And of course, "his features" and "US prices". Things look very differently in Germany for example (no 140 USD MSI X570-A Pro).
And BZ does not care about NVME storage for example. I do, that is why I went with a X570 board. But it's a good overview for the holidays, as he intended.
Because PCI-E gen 4 is a feature not utilized yet in the mainstream platform, and will be some time until it does. Don get me wrong I own a X570 Aorus Pro because I tend to keep boards for many years, and wanted to be as compatible as I can with the next 4000 series Ryzen and wanted to upgrade now (from FX8370). PCI-E 4.0 is not that much of a feature for me, at least not for the next 2~3 years. NVMe 4.0gen SSDs do not have any real benefits except sequencial transfer rates that doesnt help anything but transfering large amounts of Data at a time.. Thats why I got a fast 3.0gen NVMe SSD.
I agree to the first part though about US prices etc...
B450 for sure. Cheap and does the job. X570 way over priced, consumes more power a lot more power and the killer for me is that fan in the chipset. We probably see failures soon after it has been a year since launch of x570.
This is been said alot lately for the chipset fan and for me is not an issue at all. I place a 120mm fan near it and the PCH fan never-ever spins with temps from 45~52C(now) to 49~56C(August). Max rated temp for the chipset is 95C, so...
The power consuption is relatively nothing serious added to previous B450/X470. We are talking about +5~6W on chipset and maybe a few more here and there. Not the case...
As for the cost of X570 in general I have this...
1) It is the flagship chipset of this generation, wait for B550, without PCI-E 4.0.
2) Feature wise is well equipped (usb, LAN, audio, PCI-E, m.2)
3) Most of them have nice VRM, better than previous gen (mostly)
4) The PCI-E gen 4.0 is the feature that increases the cost mostly because of its standards in manufacturing methods. The PCI-E traces that run through the board, from slots to Chipset and/or to CPU is specially made to keep up the rated speeds and specs when compared to 3rd gen. Yes its a premium feature for now.
So considering all that then X570 is not that pricy and all depend in what you want now and/or in future.