Best Motherboards for Ryzen 5 1600 – 2018 Buyer’s Guide

The Ryzen 5 1600 is one of AMDs best selling Zen CPUs and there is good reason why. This CPU offers great performance for a great price point, and it is capable of being overclocked to hit some seriously impressive performance levels. Of course, this is entirely dependent on the components you pair the Ryzen 5 1600 with, and picking the best motherboard for this CPU is extremely important if you want to build a highly capable PC build for gaming and even overclocking. In this guide we will show you the best B350 motherboards you can choose to use with the Ryzen 5 1600 CPU in 2018. Enjoy!

Note: If you are considering a Ryzen 5 1600X instead, we would highly recommend getting the Ryzen 5 1600 and overclocking it and saving the money here and spending it on better RAM or Graphics.

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Best motherboard for Ryzen 5 1600 + Best for overclocking

The MSI B350 Gaming Pro Carbon is considered to be one of the strongest B350 motherboards out there, with extremely robust VRMs available on a B350 board. Not just a well designed and aesthetically pleasing motherboard, the Gaming Pro Carbon has plenty of features such as ALC1220, RGB lighting control and exceptional overclocking capabilities for the price point. This is a motherboard we really struggle to find any drawbacks, and this is why we recommend it as the best overall motherboard for AMD Ryzen 5 1600 CPUs – if your looking for a solid Ryzen build or wanting to overclock the 1600 to hit 1600X speeds or beyond!

 

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Best budget motherboard for Ryzen 5 1600

For builders on a budget, the best motherboard for the money when pairing with a Ryzen 5 1600 has to be the Gigabyte AB350 Gaming 3 AM4 motherboard. You aren’t going to get a better motherboard for the money, it really is fantastic value. It is perfect if you are looking to game with the Ryzen 5 1600, and with the recent BIOS updates the Gaming 3 works flawlessly with overclocking Ryzen CPUs and also memory overclocks. Features that really make the AB350 Gaming 3 stand out as a great option for the Ryzen 5 1600 is its USB 3.1 Gen 2 support allowing 10Gb/s connectivity, great 7.1 channel audio, RGB lighting, plenty of fan headers as well as fantastic support for 3200MHz RAM with XMP memory. Our only reservations about the Gigabyte AB350 Gaming 3 especially in 2018 is the lack of USB Type C, as well as the VRM cooling design could be improved somewhat, but it is still impressive and above the competitors at this price point.

 

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Best mATX motherboard for Ryzen 5 1600

When picking a mATX motherboard for Ryzen 5 1600, there really is only one clear option in 2018 – the ASRock AB350M Pro4. This model is a fantastic value B350 motherboard with plenty of features, great VRM design and plenty of connectivity (minus the low number of fan headers). If you’re looking to overclock the Ryzen 5 1600 CPU to reach 1600X levels of performance or above, then the Pro4 will be a perfect match. The ASRock AB350M Pro4  is only of the only mATX B350 motherboards that have heatsinks on all VRMs.

We would recommend the AB350M Pro4 over the Asus PRIME and ROG STRIX mATX versions when pairing with the Risen 5 1600 as the Pro4 simply matches them close on performance but doesn’t hold the same expensive price tag as its competitors. My only niggle with opting for the ASRock Pro4 however is that it only has 2 fan headers, with only one of those with PWM – so if you want a system with plenty of cooling from fans, I would consider an alternative mATX motherboard for Ryzen 5 1600. With that said, we still think that right now the ASRock AB350M Pro4 offers the best value for the features and quality you get with this B350 motherboard.

 

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Best Mini-ITX motherboard for Ryzen 5 1600

When dong a mini ITX/SFF build, you will have to do your research properly to get a build that won’t overheat or inevitably cause problems down the road.  Because of the ITX form factor and the lack of real estate manufacturers have to build on them, alot of ITX boards get very hot VRMs due to the lack of heatsinks on the VRMs of they are simply too small – so when choosing a ITX board look for one that has a good VRM cooling sink or design. Although no ITX board right now is perfect, the best mini ITX motherboard for Ryzen 5 1600 is the ASRock AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac. This board has a great layout, wifi connectivity, a solid BIOS support and won’t bottleneck your Ryzen 5 1600. All in a package that can be found for about $110 – not bad!

James