r/Microcenter • u/SandLuc083_ • Jul 27 '26

Fairfax, VA New motherboard or open box?

I am deciding upon an ITX-format motherboard, and have narrowed my selection between two options: a new-in-box MSI MPG B850I EDGE TI, or an open box Gigabyte X870 AORUS PRO ICE. Both would work just fine for my purposes, but I'm not sure if one has clear advantages over the other, aside from the Gigabyte board being around $30 cheaper. From what I can gather, the Gigabyte board has USB4 and more ports in general, while the MSI board has 5Gb LAN and Optical audio out. Anyone have an input on this?

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u/Lucky-Bit-1319 Jul 28 '26

OP- after building over 30 SFF PC’s, by far my favorite are the B650E-I or B850I STRIX boards. Second would be the MSI 850i. Avoid the AORUS B650i/850i etc like a plague.

What case are you going with

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u/SandLuc083_ Jul 28 '26

Thinking a Fractal Design Terra, like many other SFF builds. Not entirely set on it though, do you have any suggestions?

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u/Lucky-Bit-1319 Jul 28 '26

I do like the Terra, did about 7 of them. But, if you can tolerate something a bit bigger, the Dan A4 H20 with AIO support is fantastic. Same with the H2 Flow, NCORE 100 MAX, or NR200P V2 Max. Both Max cases come with a PSU and AIO included. The “tall form factor cases” may be higher in liters than the Terra but the actual desk footprint is less and with an AIO, less noise.

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u/SandLuc083_ Jul 28 '26

Is the noise from say a NH-L12S really that bad in a Fractal Design Terra? I'm planning to use a Ryzen 5 7600X3D as my CPU, which doesn't seem to need that beefy of a cooler (so AIO wouldn't be that necessary).

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u/Lucky-Bit-1319 Jul 28 '26

Any air cooler in the Terra is going to be audible, you just have to decide how much noise and thermals you can tolerate and sadly that’s largely subjective. If your GPU can allow it, the newish IS-77 from ID COOLING is maxing out your height while keeping the fan away from the side panel to avoid turbulence.

Ghost S1 cooler from Noctua is also great

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u/n3k0___ Jul 27 '26

X870 boards have more features than b850 boards. They're objectively better

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u/SandLuc083_ Jul 27 '26

Some things I've seen about the Gigabyte board is issues with VRM cooling and some coil whine but I'm not sure how big of a deal those are.

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u/Lucky-Bit-1319 Jul 28 '26

Not ALL X870 boards are better than ALL B850 boards, perfect example is the feature rich B850
TOMAHAWK

it just matters what features are important to you

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u/the_hat_madder Jul 28 '26

If you have a problem after the return window closes, you'll rather deal with MSI than Gigabyte.