amd marketing trick? AMD B350 chipset not supporting decent overclocking, contrary to what users expect?

[pstarlord]

I'm going to say this, then I'm going to wash my hands of this thread.

 

@D4n So far, every problem you've mentioned here has nothing to do at all with build quality, Gigabyte business practice, or anything like that.  Every problem you've mentioned on this thread has to do with your own ignorance on the topic causing you to misuse products and have unreasonable expectations for them.  Overclocking isn't a right you have, CPU and mobo manufacturer's do not owe you anything in this regard.  Overclocking, is a choice that the consumer (you) can choose to partake in or not.

 

Search, research, learn, apply.  Temper your attitude and expectations, but mainly your attitude, and the people here can/will help you with pretty much any problem you experience on a PC.   

[D4n]

I was actually looking for helpful advice (website link with recommended OC mainboards for Ryzen 5 1600X), but I guess nobody here can help with that

[D4n]

On 1/17/2019 at 6:30 PM, aezakmi said:

also, Gigabyte boards are mostly for budget builds so you pay for that kind of performance, you just can't overclock on those.

then can you explain the ~ 20% cost increase of a mainboard in 2018 from back in 2016 or so?

[miagisan]

37 minutes ago, D4n said:

I was actually looking for helpful advice (website link with recommended OC mainboards for Ryzen 5 1600X), but I guess nobody here can help with that

If you read the thread you will see someone posted a link to reddit based on motherboard quality that someone RESEARCHED to help buyers. 

[D4n]

LOL and now that Gigabyte X370 had boot problems, wtf, sometimes not even Bios appearing (no signals to monitor), sometimes Windows boots but suddenly black screens again. Returned it, gladly my AsRock A320 board is still working now and very reliable. Gigabyte, W T F...

[BLAfH]

If someone only would have told you: you risk killing your motherboard if you OC.... Oh wait, several people did.

 

[D4n]

Wait WHAT? I just thought risk of CPU being fried??? How would the mainboard die at 1.4 V ?? wtf

[BLAfH]

You overload / overheat the VRMs when pulling too much wattage. 

And as all electronics: those fail when getting too hot. 

[D4n]

"too much wattage" ? So you'd say Gigabyte's X370 mainboards can't handle 1.4 Volt???

[D4n]

And no overheat-protection? They even advertise with "Ultra Durable"......

[BLAfH]

2 minutes ago, D4n said:

"too much wattage" ? So you'd say Gigabyte's X370 mainboards can't handle 1.4 Volt???

 

Watts. Not Volts. And how much Watts a CPU consumes on a given voltage during OC is dependent on the type of CPU (R5, R7, Gen1 or 2) and on - again - silicon lottery. 

 

[BLAfH]

6 minutes ago, D4n said:

And no overheat-protection? They even advertise with "Ultra Durable"......

Yeah, running stock it will last decades... anything else... your game!

[D4n]

4 minutes ago, BLAfH said:

Watts. Not Volts.

I meant what I wrote...

[D4n]

3 minutes ago, BLAfH said:

Yeah, running stock it will last decades... anything else... your game!

I trust X370 to support what they're designed for; overclocking

[CaptainHammer]

[seon123]

4 minutes ago, D4n said:

I trust X370 to support what they're designed for; overclocking

They're not designed for overclocking. X370 supports overclocking, that's it. Whether or not a board is designed for overclocking, depends on the board itself, not the chipset. 

[BLAfH]

Just now, D4n said:

I meant what I wrote...

Volts are irrelevant in that case. You could run 2 volts, if you're only pulling 50 Watts the VRM won't care.

You could be running 1.37V and pulling 300Watts and they will be toast. You seem to lack a fair amount of physical knowledge for what you're up to. 

There's a reason why Youtuber like GN and hardcore OCer like der8uer not only know an cite volts, but watts, amperage, VRM temps, the W/K of the paste, and discussion about what plating on your IHS would improve temps... You'rer really haven't figured out the game you play.

[BLAfH]

7 minutes ago, D4n said:

I trust X370 to support what they're designed for; overclocking

First: it isn't.

Second: Your X370 is probably fine. Your mainboards powerstage is toast. Those are not related.

[D4n]

2 minutes ago, BLAfH said:

Volts are irrelevant in that case. You could run 2 volts, if you're only pulling 50 Watts the VRM won't care.

You could be running 1.37V and pulling 300Watts and they will be toast. You seem to lack a fair amount of physical knowledge for what you're up to. 

There's a reason why Youtuber like GN and hardcore OCer like der8uer not only know an cite volts, but watts, amperage, VRM temps, the W/K of the paste, and discussion about what plating on your IHS would improve temps... You'rer really haven't figured out the game you play.

So then the Amps matter? (Since Volt x Amps = Watts)

[BLAfH]

1 hour ago, D4n said:

So then the Amps matter? (Since Volt x Amps = Watts)

 

Simplified to a point a hope is juuuust before it gets "wrong", but given the point to start...: 

 

All of them matter. Every one of them can kill something, but the main suspect here is IMHO overall wattage.

A VRM is, as it's name implies, a module, not a single part. There's controller chips, MOSFETs, coils, capacitors, the lot.

Each of them can be killed by one thing or the other, all of them will be killed by heat which ultimately burns down (pun intended) to watts. 

It's next to impossible to kill a VRM with it's output voltage, as you can't set it to one that harms it. You may set it to some thing that kills a CPU, but you can't set it to a voltage that harms the VRM in and itself - regarding only the voltage.

