200.00. The extra $40 over a B550 is money well spent for the PCIe 4 support.
Also:
32 GB RAM
NVMe M.2 SSD
I probably sound like a broken record, but I think those specs make a difference.
Hey Seven. I’m running the game pretty good right now and just upgraded to 32 gb mem. I have a 860 evo ssd drive, is the m.2 worth the upgrade right now? Would that increase my load times mostly?
I’d say the upgrade to 32GB was an excellent call. If you’ve got a 860 evo I think I’d save my money. The upgrade probably won’t make nearly as much difference as the RAM did.
Just my $0.02…
Sorry Seven7Tango, you’re completely wrong.
I’m not sure but you may be mistaken with B450
B550 introduces full and guaranteed PCIe 4.0 support to the mid range.
Given that leaves very little reason for X570 aside from extreme overclocking there is no sense in an X570 board unless you get it for the same price.
The OP has not overclocked their current system at all, and the B550 has some great overclocking features, so is already likley more than adequate.
Only reason to get an X570 board is if it is same price or cheaper.
AMD aren’t like Intel where you really need the Z series chipsets for the best experience, even an enthusiast can do well on a mid range AMD chipset with nothing locked down (ie, overclocking) and no hindrance.
32GB of ram is definitely wise, and it’s so cheap right now.
At least DDR4-3200, anything under that starts costing performance on Zen.
It’s also essential that it be configured correctly.
M.2 SSD is convenient and my perference
NVMe is nice but makes pretty much 0 real world performance difference for mainstream and gaming use.
They might benchmark fine, but that’s about all they do.
I say go NVMe if money is no problem, otherwise get (in my preference order) M.2 SATA or 2.5" SATA, but only is the SATA drives have DDR3/4 cache (Crucial MX 500 is a good choice, avoid the BX).
::edit for clarification::
Whilst the CPU-> chipset link is still PCIe3 all vendors B550 boards will support PCIe4 to the GPU.
Given nothing currently saturates PCIe3 at the chipset with the exception of extreme niche cases it’s not that big of a deal.
You have about one of the best SSD’s money can buy.
Remember M.2 is only an physical interface.
If you got an 860EVO M.2 version nothing would change, it would still be SATA via the M.2 connector.
If you wanted a change you’d need to go for a Samsung 960Pro or 970 EVO/Pro.
These are both NVMe (they connect via the PCIe lanes in the connector instead of the SATA pins).
Completely pointless though, as load times will differ by about 2 seconds at best.
Checkout this video on Youtube for an idea of the reality.
NVMe is a much much faster interface, it benchmarks insanely well, and is great for niche applications (scrubbing extreme high bitrate video in production etc…) but you’re better off in the real world getting a bigger SSD than a faster one, just aim for something that has cache… or pretty much anything Samsung.
@MagicNoodle200
Never said you would regret it, but you might.
1st of all, you haven’t decided on a CPU yet.
If you get that board you are locked into Intel, which you might regret.
Why #1 Intel have been pretty stagnant with performance gains, you might end up disappointed unless you fork for at least a high clocked 8 core CPU, and that will cost a few dollars.
Why #2 AMD have a much more modern platform with excellent performance beating Intel dollar for performance and on performance overall except at the extreme ranges of price brackets.
Why #3 Intel are yet to release any board with PCIe Gen4, whilst AMD have had the X570 out for a year or so?? and just launched the B550 with full PCIe4 support a few months back, with Intel yet to even make a serious announcement regarding PCIe4
Why #4 If you decided to go Intel anyway there is a massive chance Intel boards and CPU’s will drop in price with the Zen3 launch… why pay for a board now that you can’t use without a CPU, that has no PCIe4 and that will remove your option to change your mind if Zen3 really is amazing (and AMD have been delivering good on promises lately).
I could probably dig up a few more reasons, but if these don’t convince you nothing will.
You’re not spending my money so do what you need to do.
I’d say a good 80% of my machines have been Intel, so there is no bias from me.
Just plain economic sense.
Last thing I ever want to do is get into an argument about… well… anything.
This is from anandtech.com, a reliable site for advice about components:
“However, X570 did bring a number of new benefits, such as PCIe 4.0 from the processor, PCIe 4.0 from the chipset, and an increased bandwidth to and from the chipset.”
