Motherboard VRM Tier List v2 (currently AMD only)

[ijyhaat]

Hey, what tier is this mobo Asus TUF GAMING X570-PRO?

[Haro]

7 minutes ago, ijyhaat said:

Hey, what tier is this mobo Asus TUF GAMING X570-PRO?

It uses the same VRM as the X570 TUF-Plus and performs basically the same as it in that regard, so it'd be in Tier A. 

[ijyhaat]

1 minute ago, Haro said:

It uses the same VRM as the X570 TUF-Plus and performs basically the same as it in that regard, so it'd be in Tier A. 

Great, thank you!

[ice856]

On 12/24/2019 at 9:10 AM, Jurrunio said:

Tier C :125A current draw on little ambient airflow, maxed out 2700, 3900x and 5900X at 1.2V on ambient cooling (P95)

What "Maxed out" mean? is it max overclock?

I'm Using MSI B450 A-Pro max and I'm planing to upgrade to Ryzen 7 3700X or Ryzen 9 3900X depending on the budget, i want to make sure my motherboard can handle it.

[Entropy.]

15 minutes ago, ice856 said:

What "Maxed out" mean? is it max overclock?

I'm Using MSI B450 A-Pro max and I'm planing to upgrade to Ryzen 7 3700X or Ryzen 9 3900X depending on the budget, i want to make sure my motherboard can handle it.

Stock? With PBO? Under normal circumstances both should be totally fine with it. Iirc it would be with a cooler such as a nhd15 (an ambient cooler), on the highest overclock it can achieve, while under a extremely demanding stress test (Prime95 mb).

[Jurrunio]

14 minutes ago, ice856 said:

What "Maxed out" mean? is it max overclock?

I'm Using MSI B450 A-Pro max and I'm planing to upgrade to Ryzen 7 3700X or Ryzen 9 3900X depending on the budget, i want to make sure my motherboard can handle it.

Max overclock under the worst stress.test

[ice856]

59 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Max overclock under the worst stress.test

 

1 hour ago, Brok3n But who cares? said:

Stock? With PBO? Under normal circumstances both should be totally fine with it. Iirc it would be with a cooler such as a nhd15 (an ambient cooler), on the highest overclock it can achieve, while under a extremely demanding stress test (Prime95 mb).

I'm not going to overclock it so it will be fine

 

Thanks

[Vacras]

I'm looking into upgrading my old x58 Platform soon and I'm really torn on which Motherboard to get. Is there any reason to not get the MSI x570 Tomahawk? It just seems to be an absolute beast at that price point and anything equally good VRM wise is B550. I was thinking about the Gigabyte B550 PRO AC/AX as well but I just can't justify "stepping down" in the Chipset if the MSI board is just that good. 

[Jurrunio]

5 hours ago, Vacras said:

Is there any reason to not get the MSI x570 Tomahawk?

If it's cheap, why not? Though it's memory overclocking is a bit worse. Also, because it;s X570, there's a chipset fan.

[Vacras]

47 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

If it's cheap, why not? Though it's memory overclocking is a bit worse. Also, because it;s X570, there's a chipset fan.

Im probably not going to go quite a lot into memory OC anyways so that’s probably fine. I have two hdds and a relatively loud GPU atm anyways so I’m not too concerned about the fan. Thanks for the input

[Levent]

FYI, B450M S2H has 4(CPU)+3(SOC) VRM while B450M S2H V2 has 4(CPU)+2(SOC). Its not the end of the world but it can make a difference when overclocking RAM.

[Shawny McKnight]

Forgive my lack of understanding here, but is a tier B better than a tier D or am I understanding that wrong? I normally think of a higher tier as better when it's numeric, but when its letters I think grades where the lower letter is better?

[Entropy.]

7 minutes ago, Shawny McKnight said:

Forgive my lack of understanding here, but is a tier B better than a tier D or am I understanding that wrong? I normally think of a higher tier as better when it's numeric, but when its letters I think grades where the lower letter is better?

Yes, generally. This is only in terms of the VRMs, or power delivery. You may prioritize other components. 

[dEEkAy2k9]

So im currently going to buy a ryzen 9 5900x (the 5950x seems to be an overkill for gaming). Thus, i am looking for a good mobo for that. It's going to be paired with a 6800 xt (amd) and with 16 gb ram + 2 ssds + 1 nvme ssd. I do have a noctua nh-u12s amd tower cooler on my ryzen 7 1700x, going to use that one too.

 

what's the major difference between B550 X570 boards? Looking at your ier list, the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master seems to be good. When im looking online, people say it's bios is crap, has issues with bluetooth (which i use for gamepads) and feels overly unresponsive (bios itself).

 

any suggestions for a board that's just going to get fed by a 6800xt, nvme ssd + sata ssds, 3200mhz ram (16 gig) and a 5900x? no fancy overclocking or anything alike.

[Jurrunio]

55 minutes ago, dEEkAy2k9 said:

what's the major difference between B550 X570 boards

Chipset cannot run PCIe 4.0 on B550, so most boards only have 1 PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot

 

56 minutes ago, dEEkAy2k9 said:

Looking at your ier list, the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master seems to be good

Completely overkill if you do not.overclock. tier A and B will do

[dEEkAy2k9]

1 hour ago, Jurrunio said:

Chipset cannot run PCIe 4.0 on B550, so most boards only have 1 PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot

 

Completely overkill if you do not.overclock. tier A and B will do

thanks for the fast reply

 

so i should just look for anything around A/B tier, with good IO and get that one?

any suggestions maybe?

