Notes on ASrock B450M-HDV

[RobinD]

Hi all,

I am to writing my experience of the ASrock B450M-HDV R4.0 in the hope that the next person whom struggles may find my notes via google or on these forums. 

Tags: ASrock B450M-HDV R4.0 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor	$157.94 @ Amazon
Motherboard	ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	$73.98 @ Newegg
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory	$79.98 @ Amazon
Storage	Crucial MX500 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive	$114.99 @ Amazon
Video Card	Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER 4 GB OC Video Card	$159.99 @ Best Buy
Power Supply	Cooler Master MasterWatt Lite Full Range 600 W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply	$271.71 @ Amazon
Case Fan	ARCTIC P12 Value Pack 56.3 CFM 120 mm Fans
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$858.59
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-26 20:51 EDT-0400

Big takeaways on Motherboard:

1. The board diagram of the B450M-HDV on ASRock site is not the same as B450M-HDV R4.0, the front panel layout differs notably, refer to the paper manual with your board for best accuracy. 
2. Ram is really hard to seat, gotta give it a bit of welly, ended up troubleshooting a ram issue for a few hours. (power to fans but didn't post), turned out ram needed a good slide.
3. My motherboard speaker shipped with board did not beep (yes i plugged it in) , during troubleshooting i should've had a 3 beep , so i suspect it was faulty or beep codes don't work as well as they should. Be aware.
4. Ram QVL on Asrock is pretty limited... for me, using a mix of pc part picker and the corsair compatibility tool helped me to get a more budget/speed suitable option. Can confirm CMK16GX4M2B3200C16  worked for me. However i read the 450 series with AMD processors can be surprisingly picky. 
5. Board uses a 24/20 pin and 4 pin for power, this is not unusual but is easily missed.  

Takeaway of case  - CiT F3 

1. CiT F3 Micro-ATX PC Gaming Case , the fans that come with it, have annoying cabling (length and type), i wanted to give them a try but in hindsight should've taken them out first thing.
2. Picked up for £30 , pretty happy with it

Big shout out to the troubleshooting guide on these forums:

Shout out to Youtube video i used which helped sanity check a few things (he does a lot of sales crap and isn't my taste of presenters but ok ref video):

Hope this helps someone one day.

All the best 
R

[steelo]

Had a similar issue with ram with my wifes build using this mb. Windows only recognized 4 out of the 8gb of ram as 'available'. The remaining 4gb showed up as 'system reserved' or something stupid like that...Swapped sticks and ensured was properly seated and voila, it worked. You REALLY have to use more force than one may be comfortable with to seat ram in that mb. Other than that, I've built 4 pcs using the asrock b450m hdv and hdv 4.0 and all of them have been working flawlessly thus far.