paulmohr

Correct, any of the motherboards that have bios flashback you can update the bios without a cpu. You just need the new bios and a usb drive. Follow the directions on the website and it should work out fine. Keep in mind that some of the boards are already shipping with the new bios installed, or you depending on where you get it you can request to have the bios updated before they ship it to you.

I run my 3600 stock after doing some testing. With cinabench R15 I get like 1625 average muti core and around 195 single core. In my MSI bios PBO has I think 5 preset options, I used #4, so second from the highest setting. With that enabled I get about the same for multi core scores but my single core score goes up to about 200. If I use the automatic overclock option in my bios, "game mode" or something like that it is called, it gives me an overclock to 4.2 on all cores. My Multi core score goes up to around 1650-1660. Single core goes down to 196-197 ish. I tried to do a manual overclock pushing it as hard as I could and got it to 4.25. Multi core score was closer to 1680 and single core was averaging around 197. It was pulling a LOT of wattage though and running hotter. Time spy and firestrike showed slight improvements with PBO and overclocking but nothing overly impressive. Under normal usage and gaming at 1080P really didn't show any gain from any kind of overclocking. It just created more heat and fan noise. So I just put it back everything back to stock and left it alone. Pretty much what I have found with every other cpu I have used. System is: 3600 on a b450 tomahawk 32 gb of 3200 mhz ram NVME boot drive, SSD game drive and 7200 rpm mechanical drive for data storage 2070 evga SC ultra video card Corsair H100i pro AIO with push pull fans, temps are 68c while running R15 multi core test.

I am not sure if you can enable game mode and pbo at the same time. I never tried to be honest. After you enable game mode and it reboots it will say something about not changing things in the bios after you turn it on. I never tested to see if you could use them both at the same time. If it works let me know, I might try it to see what it does. When I did it "game mode" still let my cpu idle and everything. If I remember correctly the core speed would stay at 4.2 but the voltage would vary depending on the load. I hear people talk about "auto clock" or whatever and honestly don't know what that is because I have yet to find anything labeled like that in the MSI bios. The Game thing was the only thing I saw. I am not sure if that is the same thing or not.

Unless you are getting one heck of a deal on the 2700x get the 3600. Once they released the 3600 the 2700 and 2700x are simply not worth the money. They kind of screwed themselves on that one. They need to come down on the 2700 prices to make them worth it. Now if you could get a 2700 for what a 2600 costs then ya I would snap it up.

If you go in the bios of the tomahawk is a "game mode" or something like that. If you choose that it will do an auto all core overclock to around 4.2. I tried manually over clocking mine and about the best I could get was a 4.25 anyway so if want an all core overclock just do it that way, it is much easier. On mine using pbo will let my single core boost speeds go higher. If you do an all core overclock you are kind of locking it in at 4.2. You get an increase with all core work loads but take a slight hit on single core stuff. You just kind of have to do some testing with what you do with your computer and see which works better for you.

The X version comes with a slightly higher stock speed and slightly better cooler. Basically they upcharging you for a cooler. And niether cooler is all that great. And once you enable PBO or something they are basically the same processor. Is 50 dollars more worth it in my opinion, no, not really. If you were just going to drop the cpu and cooler into a computer and not mess with anything then maybe it is worth it, if 50 bucks isn't that big of a deal to you. I highly doubt you are going to notice the slightly higher speed increase on normal usage though. And honestly either of those coolers will work fine if everything is set to stock. Providing you have decent airflow in your case. Pretty much any aftermarket cooler will work better than the stock ones, even a 15 dollar one. If you spent the extra 50 bucks on just a cooler it would way outperform the stock cooler. The amd X versions are not really "binned" chips like what you expect from a intel K series or something. And every ryzen cpu is unlocked so you don't have to spend more to overclock it. Not that overclocking one does much anyway. They run about as well as they can out of the box, amd set them up that way.

? That made my day lol, just pure awesome.

