Nosotros've learned most of what there is to know well-nigh AMD'southward new Vega-infused CPUs, but those of yous thinking nigh buying the Ryzen 3 2200G or Ryzen 5 2400G after seeing how it competent it is as a budget gaming platform may be request yourselves whether the chip would be best installed on an A320 or B350 motherboard.

For budget AM4 builders there's ever been a choice between 2 chipsets: the locked-downward A320 with no overclocking support or the B350 that gives users the liberty to transport their Ryzen processors rocketing towards 4GHz.

Now, I've e'er recommended that you shy away from A320 models as they're only $x to $20 cheaper, simply if you lot never intend to overclock the motherboard, and its resale value isn't something you lot care most -- or the lack of flexible retentiveness upgrades -- then buying a $50 A320 board might make sense.

For only $10 more than though, you gain the power to overclock on a B350-based motherboard, and that means boosting both CPU and GPU on the Raven Ridge APUs -- again, an impossibility on A320 boards.

Those of yous willing to spend yet another $20 over a basic A320 board (so $70 total on a motherboard) will have boosted breathing room for choosing models that can not only overclock only are well stocked with features including four DIMM slots for flexible memory upgrades in the future. My personal budget friendly favorites include the Asrock AB350 Pro4 and MSI B350 PC Mate.

If y'all are upgrading an old organization to run on AMD'south new platform, you'll need Ryzen 3 2200G ($100), at least 8GB of DDR4 memory ($100) and an AM4 motherboard, which pushes the total bundle to $250 if built with an A320 board and $270 if you used a better B350 model, which works out to exist an 8% increase in cost. What does that buy?

Overclocking bated, you get quite a few extras for that small investment: the audio implementation is much better on the Asrock AB350 Pro4 opposed to the Asrock A320M and yous get ii extra SATA ports, an extra 1000.2 port, many more PCIe slots, a decent VRM with passive cooling, every bit well every bit more than USB 3.0 ports plus USB Gen1 Type-C. It'due south also a similar story when looking at the MSI B350 PC Mate.

What's interesting is that while the Asrock A320M lists up to DDR4-3200 memory back up via overclocking, I wasn't able to get either Raven Ridge APU working at this speed. In fact, 3066 failed and I fifty-fifty ran into a few stability issues at 2933, forcing me downward to 2666 and thankfully the system was completely stable hither.

In fairness to A320 boards, I got my easily on the well-nigh expensive Asrock A320 model, the A320M Pro4, which makes little sense at $65 just I wanted to see if retention support was whatever better. Here I was unable to mail service with the 3200 XMP profile enabled and was forced to run at 2933, which did appear to be stable. I should annotation that increasing the DRAM voltage didn't help on either lath.

Now I'thou not maxim all A320 motherboards won't work higher up spec for the memory but I tried 2 different models and neither worked. I suspect the aforementioned might be true for the ultra cheap $60 B350 boards that share the same physical design every bit the budget A320 models.

However, every bit I said earlier if you spend a little more on models such as the Asrock AB350 Pro4, these retentivity compatibility issues seem to get away and on this board I was able to run DDR4-3466 without an issue.

Although Ryzen CPUs are sensitive to memory frequency, normally I'd say this isn't really a big deal for upkeep buyers merely with Raven Ridge APUs it really is a large deal. Dropping downwardly from DDR4-3200 to 2933 volition reduce frame rates by 6% and going from 3200 to 2666 is a 12% reduction. Then while the A320 board might be upwardly to seven% cheaper overall, here it was at least half-dozen% slower and that cancels out whatever savings.

And then of course at that place is the event of overclocking and I'd encourage all Raven Ridge owners to requite it a become. AMD's Ryzen Master software makes overclocking inside Windows quite easy though I'd suggest applying these settings in the BIOS if yous can. In whatsoever example, taking the Vega 8 GPU embedded in the Ryzen three 2200G from its default operating frequency of one.1GHz to 1.5GHz is really easy and this 36% bump in frequency will net you some really great results.

If y'all missed our 2200G overclocking guide which showed you how to extract around 20% more than frames in games with a basic aftermarket air-cooler, then be sure to check it out.

Again, I'd just like to remind readers that information technology's not possible to overclock anything on the A320 boards, then the Vega 8 GPU volition stay fixed at 1.1GHz nether load. By my ain estimates, you stand to quite easily excerpt fifty% more than performance out of the 2200G for gaming when paired with a B350 board using DDR4-3200 memory, and to me that alone seems well worth spending 8% more on an upgrade packet.

And then to wrap this upwardly, for the ~$20 difference between A320 and B350 boards, the latter volition come with more features, better operation and with greater flexibility and options in the future, along with the extra fact that inside a few years I believe the B350 boards will command a much higher asking price on the secondhand market, which may also be worth keeping in mind for budget builders..

I'd go as far as to say that gamers pairing a Raven Ridge APU with an A320 board instead of a B350 lath are spoiling the potential value of a swell product.