Bandwidth seems important for this software, which is why NVMe storage seems such a good idea. And well matched memory from the vendor’s QVL.
Also from the same anandtech article:
“GIGABYTE B550 Vision D is one of very few B Series boards with two PCIe 4.0 slots from the processor. It’s rather pricy as a result, at $260.00”
The Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elitie WiFi mainboard in my build cost $180.00 - seemed like a good way to go, with a lot of features for a reasonable price.
For the record, I don’t typically overclock, so I did not buy the X570 for that reason. Also the reason I went with a 3600 CPU instead of the 3600X or 3700X.
There is a lot of misinformation about B550 as it was thought at one point to not have PCIe 4.
With it being so new a lot of this bad info and speculation is still around.
From the front page of the same website you quote right now is a review of the ASRock B550 Taichi.
“The B550 chipset has less PCIe 4.0 support than X570, with only the top full-length PCIe slot and one PCIe M.2 slot operating at PCIe 4.0”
Thus the older information you seem to have is incorrect.
Whilst it is not an exclusively PCIe4 board, the things that matter are covered with PCIe4, being GPU and storage. and the real world benefits of either are questionable at current, but it’s still wise to buy into an up to date platform.
Also the block diagrams from AMD themselves show PCIe 4, and it’s advertised on their website.
https://www.amd.com/en/chipsets/b550
Also note this board from Asus (a random example)…
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-STRIX-B550-E-GAMING/
Clearly shows PCIe4 to the first x16 slot and to the first M.2 slot.
B550 boards absolutely and without argument have PCIe 4.0 they are out there and this information is accurate and real and current.
The B550 boards are in fact so ■■■■ good they almost make X570 redundant.
All except one thing, the price, and I’ve mentioned this a few times.
The are newer than the X570, only being released a few months ago, but at launch they were stupidly priced, hence why i myself have an X570 board (it was cheaper than a B550!!!).
Price being equal I’d recommend X570, B550 being cheaper (and it is coming down in price) then B550 will start to make sense.
Here, now today it could go either way, for $10-$20 difference the slightly older but higher end X570 could well be worth the extra, or if it saves $20-$30 or more then the newer B550 is the go.
There might also be some confusion over slots vs lanes, only one of the PCIe slots is gen 4 (with 16 lanes), but that’s more than enough for a single GPU setup, and with SLI and it’s cousins being all but dead no one is going to care too much.
–And if you have money for dual RTX3090’s then saving $0 to $60 on a motherboard is the least of your concerns.
Something to remember, the PCIe lanes in question don’t even come from the chipset.
They come from the CPU, hence why it was also thought that X470 and B450 boards running PCIe4 capable CPUs might get PCIe4 support.
Problem was that the physical lanes on the motherboard need to be designed to a higher standard to ensure the signal integrity required for the faster speed.
It was decided that adding PCIe4 support to those boards could potentially lead to reliability issues as the boards were never originally designed for it.
The reality is in 99% of cases it would have worked flawlessly, but AMD erred on the side of caution and did not retroactively activate PCIe4 on said boards, a wise choice in my opinion.
Given the guesswork pre launch and how new the chipset is it’s easy to find plenty of speculation and bad info. I have a lot of respect for Anandtech, a great place for info, they got it wrong, but even so they’re usually a better source than most in my opinion.
-A little regarding storage bandwidth.
See the NVMe vs SATA ssd video i posted above re game loading times.
SATA 3.0+ being 600MB/s and PCIe3.0x4lanes being 3,940MB/s you’d expect NVME to be >6.5x faster.
In benchmarks the difference is staggering, in reality the difference is so small it can’t be noticed.
We’re talking double the price for a drive for a 1-2 second load time benefit.
In my option I’d say the money is better spent on a larger SSD than a faster SSD as long as it at least has DRAM cache.
My Samsung 950Pro which will bench 3.5GB/s and my Intel 540s with does 1/6th that speed both have load times for MSFS within about 1-2 seconds of each other.
And according to disk bandwidth and access time data MSFS is not starved for bandwidth with either disk.
So assuming you’re not running a trash SSD, SSHD or a mechanical drive there is nothing to be gained real world for FS2020. In my private testing the evidence is just not there.
