Confusing support fort zen2?

[DevlosMaxima]

I use PCPartpicker they claim I will have issues if I do zen2 on my motherboard even with a bios update but Asus claims on their website support section that it is completely compatible. Who should I trust more? pcpartpicker or asus?

[mxk]

its hard to tell you anything without knowing the motherboard, so what motherboard do you have selected from asus?

[fabafaba]

What mainboard and CPU are you looking at? There's some incompability with the 3xx chipsets.

[DevlosMaxima]

2 minutes ago, mxk said:

its hard to tell you anything without knowing the motherboard

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/PRIME-B450M-A/HelpDesk_CPU/

This is the motherboard I have.

[mxk]

Just now, DevlosMaxima said:

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/PRIME-B450M-A/HelpDesk_CPU/

You'll be able to put the chip in the motherboard, but theres a chance you'll need to update the BIOS because the prime A is last gen.

 

You might get shipped a board with a BIOS thats already been updated to be compatible with Zen 2 but theres a small chance you'll get a board thats been sitting in a warehouse for a year and hasn't been updated.

[Stormseeker9]

1 minute ago, DevlosMaxima said:

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/PRIME-B450M-A/HelpDesk_CPU/

This is the motherboard I have.

You will need to update the bios to the latest version or stable version for zen 2 suppor

[DevlosMaxima]

3 minutes ago, mxk said:

You'll be able to put the chip in the motherboard, but theres a chance you'll need to update the BIOS because the prime A is last gen.

 

You might get shipped a board with a BIOS thats already been updated to be compatible with Zen 2 but theres a small chance you'll get a board thats been sitting in a warehouse for a year and hasn't been updated.

It's already updated. I am running a 2600 on it right now. 

Do you suggest I upgrade to liquid cooling before I get get anything like 3800x? I currently have a gammax deep cool air cooler. I heard that zen 2 produces a ton more heat than older zen processors from a friend.

[mxk]

1 minute ago, DevlosMaxima said:

It's already updated. I am running a 2600 on it right now. 

Do you suggest I upgrade to liquid cooling before I get get anything like 3800x? I currently have a gammax deep cool air cooler.

The 3800x is a more powerful chip the only real thing im concerned about are the VRMs on your board. Liquid cooling isn't really needed when there are air coolers that don't have the same fail rate as an AIO and are quieter.

 

As long as you aren't overclocking a 3800x you'd be fine.

 

And when you say the BIOS is already updated, you've updated it recently? I'm just being sure.

[minibois]

The Zen 2 chips are certified to work if you have BIOS version 1201 or newer, PCPartPicker is just telling you "you could get a board with an older BIOS on it from a store", which is very true.

So while there is a chance it will have the correct BIOS, there is also a chance the other way around.

[DevlosMaxima]

1 minute ago, mxk said:

The 3800x is a more powerful chip the only real thing im concerned about are the VRMs on your board.

 

And when you say the BIOS is already updated, you've updated it recently? I'm just being sure.

I check for updates every month I just checked for a motherboard update last week. I have the latest biod update. Also VRMs? You mean my ram?

[fabafaba]

1 minute ago, DevlosMaxima said:

It's already updated. I am running a 2600 on it right now. 

Do you suggest I upgrade to liquid cooling before I get get anything like 3800x? I currently have a gammax deep cool air cooler.

That totally depends on your current cooler. But you should check out this post, your VRMs might not like 3rd gen Ryzen that much

 

[fabafaba]

4 minutes ago, DevlosMaxima said:

Also VRMs? You mean my ram?

The VRMs are the voltage regulation modules on the mainboard, the electrical components that step down the 12V the board gets from the power supply to around 1V for the CPU. These VRMs can only handle a certain load before they overheat or outright fail, and a 3800X will get them close to their limits

[DevlosMaxima]

2 minutes ago, fabafaba said:

That totally depends on your current cooler. But you should check out this post, your VRMs might not like 3rd gen Ryzen that much

 

According to the spreadsheet major air flow recommended....So yeah it looks like I do need a cooler upgrade.

[fabafaba]

Just now, DevlosMaxima said:

According to the spreadsheet major air flow recommended....So yeah it looks like I do need a cooler upgrade.

The sheet is about the cooling for the VRMs, not the CPU itself. The VRMs are the parts marked on this picture and they require cooling (airflow) too. If you just swap out your current (presumably) air cooler for an AIO, they can easily end up getting even less airflow, making them run even hotter. If you need a bigger cooler, get one of the fat ones from Noctua or BeQuiet and make sure that you have a fan where it blows air over the VRMs

 

[DevlosMaxima]

4 minutes ago, fabafaba said:

The sheet is about the cooling for the VRMs, not the CPU itself. The VRMs are the parts marked on this picture and they require cooling (airflow) too. If you just swap out your current (presumably) air cooler for an AIO, they can easily end up getting even less airflow, making them run even hotter. If you need a bigger cooler, get one of the fat ones from Noctua or BeQuiet and make sure that you have a fan where it blows air over the VRMs

 

So liquid cooling wont help? Then you said something about Noctua and BeQuiet. Can you give me examples of good models to choose from for their fans.

[fabafaba]

5 minutes ago, DevlosMaxima said:

So liquid cooling wont help?

In your case it won't. If you don't want to replace your mainboard, it makes more sense to go for aircooling with a ton of airflow over the board.

[DevlosMaxima]

Just now, fabafaba said:

In your case it won't. If you don't want to replace your mainboard, it makes more sense to go for aircooling with a ton of airflow over the board.

Thanks very much! Is there a way I can contact people here for help without flooding the forums with stuff like this? I can't find a reference for this motherboard but I am sure you get similar questions to this all the time.

[mariushm]

Your motherboard doesn't have heatsinks on the VRM, which is a circuit that powers the processor:

If the processor consumes too much power, those chips which convert 12v into 0.8v..1.4v for the processor can overheat.

If they overheat, the BIOS detects that and will automatically throttle the processor (reduce the frequencies) for some time until those components cool down below some threshold.

So cooling the CPU itself won't help much, in fact the better you cool it, the happier it will be to aim for higher frequencies, which means it will take more energy to function at those high frequencies, but this in turn makes those components I circled with yellow to heat more.

The 3800x has a 105w TDP.  I personally would only use 65w TDP processors on motherboards that have no heatsinks on the VRM circuit.

The 3800x processor will work, but that circuit will be constantly hot and if you do something very cpu intensive, the cpu may be slowed down to keep things cool.

 

You can try to improve things by getting a 80 mm or 92mm or 120mm and screw it to the side panel (after you make a cutout in the side panel) so that the fan will be right above that area blowing air down on it.

 

You could also improve things by a tiny bit (not much) by applying some heatsinks on those chips:  https://www.amazon.com/Easycargo-Heatsink-conductive-Regulators-8-8mmx8-8mmx5mm/dp/B079FQ22LK/

 

Here's another link, where you can buy exact sizes to cover each chip individually : https://www.digikey.com/short/pdtjqm