 

i kinda settled for the X570 Taichi, still gotta figure out if i need to update the bios myself before installing the 5900x and if my ryzen 7 1700x can do the job

Edited May 15, 2021 by dEEkAy2k9

[Entropy.]

1 hour ago, dEEkAy2k9 said:

thanks for the fast reply

 

so i should just look for anything around A/B tier, with good IO and get that one?

any suggestions maybe?

B550 aorus elite/v2, x570 tomahawk I suppose, a cheap option is the b550-a pro, more aesthetically pleasing options include the b550-f and a (same board but one's black, other's white), and the b550-e. No real point in the -e though, at that level is just go for the master. 

 

[Jurrunio]

1 hour ago, dEEkAy2k9 said:

i kinda settled for the X570 Taichi, still gotta figure out if i need to update the bios myself before installing the 5900x and if my ryzen 7 1700x can do the job

You might need to update the BIOS but you don't need a CPU at all for BIOS update (with BIOS flashback button). X570 works with as old as Zen+ CPUs, so your 1700X won't work.

 

In terms of BIOS though, Asrock is on par with Gigabyte. Gigabyte has unconventional layout let's say, while Asrock is a cluttered version of the conventional layout. In other words, both have more troubles than others.

[Firewrath9]

Hi, I just have a couple questions.

In tier A, you have the MSI B550-A Pro, which has a 10 phase based on the ubiquitous discrete mosfets that MSI always uses, the 4C029N and 4C024N, with 1 of each per phase.

Then, in tier C, you have the X570 Gaming Pro carbon, which has a 10 phase with dual n-fets (QA3111N6N).

This puzzled me, so I looked up the spec sheets for both, and it turns out that the X570 GPC has a stronger VRM, efficency-wise.
The 4C029N high side mosfet has a RDS(ON) of 5.88ohms, and the 4C024N low side has a RDS(ON) of 2.8 ohms.
However, the MSI gaming pro carbon, with its dual n-fets, have slightly less resistance on the high side (5.6ohm), and *significantly* less resistance on the low side, 1.3 ohms to be precise. The low side creates the most amount of heat generally, which means the power loss of the QA3111N6N will be significantly lower. Even the rated throughput of the dual nfets is significantly higher (not that thats really a great resource)

So this leads me to question, why the B550-A so high, yet the X570 Gaming pro carbon so low? They both have the same amount of phases (5x2) powered by the same controller (IR35201) using the same doubler/driver (IR3598s), and the same amount of mosfets per stage (1 each of high and low), with the only difference being the significantly higher efficiency of the X570 GPC's dual n fets.

Attached are screenshots of the spec sheets for reference.

Spoiler

 

Not to mention, the X570 Aorus Elite has a stonger VRM still, using a 12 phase with 50a DrMOS power stages

 

 

[Jurrunio]

55 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

I looked up the spec sheets

I looked up reviews

https://nl.hardware.info/artikel/9411/12/25-amd-x570-moederborden-review-op-de-proef-met-een-3900x-vrm-test

couldnt find the video for this one but there is this twitter post to show that similar results were found by Hardware Unboxed

I don't know what went wrong with the X570 Carbon's design, all I know is it sucks.

[Chiyawa]

47 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

I don't know what went wrong with the X570 Carbon's design, all I know is it sucks.

I think I saw Gamer's Nexus said the VRM is over heating. Probably the reason why many MSI X570 boards gets lower tier grade than they should. Not sure if it's the same board, though.

[Firewrath9]

9 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

I looked up reviews

https://nl.hardware.info/artikel/9411/12/25-amd-x570-moederborden-review-op-de-proef-met-een-3900x-vrm-test

couldnt find the video for this one but there is this twitter post to show that similar results were found by Hardware Unboxed

I don't know what went wrong with the X570 Carbon's design, all I know is it sucks.

And have those reviews compared the same setup on the B550-A pro?

and that still doesn't say anything about the fact that the X570 Aorus elite is really cooler than the ace, yet also in tier B.

 

[Jurrunio]

22 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

And have those reviews compared the same setup on the B550-A pro?

Actually found X570 Carbon with a bunch of other boards including the B550-A Pro

 

22 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

and that still doesn't say anything about the fact that the X570 Aorus elite is really cooler than the ace, yet also in tier B.

The Ace gets contradicting reviews. Mind posting your sources?

 

As for why X570 Elite is down here, it's based on this

 

Result sandwiched between X570 TUF Plus and X570 Steel Legend, hence between the two in rating. I cant find exact info of it with 3950X, but my guess is it will step into 100C range which disqualifies it for tier A.

[rxp]

On 3/30/2021 at 5:38 AM, Jurrunio said:

To get actual benefit in audio quality you first need a high end audio system and then an external DAC.

Correct on the first point .. but.. external DAC?  for what? The signal is already converetd from Digital to Analog from the onboard sound. What would an external DAC do? 

 

A simpler apprach would be to either a) upgrade the conversion by adding a higher performing internal sound card .. or b) add a higher quality audio amplifier after pc and before listening source. 

 

 

 

[oldbie]

On 3/30/2021 at 3:08 AM, Jurrunio said:

Yes, only because the heatsink is better.

Are you certain? Judging by photo B450 TUF Plus II VRM looks like B450 TUF Pro S one.