A little side bit, should have got the 3700X 
Not overclocking is not a reason to avoid that chip, gives you a higher clock and 2 extra cores than the 3600. That said i don’t know what the market was like when you bought, the 3700X has dropped in price considerably over the last few months, might have been pricey when you built.
At this time I’d consider it the #1 choice for MSFS in the mid range price point.
The 3600X and 3800X are pointless and shouldn’t exist… says me with a 3800X…lol.
Crazy sale or something, got it for the price of a 3600X at the time!!! AUD$424 delivered (~USD$305).
But seriously, only chips to consider for sim and gaming are 3600, 3700X and maybe 3900X (and the XT variants.
For multi threaded friendly workloads the 3950X cpu can be a valid choice also.
No argument intended, just the information i was seeing looked wrong.
If there is better evidence I’m open to being corrected.
Also just found this slide from AMD the covers the current 500 series chipset range.
The A520 will be on shelves soon… probably a great budget chipset, but i have no interest in it really.
Might suit office or web surfing tasks well into the future, but the entire lack of PCIe4 rules it out for me.
Wow. Ego much?
Sorry if correcting you also offended you.
I guess not all of us are open to learn new and correct things.
That’s on you buddy.
If you’re going to get upset when you are wrong and someone corrects you then either don’t be wrong or don’t post at all.
Some people have limited money to tip into this hobby and accurate information can make a pretty big difference to them.
Have a nice day.
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/igkgmw/you_almost_certainly_dont_need_x570/
What he’s saying is backed up by multiple sources.
Sorry for not knowing much about any of this as you guys… I am still a padawan basically when it comes to understanding computers, and even that is kinda giving a little to much more than deserved. I have not bought anything as of yet and am still going to wait.
I got MSFS 2020 to become playable up to 30 to 40 frames on 1440p (i can even play in “4k” at 20 fps but that also is debatable on whether my system and TV are truly showing native “4k” to my perspective). I dont really FEEL like i need to rush anything because there are not any games really coming out for a few months anyways.
So basically this is where i can start doing research and planning. IFFFF i was to go with AMD and get that b550 board, what would be the best CPU i can get that would be cost effective and go good with my 2070 super (im not upgrading the graphics card for another year or 2).
No need to apologize.
I might be a complete noob with cars or cranes or house framing, we can’t all know everything.
Even my hardware knowlage has it’s limitations.
So a couple of things for the ‘right now’ sounds like you have it running mostly OK.
Are those CPU temps under control now? If not you could be thermal throttling which if rectified might open up more performance.
Also dropping back a graphics preset has had less of a visual impact than some had thought.
I dropped from High to Medium and won a big performance gain with (at least away from cities) minimal visual loss.
On the subject of a new machine.
The big deal right now is PCI express Gen4, intel have nothing in the pipeline in the near future that supports it. Whilst you next graphics card upgrade is a while away it will most certainly want a PCIeGen4 slot to live in, thus the favor for AMD’s current offerings.
The suggestion to wait however is more focused on the upcoming new CPU’s coming from AMD.
The last few releases have been incredibly competitive so much that Intel has been forced to offer more cores and drop prices. Hence why we saw Intel’s 8th gen i3’s move to 4 cores, i5’s to 6 cores and i7’s to 8 cores. (from 2cores +Hyper Threading, 4 cores, and 4 cores with HT).
The current favorite CPU in my opinion is the 3700X, for a tighter budget a 3600 is a good choice, if you want to go up market a little the 3900X is the go, 6,8 and 12 cores.
But that said the new CPU announcement is just around the corner and it will most likely drop the prices of both intel’s and AMD’s current models as retails push to clear their stock for the incoming newer and better CPU’s
2 best times to buy are during such clearances and later once prices have settled on the new product.
Clearances are likely to start soon so the wait shouldn’t be too long.
As for B550/X570 the B550 is a great board, but has been plagues with unrealistically high pricing.
B550 is newer, but tech wise sits 1 level under the X570.
Both support PCIeGen4 from the CPU to the video card slot with is the main concern for future GPU and of course is backward compatible with older PCIe gear.
I have an X570 board, but would be just as happy with a B550 if I’d had an opportunity to save 10-20% or more, but when i bought the X570 was actually cheaper.
So both being great options if prices were equal go the X570, if there is a decent price difference favoring the B550 go with it.
