mobo and memory for Ryzen 7

BradHP

It's finally time to upgrade the system that I built almost 10 years ago, so it's been a while and I'm a little out of touch on the best parts. The GPU is staying for now (RX 570 is the one and only part that's been updated since the original build), and then the PSU, case, and hard drive are also staying (will be adding an SSD as the boot drive). 

 I'm set on the Ryzen 7 3700x for the cpu, but I'm a little overwhelmed by the motherboard options.  I'll be using this for playing and making games, so I'll be running Unreal Engine, Maya, Substance Painter, Illustrator, and a few other programs. I'll probably do some light overclocking, not push it too hard, but I do want to make sure I'm getting the max performance I can.

I've read up a little on the differences between B550 and X570 and I'm still not sure sure which is the better choice or if it makes a difference for how I plan to use it.  I don't want to go to far above $170-180 max on the mobo, and if I can find a cheaper option that will handle everything I need, that would be great. I don't need wi-fi, as I'm on a wired connection.

Other question is memory. I'd really like to get 32 GB, but the prices a pretty high. Would I do better to get a faster speed of 16GB? Will DDR4-3600 give me a very noticeable increase over 3200? Currently looking at these guys here https://www.microcenter.com/product/467049/gskill-ripjaws-v-32gb-(2-x-16gb)-ddr4-3200-pc4-25600-cl16-dual-channel-desktop-memory-kit-f4-3200c16d-32g---black

TSTonyV

The third gen Ryzen CPUs don't have a lot of room for overclocking, so I wouldn't be overly concerned with crazy insane overclocking performance on your board. The main question to be asking is features. For most people B550 is perfectly good for their needs. The main difference between B550 and X570 is that X570 has more PCIe 4.0 support. Otherwise they're very similar. 

That said, at that price range there are several X570s and B550s that are close together so you might as well get the X570 if it's an option. The ASUS X570 TUF and Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite are both solid options at $190. 

I would always recommend DDR4-3600 for third Gen Ryzen, since that's the sweetspot, but if what you're doing is RAM intensive, it's better to get the higher amount. That extra 400Mhz isn't going to make up for an extra 16GB of capacity if you can utilize it.