 

Amps - well, there is an upper limit of amp, some of the component can handle. Although this is - in most cases like MOSFETs - not only amps, but in a big part amps at specified voltage -> therefore Watt. 

 

Some very rare effects ignored, it boils down to efficiency and temperature. VRMs take a "high" voltage (12V) and convert it down to a lower, in your case... 1.3 to 1.4V for the CPU. It can't do that with 100% efficiency (well, physics, and unfortunately there are no room temperature superconductors in sight) so there's always something lost. And any loss in a electrical system is... heat. 

 

Let's assume your VRM is - over all - 90% efficient (simplified view on the VRM as a whole, no regard for varying efficiency at different  loadpoints and voltages and on different parts of the vrm, including the disadvantage of low volt high amp regarding On-State Resistance in FETs, cross heating of components  etc.pp.,  wildly guessed number, just for a nice calculation, results rounded). Cooling on the VRM is good to keep it in spec for max 15W heat generated at the VRMs.

 

Your CPU is pulling 1V@100A. 100W. 10% is "lost". So your pulling 111W on the PSU side. 11W will be converted to heat. All is nice and dandy.

Another CPU is pulling 2V@50A (you won't find one in real life, but... for the calcs, meh...). As above... 100W, 111W on the PSU side, 11W in heat. all is nice and... 

 

You see? Neither 100A nor 2V alone have killed anything.

Well... Put in a CPU 2V@100A. 200W. 222 on the PSU side. 22W in heat. You can cool off only 15.

That's about 50% thermal overload, you fry some part on your VRM. Or, more likely... you degrade them. 

Capacitors for example have a lifetime of... lets say 5000h @ 85C max. - overheat them... and they may only have 50.. at 170C. 

 

It won't be "bang, dead". It will be more like... runs a day... Bluescreen. runs 4 hours... Bluescreen. runs  15min,... dead 

 

And it also shows how you can improve the design of the VRM. You can have more "phases", sharing the load and heat over more components, of which each one won't get as hot. Cons? Cost and space. 6 Phase cost 50% more than 4. And it needs room on the board, and it has to be in a certain spot on the board, limiting space and cooling overall again...

You can improve cooling (to a point... e.g. the MOSFETs in your VRM are tiny pieces of silicon, and there's a limit on how much heat you can remove from such a small area). Again. Cost. Space. 

You could make a more efficient VRM - but those VRMs nowadays are already very close to whats doable. 

 

Also as a side note on cooling VRMs: If you're thinking about a AIO for the CPU... Those tend to be worse for VRM temps, as the don't generate airflow on the VRM area on the board as a air-cooler does. Cooler CPU, higher OC. Dead VRMs. 

  

 

[D4n]

Thank you very very much!

 

1 hour ago, BLAfH said:

6 Phase cost 50% more than 4.

Where did you get this calculation from, though?

 

And are there mainboards with temp sensors and some technology to "throttle" the VRMs to less amp? Or what would happen to a CPU if the amps drop by a little bit? Would it just calculate slower, or instantly produce wrong calculations and make the OS crash?

 

Which manufacturers produce AM4 mainboards with 6 phases, are they available to normal users?

[BLAfH]

3 minutes ago, D4n said:

Thank you very very much!

 

Where did you get this calculation from, though?

 

Well, I'm neither Gigabyte nor MSI, so I cant give you exact numbers. But.. you need 50% more parts. 50% more assembly time on the pick&place.. and so on. 

While there is a slight economy of scale, some of it is eaten away by things like a higher failure rate (more parts to go bad, more soldering to go bad) and effort as in spacing, design, cooling. 

If you go even higher those factors will up the cost even more, as it gets more and more difficult to cram the VRMs into the place they have to go in (you can't place them at a random spot on the board, they _have_ to be in just that corner, very very close to the CPU, but not to obstruct the space for RAM, or the traces to the PCIe, and so on...).

Of course VRMs are a fraction of the cost of a board. But not a too small one. 

 

Quote

 

And are there mainboards with temp sensors and some technology to "throttle" the VRMs to less amp? Or what would happen to a CPU if the amps drop by a little bit? Would it just calculate slower, or instantly produce wrong calculations and make the OS crash?

 

Which manufacturers produce AM4 mainboards with 6 phases, are they available to normal users?

 

Yes. Better Mainboards have a temperature shut off on the VRMs. GN has a video where they try to heat up VRMs to failure and encounter thotteling due to VRM overtemp. Should be easy to find on youtube.  Still - thats a measure to prevent sudden death. They will still run unhealthily warm if pushed. That's why some OC freaks keep a probe on them, add fans... 

 

For Phase design and such: there's are lists here in the forum (and elsewhere) , e.g.: 

 

But you should still go search for detailed reviews of the top boards you've picked from that list. Not all shiny things are...  

 

Note: "6+2" means: 6 to CPU, 2 to RAM. Some are "doubled", so some "8+4" are 2x"4+2". That means they are sharing a controller chip that can manage 4 phases to control 8. That lowers the precision of the regulation a bit, but (of course someone will state the opposite for some special case) that's usually not a dealbreaker.   

[D4n]

Ok I guess I'll go with this one someda, assuming it won't break when I run my Ryzen 5 1600X on 4.0 or even 4.2 GHz (1.4v) https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X370 Taichi/