Both boards will run the new Zen3 CPU’s coming in a few months, and these CPU’s are rumored to have both higher clock speeds and a higher IPC (Instructions Per Clock), but only rumored !!
In short, Immediate answer go with a 3700X (8core) or a 3900X(12core) if the budget allows.
XT is a slight variant of the above with negligible improvements so get the XT vatiant if it’s only a tiny bit more expensive.
Avoid the 3600X and 3800X unless you can get them for same price as the 3600 and 3700X (unlikely but it happened to me).
In a few months I’d probably change my answer based on pricing of the new models but would at a guess suggest the newer versions of the 8 and 12 core chips.
There is a small chance the new release might push Intel’s prices lower in which case going that way might be plausible, but highly unlikely they will drop prices enough to be enticing.
Added to that is the lack of PCIe Gen4, which in a few years time your future GPU will want… Just makes it an undesirable scenario.
Keep asking questions, happy to help.
I don’t have a lot of cash to burn myself, I came from a 6600K only because of a faulty motherboard and I’m still rocking a GTX1070!
So understanding how to point money in the right direction for greatest performance and reliability is pretty much what i aim for for my own benefit.
::edit::
@TheOriginalBabu has a link to a reddit post that has some great info on B550 vs X570 take a look.
In my country you have to work more than 1,5 months to buy new RTX 2080 ONLY.
Sometimes I’m shocked when I calculate money I spent for my rig and all addons just for flight simming (the only game I play when it’s released is Hitman) 
My rig is not that up-to-date (Intel i7-9700K, G.SKILL 32GB 3000MHz CL16 Aegis, Gigabyte Z390 Gaming X, Samsung 512GB 970 PRO PCIe x4 NVMe, Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 OC 8GB GDDR5X 256bit G1) but have quite good performance in MSFS with sliders set to ultra and high. I’m afraid this will change when I fire up study-level airliner from PMDG online at some busy airport (eg. EHAM or EKCH from FlyTampa).
Currently, I have no idea what to invest in and not go bankrupt (new GPU, maybe CPU?)
Have a great day!
You should be fine with your cpu and its 8 full threads, if youre overclocking it properly to 4.8 or higher/all cores it has already 85% of the raw performance asobo states required ultra. Your ram is reasonable fast, can oc it (but here its way more difficult then with cpu oc) so youre fine here to… Only the 1080 will limit you pretty hard on ultra, maybe on 1080p it’s fine too.
Just optimize your system, get used to it, oc your CPU and learn how NVIDIA drivers work to give the most througput. If youre ok with not ALLSETTINGSULTRA then do that and never let the render settings exceed 150! ->Software preset for rendering in 4k/1440p and personal experience
Avoid simple user errors in the settings as many gamers nowdays 
Better stay with your money!
The cleaning advice is right on the money! I thought I was going to have to upgrade my 2012 i5 3570k to get playable frame rates, but in actual fact it was being thermally throttled due to overheating. After cleaning the dust out of the fins of the CPU cooler and applying fresh thermal paste, I went from stuttery 15-30fps to smooth 30-40fps. Unbelievable difference, and a hell of a lot cheaper than the CPU/mobo upgrade I had been considering!
That is a great tale. When you think about it, pretty amazing.
Hi, my situation is: i5 7600k 4c/4t stuck to 100% utilisation that means severe stuttering. I have a decent 1080Ti and 32GB ram so I’d only need a new cpu+mobo to play nicely on a 1080p monitor. Having said that what would be the optimal cpu choice given that I have 4x8GB 2400mhz ram banks that I wouldn’t replace to save some money? Intel 10th or Ryzen? Thanks
So I’ve decided to finally give in and update my PC.
I’ve ordered an i9-10900K, Gigabyte Z490 Vision D, Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB m2 SSD, Fractal Designs Celsius S36+ AIO Water Cooler.
I’m just at the point now of waiting for the 3090’s to be released. Anyone here have any experience with the time between announcement and ‘stock’ of new Video cards in the past?
I know working for another business in the past that it’s not uncommon to receive stock before an announcement but never dealt with PC Components.
I don’t really wanna put my old GTX1080 into the new build, only to swap it out later.
Thanks.
Rumors say 3080 mid september, 3090 early oktober… salt, grain,pepper, ya know…