So you do want to game then. And when that time comes I am assuming you are going to upgrade to better equipment. I highly doubt you are going to game at 1440 ultra wide 120hz with a cheap mobo and APU. You are going to need a decent CPU and dedicated GPU to do that. And depending on what games you want to play you may need something better than "decent". Until then the refresh rate really isn't going to matter. Most video is going to be locked somewhere between 24 and 60 hz depending on how it was encoded. Text base stuff and static images the refresh rate simply won't matter, 30hz would work fine. For non gaming type of stuff FPS really isn't a thing. So basically all you are concerned with is will your mobo/APU support that display resolution. What refresh rate it will support it at really isn't all that important. So I would look to see if the parts you are choosing support 4K 60hz. If they do they will most likely work fine with 1440 ultra wide since it will fall somewhere in the middle of normal 1440 and 4k. Once you start to game you are going to need a dedicated graphics card and that will determine what resolution and refresh rate you can use. And the FPS you get will depend on your over all system and what games you play .FPS can vary greatly from game to game and the settings you use. I use a 55 inch screen for my computer and 1080p doesn't look horrible by any means. Yes, text is a bit more crisp at 4K, because that is my screens native resolution. And in games at 4k you can run them without using antialiasing and stuff like that and they still look good. However if I run them at 1080p and turn all that stuff on it pretty much looks the same. What it takes to run them sort of evens out. At 4K it taxes my system because of the higher resolution so it helps that you can turn off that stuff and still have clean lines. Where as with 1080p you have to turn that stuff on, but it isn't trying so hard to begin with because of the lower resolution. And for video it makes no difference at all. I simply can't tell the difference between 1080p and 4K. The same thing happens with home theater stuff, which is basically what my set up is. A home theater set up with a computer hooked up to it. 4K doesn't really start to show a difference until you start using a projector with a very large screen size.

I am curious to know what you are going to do with the computer. You keep stressing NON gaming. If you are not going to game why are trying to use a 1440/120hz monitor with a cheap motherboard and APU? What are you doing that needs that kind of refresh rate. I can understand the wide screen part, those are nice sometimes for doing mulitiple things since you get more screen space. Without knowing specifics I think the best answer you are going to get is "maybe". It is going to depend on what the motherboard handles, how good the APU is and what cables you use. That statement simply makes no sense. Those are the things that actually matter. There isn't much left in the system to be "high performance" and it isn't going to matter if you don't have the core parts to use them. Maybe a different way to go about this would be to tell us what you want to do with the computer, what your budget is and that you plan on upgrading in the future. Then someone can work with you to put a system together that will meet your needs.

Worked out how? Mine worked perfectly fine once I updated the bios. And I don't think the MAX boards are really much different than the non max boards. I was under the impression all they really did was put a larger bios chip on them so they could fit a full bios instead of the bios "lite" version. But at its core it is the same base bios code. They are just shipping from the factory with it installed so you can just drop a 3000 cpu in it much like you would a x570. But right now regular b450 boards and so on are shipping that way. They already updated the bios on them before they are shipping. I might be wrong though, I never actually looked at any reviews of MAX boards. I didn't think they came with better VRMs and stuff like that though.

I don't even see any pins lol. I have old eyes sorry.

Oh, I didn't actually answer that lol. I was in a rush this morning. Yes I used the 450 tomahawk, no I didn't use bios flashback, I used my old cpu to do it. Everything went pretty smooth to be honest. I flashed the new bios, put the cpu in, went into bios and set it to optimized settings or whatever the defualt settings are called. Saved and restarted. Then I enabled XMP for my memory, saved and rebooted again. I never had any of the voltage or heat issues some people are talking about. It all just kind of worked. The only issue I would say it has is every now and then it fails to post if I restart the computer, or it will cycle through the boot up sequence twice or something. If it hangs I just push the botton to power it down the start it up again and ti works. And it doesn't do that very often. I would assume at some point they will put out an updated bios version that might fix that. Or maybe it is just some odd quirk with my system for whatever reason.

Yes I did, but I didn't use flash back, I already had a 1500x so I used that instead.

For what you are doing I don't see a need for a 3700x. I don't see anything you listed that would really need the extra cores. I don't know much about programming though. Maybe if you were compiling stuff the extra cores might help, but I honestly don't know enough about it to say. Maybe someone that does could tell you. 3600 vs the 3600x I would go for the 3600 and an aftermarket cooler personally. The cooler on the X model isn't that much better than the other. Now if it came with the prism cooler I would consider it, but you have to get the 3700x for that. And if you are not going to mess around with overclocking honestly the stock cooler should work fine if you have good airflow in the case. An after market cooler will drop the temps a bit more though and probably be more quiet. I have the 3600 on a b450 tomahawk with 3200 mhz memory. It runs just fine. All I had to do was update the bios before installing the cpu and then turn on the xmp profile in the bios for the memory. Just do a little research and ram with the best CAS you think fits in your budget. Do compare prices though, because sometimes you can find 3600 speed ram for not much more than 3200 if there is a good sale. In the end though it probably won't make a big enough difference you will actually notice while using it.

There are literally thousands of people with that combination not having any problems, myself included.

Oh, and when I worked at a computer store back in the 90's if we had a big customer like a business or a school or something we would actually burn the systems in for at least 24 hours before we even delivered them just to make sure there were not any issues. So no, I don't think a 20 hour workload is going to hurt anything, especially at those temps. It isn't going to help the ambient temp of your room though lol.

Heat has kind of always been a debate with electronic parts. Some will say what wears them out faster is heating up, cooling down and heating up again. This is why some people don't shut their computers off. As long as it is in a safe range it really shouldn't hurt it it. I just uses more electricity. You can wear out a display though, they have a finite life span before they start to get dim. Same with SSD's I think, they can only handle so many writes I think before they start to fail, but with most it is so high you won't hit it before you end up replacing it with something better anyway.

