X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming for Zen2 with 32GB RAM

[Dubba]

After endless hours of running around internet, I've found a lot of older boads that are mostly out of stock or new ones that are pointlessly expensive while also being out of stock. Then I found this 160€ "treasure".

It's documentation is a bit lacking and I can't find info whether it's possible to have 2x 16GB DDR4 at 3600MHz? Any recommended kits?

 

I'm buying a 3700X right nao and this board happens to have just the right amount of internal headers and ports in the back. One USB-C and 4x USB3.1-A headers to front, enough USB2 and -3.1 ports in the back, intel LAN, not too much extra stuff like blinding RGB or "great audio" circuitry.

Is this a board you'd recommend, while none of the youtubers or review sites have mentioned this one in these past few weeks?

[Jarsky]

I have this board, but I use it with 2 x 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 @ 3000Mhz with a 2700X. 

It's my understanding that the speed of the memory on pre-Zen2 chips is limited to ~3200Mhz because of the implementation of the memory controller on these CPU's where raising memory speeds raises the Infinity Fabric speeds.

 

This is eliminated with the new Zen 2 CPU's but I don't have a 3000 series CPU or high clock DDR4 to test that with but I dont see the board not being able to run 3600Mhz. 

Keep in mind you need to be running the new Gigabyte F40 BIOS to be able to run the new 3000 series in this board. The board doesn't have BIOS flashback functionality to do the upgrade without a CPU. 

[Dubba]

Ah thank you. My virtual instruments would also like to thank you for the potential increase in their living enviroment.

 

I don't really have a great understanding on how the memory controllers work in AMD side, but in theory, could you take any x470 board with quality, high-rated DDR4 that worked with Zen+ at 3200MHz and expect it to work at 3600MHz? Gigabyte doesn't have high test clocks in their QVL list unfortunately and from what I've read, there's quite a lot of pickiness left.

 

I'm going to pay for the shop to upgrade the BIOS for me, saves me the hassle

[Jarsky]

3 minutes ago, Dubba said:

Ah thank you. My virtual instruments would also like to thank you for the potential increase in their living enviroment.

 

I don't really have a great understanding on how the memory controllers work in AMD side, but in theory, could you take any x470 board with quality, high-rated DDR4 that worked with Zen+ at 3200MHz and expect it to work at 3600MHz? Gigabyte doesn't have high test clocks in their QVL list unfortunately and from what I've read, there's quite a lot of pickiness left.

 

I'm going to pay for the shop to upgrade the BIOS for me, saves me the hassle

 

In theory, as long as the board has a decent power delivery system which this board has 8+3 Phase with decent cap's. 

I haven't done much research on performance with higher clocked memory on these new Zen2's. With the Zen/Zen+ they saw big improvements between DDR4 2666Mhz & 3200Mhz because of the Infinity Fabric frequency increase that raised along with the memory clock in a 1:1 ratio. With Zen2 it seperates it onto a seperate chip, and while the IF frequency raises with the DRAM frequency, it cuts at a threshold. My assumption would be that just like Intel, performance gains become negligible past a point. 

But I dont see any reason why the board shouldnt be able to run higher clocked speeds, it always comes down to the memory controller for support, which is on the CPU die in modern processors. 

 

P.S i've had this board for over a year now, got it on a launch special for US$120 which was a crazy deal. I'm surprised its not more popular given the feature set. 

[Herman Mcpootis]

4 hours ago, Jarsky said:

In theory, as long as the board has a decent power delivery system which this board has 8+3 Phase with decent cap's. 

That's not an 8 phase VRM, that's a fat 4 phase.

[Dubba]

13 hours ago, Herman Mcpootis said:

That's not an 8 phase VRM, that's a fat 4 phase.

I'm not familiar with that term

I mean, it should still be plenty stable for 3700X and even higher

 

Guess what. Every decent 32GB kit in Finland is out of stock \o/ Maybe just get 16GB and upgrade later. I'm just not sure if 2 vs 4 sticks has any meaningful difference when trying to shoot for 3600MHz

[Herman Mcpootis]

14 minutes ago, Dubba said:

Guess what. Every decent 32GB kit in Finland is out of stock \o/ Maybe just get 16GB and upgrade later. I'm just not sure if 2 vs 4 sticks has any meaningful difference when trying to shoot for 3600MHz

might be harder to get to 3600mhz depending on the board with 4 sticks vs 2. are you just gaming with that rig?

 

16 minutes ago, Dubba said:

I mean, it should still be plenty stable for 3700X and even higher

which site are you buying it from?

[Dubba]

Found this kit but they don't tell if it's version 4.31 (b-die) or micron version. This is also the shop where I'm getting most of the stuff from.

https://www.jimms.fi/fi/Product/Show/133287/cmr32gx4m2c3000c15/corsair-32gb-2-x-16gb-vengeance-rgb-ddr4-3000mhz-cl15-1_35v

 

I'm doing audio engineering. Sometimes projects are big enough that when I want to cache everything or when I run loads of virtual instruments, 16GB is not enough.