Thanks for a long, informative insight :) It does indeed sound like you have a bit more in-depth experience with these boards and different manufacturers than I do. The problems with memory timings and slow AGESA updates pretty much reflect my bad experience with the B350 Tomahawk (but this was early in the first-gen Ryzen lifecycle). I'll do my research again the next time I build a system and consider MSI if it proves to be objectively good in reviews.

I was surprised ASRock turned out to be so bad. I thought they had the best boards for AM4, and I would probably have bought a Taichi if I were to build a new system today. I have a Ryzen 1600 in my rig, so maybe I'll upgrade it eventually.. We'll see how well it runs Battlefield 2042.
I do agree, and I put a little more money into it when buying components now. You get a lot back for it if it's something you intend to keep for a long time.

It may be, but I'd like to point out that I'm actually using a $55 computer to type this post.

(Then again, I *did* add a USB SSD, which, for browser use, is *much* better than an SD card, as for whatever reason, web browsing is extremely disk write intensive these days.)

My friend is using B550 AORUS MASTER. From what I've heard and seen it's a great motherboard for gaming. But if you ask me for any B550 motherboards is going to be great.

just buy the steam deck it runs linux by default

I don't think it's possible to buy one without a steam account, and I don't consider it ethical to make an account on a platform that enables and provides DRM.

My B450 allowed flash from a USB 2.0 device in a specific USB port on it. FAT32 format the drive, make sure there's ONLY the one file on it, connect the USB in the proper port, and push a button on the mobo. NO OTHER DEVICES CONNECTED (not even CPU!) I've seen some others have had that feature as well. It's why I selected this particular mobo.

I think I'm going to go with a micro-ATX motherboard, probably a B550 or B450 chipset. However, there's still the question of which brand or specific model to get.

Also, for those recommending specific boards (like that MSI one), how's the current Linux driver situation on them? (Worth noting that I'm planning on installing the current *testing* version of Debian, as "stable" distributions have older kernels that might not have as much support for newer hardware.)

Interestingly, I believe my ASRock motherboard also has this feature, though I've never had to use it.

(There's no chance of the old motherboard working for the new computer build; it doesn't have the right CPU socket, for example, and no NVMe support either.)