How good are low end B350 motherboards?

[MyName13]

Like asrock AB350M, AB350M-hdv, asus b350m-k and Gigabyte's yellow motherboards?

[DrMacintosh]

B350s are mid tier boards, not low end. Those boards might be low tier mid range boards but they are still decent. 

 

B350 boards are great, you'll be able to OC. Not sure what else you want to know lol

[Zando_]

8 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Not sure what else you want to know lol

That they look ugly? Except for the Pro4, it's decent. 

[Sir Asvald]

19 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

That they look ugly? Except for the Pro4, it's decent. 

Which ones are ugly?  

[Zando_]

Just now, Abdul201588 said:

Which ones are ugly?  

Generally lower end boards are brown, instead of jet black. Gigabyte's black/yellow ones look nice, so do ASRock's but then never look as good as a higher end B350 or X370 board. 

[Princess Luna]

Any but MSi ones(terrible issues with memory ram overclocking even by today) are fine enough.

[MyName13]

5 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

B350s are mid tier boards, not low end. Those boards might be low tier mid range boards but they are still decent. 

 

B350 boards are great, you'll be able to OC. Not sure what else you want to know lol

Wat?I want to know how good they are in terms of overclocking (vrm quality and cooling for example).

 

5 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

That they look ugly? Except for the Pro4, it's decent. 

Not everyone buys PCs to stare at them

[Zando_]

21 minutes ago, MyName13 said:

Not everyone buys PCs to stare at them

I do. 

 

21 minutes ago, MyName13 said:

Wat?I want to know how good they are in terms of overclocking (vrm quality and cooling for example).

B350s are great overclockers, depending on the board. The ASRock Pro4 and MSI Tomahawk are good, I know that. 

[MyName13]

4 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

I do. 

 

B350s are great overclockers, depending on the board. The ASRock Pro4 and MSI Tomahawk are good, I know that. 

Which is why I said "not everyone" :).

I'm talking specifically about low end b350 motherboards like the ones in my 1st post (pro4 and tomahawk are definitely better than these).

[Zando_]

Just now, MyName13 said:

Which is why I said "not everyone" :).

Yup. But everyone should...

1 minute ago, MyName13 said:

I'm talking specifically about low end b350 motherboards like the ones in my 1st post (pro4 and tomahawk are definitely better than these).

IDK, really. look for a review on them or something. I doubt they have VRM heatsinks though, so the VRM may overheat and not let you OC as high. Why are you looking at such cheap mobs anyways? The better ones are only $10 or so more. 

[MyName13]

11 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Yup. But everyone should...

IDK, really. look for a review on them or something. I doubt they have VRM heatsinks though, so the VRM may overheat and not let you OC as high. Why are you looking at such cheap mobs anyways? The better ones are only $10 or so more. 

Nope, the screen is what you want to be looking at.I want to know what can be done with these motherboards (since they are close to A320 motherboards).Better ones aren't 10$ more everywhere (for example MSI gaming pro and asus A cost around 25-30€ more on my market).

[Princess Luna]

15 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Yup. But everyone should...

Nah I only care how good looking are my games on the display, metal is just metal.

[Zando_]

Just now, MyName13 said:

Nope, the screen is what you want to be looking at.I want to know what can be done with these motherboards (since they are close to A320 motherboards).Better ones aren't 10$ more everywhere (for example MSI gaming pro and asus A cost around 25-30€ more on my market).

I'd stick with an ASRock Pro4. Best way to find out is to get a low end one, I guess. Are there many review for lower end boards? @LinusTech should make a video on OCing Ryzen with the cheapest possible mobo. that'd be an interesting vid. 

[Zando_]

Just now, Princess Cadence said:

Nah I only care how good looking are my games on the display, metal is just metal.

I care about both. That's why I've got an Enthoo Evolv, various Apple products, etc. They look pretty and perform well. 

[Princess Luna]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

I care about both. That's why I've got an Enthoo Evolv, various Apple products, etc. They look pretty and perform well. 

Apple and perform well in the same sentence?

[Zando_]

Just now, Princess Cadence said:

Apple and perform well in the same sentence?

Yup. iPhones are awesomely fast (even my poor old 6 Plus, sheesh, even my old 4S was okay), and my MacBook Pro (2012) is going strong, and most of the other Apple products I've used perform well (and the iMac 5K I've had the pleasure of using is awesome). Apple devices aren't slower than other devices, they just have lower specs (made up for in the most part by excellent software integration) and a beautiful design. 

[MyName13]

3 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

I care about both. That's why I've got an Enthoo Evolv, various Apple products, etc. They look pretty and perform well. 

I do agree that the design is somewhat important, but to me it looks like "enthusiast" PC gamers care only about RGB and Xx420pu55yslayerGamerRGBeditionxxx stuff than video games (that's where console gamers are much better than these PC "gamers").Interesting thing about me, I played a surprisingly large amount of AAA games (up to 2014) with a dual core Pentium from 2008 and GeForce 9400, sure it was on lowest details and on 1240x768 but I enjoyed it a lot, probably (sadly) even more than these enthusiasts (and surprisingly I don't remember any stuttering and yet people say that hexa cores are the new minimum :S).

[Guest]

If one is to buy a 4 core ryzen any b350 board has adaquate VRM and temps they only pull 50amps full load at 1.425v. 

