Micro Center Ryzen 5 5500 + A520M Motherboard Bundle

I upgraded because TurboTax announced it won’t support Windows 10 for tax year 2025, and that’s the software I rely on. For about $200, I picked up this combo with new memory (twice as much as before) and thought I was set. Build Experience: The board came with tiny screws and a basic port shield — not as nice as my old colored one. Installing the fan was tricky: you have to remove the clip on the motherboard, and when the screws come out, the nuts underneath can fall. I managed to get it secured. On first boot, I got three beeps and no video. Turns out the onboard video only works with certain CPUs, so I had to reinstall my old graphics card to get started. Windows 11 Upgrade: My old card wasn’t Windows 11 compliant, so I bought an inexpensive video card and everything ran fine. A few days later, my WD SA510 hard drive disappeared — apparently there’s a firmware update to prevent this, but you only find out after it happens. I replaced it with a 1TB PCIe NVMe drive for $75. That’s when I realized what the tiny screws were for — securing the little card in place. Takeaway: I spent more than I expected and probably could have bought a better prebuilt system for less. But I love my case, enjoy building, and learned a lot along the way. The combo itself works well once paired with the right video card, and it’s a solid foundation for Windows 11. Pro Tip: If you need or want onboard video, look for other combos with a better CPU. The cost of a separate video card will often equal the price difference, and you’ll save yourself the extra hassle. Note: I gave this five stars because the product and seller delivered exactly what was promised. Any hiccups I ran into were due to my own learning curve after being out of the building game for a while, not the fault of the hardware.

GodfreyT · 2025-12-03 · via amazon

This is actually a great budget cpu and motherboard combo, the mobo came with the updated bios so it worked with the 5500 out of the box, can’t say for what you get. The mobo is nothing to praise about but far better then a basic 520 chipset board you can get for cheaper so it’s worth it, it is not prime, will take 3-5 days to get to your door step but not that long of a wait. The stock wraith cpu cooler works but is complete dog poopoo lol get a cheap cooler master tower cooler for $15 bucks and is wayyyy better then the stock cooler but over all I’ll give it 5 stars for how cheap it is, this is going to be my work build so I don’t need it as good as my z790 and 14th gen I7 build at home. Great stuff!

Harvey James · 2026-04-18 · via amazon

This CPU motherboard combo works amazing for my gaming PC for DDR4, definitely worth it and haven't had any issues.

PeterZane · 2026-03-15 · via amazon

This is the core of a mid range cost effective gaming PC that I built. I am very happy with the choice I made given the budget constraints. This CPU and MB are 3 to 4 year old tech but they still perform excellently for all modern games. BIOS updates were easy and Windows 11 drivers installed without a problem. Performance benchmarks are really good. I built my system with 32gb RAM and an Intel ARC 12gb GPU. I'm happy with it.

Mark · 2026-03-25 · via amazon

Wonderful combo for a good price! Wife was on an old i7 with ddr3 this was her upgrade and it's been stellar! Plus with the microcenter name I hold alot of trust in that name!

Ace · 2026-04-03 · via amazon

Best Buy

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VALUE SCORE

FUTURE-PROOFING

Socket

LGA1851

Chipset

B860

Form

ATX

WiFi

WiFi 6E

Socket

LGA1851

Chipset

B860

Form

ATX

WiFi

WiFi 6E