I wouldn't say the x570's are better, or safer for that matter. They only real advantage I see with them is you don't have to update the bios first for a 3000 series cpu. And even with those I wouldn't buy one under the 200 dollar price point. So unless it specifically had features you had to have I wouldn't spend that much money on one. I just took a quick look at newegg. A320 boards are between 55 and 150 dollars. B350 boards are between 65 and 200 dollars. B450 are pretty much the same price, 70 dollars up to the low 200's. There is actually one on sale right now for 60 bucks. X370 and 470 boards start around 100 dollars. So to me it just makes more sense to get a B450 for 15 or 20 dollars more. Even a kid should be able to scrape up 20 bucks doing some odd jobs, yard work or collecting soda cans.

Limiting you to what you can do with them aside, they just are not built very well in most cases. And the prices are not that much cheaper. Same with the B350 boards last time I checked. They are not that much cheaper than a b450. If it was a 50 or 100 dollar price difference then yes it would be a bargain and you could probably get buy with one for normal usage. However when you can get a better product for really not much more money it doesn't make sense. Now if you already had one and were broke, then sure, do what you have to. Or if you could grab one for 10 bucks or something and you were a kid with no money.

If you have a place locally where you can take it that might be an option. If it does need the new bios they most likely can do that for you. I would hope they wouldn't charge you too much to do it. At this point I think the easiet thing to do would be to put an older ryzen cpu on it and see if it will post to the bios. Then you can see what version it has. If it still won't work then it is some other issue with the hardware or another board problem. The chances of getting two bad boards in a row is pretty slim though. What I think is happening is they are saying it is ryzen 3000 capable but forgetting to mention it needs the bios update first. Unfortunately this is the problem with ordering parts off the internet. You get very little support or the support you do get is time consuming. It does save you money though, and sadly for some it is your only option anymore since there are not that many brick and mortar stores around anymore. This is also the problem with building system in your home, especially if its your first system or a major upgrade. It is so much easier in a shop where you have access to other parts where can swap out parts to test stuff. If you are at home and don't have any extra parts it makes trouble shooting a royal PIA. It is also why for some people a pre built is a better option. You have to spend more but you can be reasonably assured it will work when you get it. I am not saying you should have bought a prebuilt though. I don't know your skill level. So please don't get offended. I am just saying from some people it is the better option. My brother for instance probably doesn't even know how to plug in a mouse ( or which part the mouse is lol).

The problem is like I mentioned in my other post is that the userbenchmark isn't actually a benchmark. It mainly just collects system information and runs a few quick tests that were not even accurate when I tried it out. Benchmarks are not quick. They take time to run and you have to run them mulitiple times and average the results. A lot of these reviewers spend hours, if not days running benchmarks and analyzing the data. It would be much faster to watch a couple reviews and look at the charts then to actually do the testing yourself.

Well my advice is to stop panicking, the performance difference isn't that great. Is it the same, no, but its not a huge improvement. I would say get the best 3200 speed ram you can afford, and if you find a deal on 3600 that isn't much more get that. Higher clock speed is good, but so is better timings. They kind of even out. Me personally I would get a decent brand of 3200 with good timings before I got the cheapest no name kit of 3600 with not so good timings. That is just a personal thing though. And that is just from a reliability standpoint.

Userbenchmark isn't even a benchmark suite. It is of no valid use in comparing hardware. You might as well go by the user reviews on amazon, actually they might be more accurate. Quoting that site is like saying "My brother in law is a mechanic and his six year old son told me ford is better than chevy, so I am going to buy a ford.". Why even comment on something you didn't even bother to read? It took me all of about a minute to read that post. You must have a seizure when you read one of my posts lol. As for the original post, I think most of the others have pointed you in a good direction. Some of those reviews have actually tested those cpus on those programs. Look at the data and decide if the performance gain or loss is worth the price, or going with a brand you like better. If someone wants to spend a little more on a brand they like or trust more for whatever reason I don't knock them for it. Or take a slight performance hit for less money, either way. Honestly if Apple released the most awesome fastest computer in the world I still wouldn't buy it. I just hate Apple that much lol.

I don't have either of those, I have the 3600 on a b450 and mine works great. Never had any issues from the get go.

You are not going to gain a whole lot overclocking a 3700x, so I wouldn't spend a bunch of money on a motherboard with that specific reason in mind. And even if you did there are b450 and x470 boards that will let you do that for less money. You already have an old ryzen cpu so updating the bios won't be an issue. I don't know anything about the current board you have, but I bet it will work fine too. I would take the money you were going to spend on a X570 motherboard and put it into something else.