 

If however you get a 6 core the VRM on b350 if OC 1.425V starts to get to 70-75 amps and most of these 4+2 phase boards can only do 100 amps max and they will get extremely toasty doing that like 150C and at that point don't expect the setup to last. Here is an example just done by overclocker Chew who Amd gave products even before bulldozer skip to 27min in to see the temps

 

 

[MyName13]

8 hours ago, jdwii said:

If one is to buy a 4 core ryzen any b350 board has adaquate VRM and temps they only pull 50amps full load at 1.425v. 

 

If however you get a 6 core the VRM on b350 if OC 1.425V starts to get to 70-75 amps and most of these 4+2 phase boards can only do 100 amps max and they will get extremely toasty doing that like 150C and at that point don't expect the setup to last. Here is an example just done by overclocker Chew who Amd gave products even before bulldozer skip to 27min in to see the temps

 

 

And yet people recommend ultra cheap motherboards and mention "upgradability".What about A320 motherboards?Can they support all ryzen CPUs without any problems since they run on stock settings (except motherboards that support only CPUs with 65w TDP)?

[Guest]

21 hours ago, MyName13 said:

And yet people recommend ultra cheap motherboards and mention "upgradability".What about A320 motherboards?Can they support all ryzen CPUs without any problems since they run on stock settings (except motherboards that support only CPUs with 65w TDP)?

HI a lot of users simply don't test VRM temps think of one top youtuber who has linus nope+jay no+even the BA people at level1techs. Paul+Kyle, gamer nexus has slightly talked about it but not much. Leave it to the community to figure these things about for example in that video chew posted at overclock.net

 

Now with X299 coming around i hope more talk about VRM temps in the future. We had a decent amount of AM3+ boards that couldn't even handle a 8350 at stock and was throttling frequency. 

 

I read many posts saying "my board died in just a few weeks" makes me wonder why. 

 

A320 series has OC disabled and any ryzen processor is fine on any AM4 board at stock. Heck my CPU is at stock at the moment as i'm tweaking my memory and i like to start their and my VRM temps are VERY cool compared to even OC at 1.2V. 

 

 

[KarathKasun]

MSI B350M Pro Gaming is OK for R5 1400/1500X.  Wouldn't want to push very high clocks on 1600 or above though.

 

Currently using that board + R5 1400 + 8gb DDR4 2133 15-15-15-15-36.  I have been able to get the CPU up to 3.9ghz and the memory up to 3200.  Picked up the board on sale for ~$60 US, not disappointed.  Be aware that many lower end boards seem to have a 1.4v limit for VCore once you update the UEFI.  For memory overclocking over ~2933 I had to set every timing related option by hand, other than that it has worked fine.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

MSI B350M Pro Gaming is OK for R5 1400/1500X.  Wouldn't want to push very high clocks on 1600 or above though.

 

Currently using that board + R5 1400 + 8gb DDR4 2133 15-15-15-15-36.  I have been able to get the CPU up to 3.9ghz and the memory up to 3200.  Picked up the board on sale for ~$60 US, not disappointed.  Be aware that many lower end boards seem to have a 1.4v limit for VCore once you update the UEFI.  For memory overclocking over ~2933 I had to set every timing related option by hand, other than that it has worked fine.

Thank god now they just need to lower that to 1.2V on 8 core and 1.3V on 6 core and 1.4 on the 4 core

 

People should not be using anything higher then 1.425V on any ryzen CPU on any board and people should not be using 1.4V on a 4+2 phase VRM with a 8 core. 

 

 

[KarathKasun]

53 minutes ago, jdwii said:

Thank god now they just need to lower that to 1.2V on 8 core and 1.3V on 6 core and 1.4 on the 4 core

 

People should not be using anything higher then 1.425V on any ryzen CPU on any board and people should not be using 1.4V on a 4+2 phase VRM with a 8 core. 

 

 

The board was fine up to 1.5v with an R5 quad, had to use Ryzen Master to get that high though.  Observed temps with IR probe were reasonable during P95 torture, under 80c.  Keep in mind that this board has a 3+2 VRM too.  The quads use minuscule amounts of power, even with obscene voltages.

 

I would say ~1.4v would be a reasonable limit for a R5 hex core and 1.3v for an R7 while using a GOOD 4+2 VRM.  It may run a bit hot, but it should be easily manageable.  With those voltages you are looking at ~3.8ghz for the R5 1600/X and ~3.6ghz for the R7 series.

 

I do agree that a 4+2 B350 + R7 @ 1.4v is asking for trouble, and I am not even going to get into the 3+2 and faked 6+2 boards.  For those I would follow closer to your recommendation of 1.4v/1.3v/1.2v for quad/hex/octo core CPUs unless you can afford to have the board/CPU go up in smoke and know what you are doing.

[Guest]

1.5V might be doable but the CPU itself will start to die slowly on a 4 core as Amd said even 1.45V 24/7 will surely degrade the chip. 

[KarathKasun]

No doubt.  I was just pushing voltage up in order to see what it would take to hit 4ghz on my board/CPU with no intention of running that 24/7.

 

Droop on a 3+2 is so bad at ~1.5v that the CPU itself was only seeing ~1.45v, so it really wasn't too far out of AMD's 'safe zone'.  Lesson learned, my chip needs one of two things for 4ghz...

 

A) more stable voltage regulation

or

B) 1.5v+ at the CPU itself