Computex: ASRock motherboards. AM4 ITX and, yes you're going to read this right, X299 ITX.

[Notional]

11 minutes ago, DildorTheDecent said:

quad channel on ITX sounds awesome, but it's SO-DIMM :I

 

What's wrong with So-dimm?

[DildorTheDecent]

1 hour ago, Notional said:

What's wrong with So-dimm?

there's no decent so-dimms available. 2666MHz? lol

 

I've been thinking about my current 5820K + 1080 Ti ( in the future) in a little compact iTX rig for a while. I like performance. that also means fast ram. 

 

inb4 ram doesn't make a difference on X99. Because it defo can.  

[Notional]

12 minutes ago, DildorTheDecent said:

there's no decent so-dimms available. 2666MHz? lol

 

I've been thinking about my current 5820K + 1080 Ti ( in the future) in a little compact iTX rig for a while. I like performance. that also means fast ram. 

 

inb4 ram doesn't make a difference on X99. Because it defo can.  

Sure, but with quad channel, it should not be that crucial? On this board, ram amount and quad channel is prioritized ahead of ram speed. 

[captain cactus]

1 minute ago, Notional said:

Sure, but with quad channel, it should not be that crucial? On this board, ram amount and quad channel is prioritized ahead of ram speed. 

It's why the AM4 board has 2 full DIMM slots for faster sticks, rather than going the max capacity route with 4 SO-DIMMs. 

[DildorTheDecent]

5 minutes ago, Notional said:

Sure, but with quad channel, it should not be that crucial? On this board, ram amount and quad channel is prioritized ahead of ram speed. 

you still run 3200+ kits on BW-E tho. 

 

3 minutes ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

It's why the AM4 board has 2 full DIMM slots for faster sticks, rather than going the max capacity route with 4 SO-DIMMs. 

AM4 only supports dual channel .that's why.

[Bananasplit_00]

4 hours ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

Now that I think of it, it wouldn't be difficult to imagine that the X370 board has a "true" 6+2-phase setup with the B350 board having that 3x2 +2 setup.

ASRocks Taichi board uses the 3x2 +2 phase im pretty sure

 

4 hours ago, Pohernori said:

 

Yea at the same time it also looks like the ones used in the B350 boards. We'll have to wait for tweaktown to take it apart to really see how "good" it is

i can almost already asure you that its the 3x2 +2. anyway we dont know for certain but i cant see it being anything else

[captain cactus]

10 minutes ago, DildorTheDecent said:

you still run 3200+ kits on BW-E tho. 

 

AM4 only supports dual channel .that's why.

You can still put 2 SO-DIMMs in one channel. 

 

10 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

ASRocks Taichi board uses the 3x2 +2 phase im pretty sure

 

i can almost already asure you that its the 3x2 +2. anyway we dont know for certain but i cant see it being anything else

The Thaichi is a real 6-phase AFAIK. 

[TheRandomness]

1 hour ago, DildorTheDecent said:

quad channel on ITX sounds awesome, but it's SO-DIMM :I

 

 

Is there a problem with SO-DIMM though?

[Dylanc1500]

8 minutes ago, TheRandomness said:

Is there a problem with SO-DIMM though?

That's what im not understanding. I mean you could shove 64GBs of 3000 on that board.

[DildorTheDecent]

14 minutes ago, TheRandomness said:

Is there a problem with SO-DIMM though?

doesn't look as good. most of the fast kits are crap on timings. so actually a bit slow unfortunately. 

 

no fast rig this year then. 

20 minutes ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

You can still put 2 SO-DIMMs in one channel. 

still not quad channel tho. all that bandwidth is nuts. 

 

6 minutes ago, Dylanc1500 said:

That's what im not understanding. I mean you could shove 64GBs of 3000 on that board.

nice latencies. need fasts not slows. 

[TheRandomness]

Just now, DildorTheDecent said:

doesn't look as good. most of the fast kits are crap on timings. so actually a bit slow unfortunately. 

 

no fast rig this year then. 

still not quad channel tho. all that bandwidth is nuts. 

 

nice latencies. need fasts not slows. 

Frequency usually wins over latencies. How about we ask @MageTank? Tbh, I could be very wrong.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

29 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

ASRocks Taichi board uses the 3x2 +2 phase im pretty sure

 

Asrock Taichi is a true 6+2 phase... 

 

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8099/asrock-x370-taichi-amd-motherboard-review/index3.html

 

Quote

The VRM on the motherboard is very strong, after doubling we get 12+4 phases for the core voltage and SOC voltage. The International Rectifier (now Infineon) IR35201 fully digital PWM is being used in 6+2 phase mode

 

[Dylanc1500]

4 minutes ago, DildorTheDecent said:

nice latencies. need fasts not slows. 

CAS 15?

[Bananasplit_00]

16 minutes ago, Pohernori said:

 

Asrock Taichi is a true 6+2 phase... 

 

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8099/asrock-x370-taichi-amd-motherboard-review/index3.html

 

 

my bad, was thinking of the wrong board then. but from what i know ALL ASRocks B350 boards use the 3x2+2 and it would make no sense to put anything other then that VRM on this B350 board

[NumLock21]

1 hour ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

It's why the AM4 board has 2 full DIMM slots for faster sticks, rather than going the max capacity route with 4 SO-DIMMs. 

Asrock had 2 x99 itx. One with full size dimms that only have 2 slot and a so-dimm, that had 4 slots. The so-dimm was marketed as a server board.

 

[DildorTheDecent]

37 minutes ago, TheRandomness said:

Frequency usually wins over latencies. How about we ask @MageTank? Tbh, I could be very wrong.

go ahead. 3000 c14 would still be quicker than 3200 c16 tho. 

33 minutes ago, Dylanc1500 said:

CAS 15?

what so-dimm kit in a 32GB or 64GB capacity has 3000MHz 15-15-15? or maybe 15-16-16 at a pinch. haven't seen one yet tbh. 

[MageTank]

3 hours ago, TheRandomness said:

Frequency usually wins over latencies. How about we ask @MageTank? Tbh, I could be very wrong.

With modern ram speeds, latency is far more important. We've achieved bandwidth that eclipses any modern consumer storage medium, upwards of 40GB/s in dual channel on modestly clocked DDR4. Your fastest RAID 0 NVMe drives are limited to 4GB/s (1/10th of that) due to PCIE/DMI limitations.

 

A very simple rule with ram bandwidth: it only matters once you do not have enough of it. Once you have enough, going any higher won't yield any performance benefits from what I have tested. Latency on the other hand, seems to scale endlessly. The better your latency, the better the experience all around. That being said, do not write off frequency entirely and go on a latency crusade. Both are firmly tied to each other, and go hand in hand. If timings remain the same, but frequency increases, latency decreases. This is because your RTL (Round Trip Latency) takes frequency into consideration on top of every timing in your system (including command rate, which technically isn't a timing). The lower your RTL, the "faster" your ram is. So the trick is finding a balance between frequency and timings that yield the best possible RTL/IO-L value. It's easier said than done though.

 

For most dual-channel users, I advise people worry about clock speeds up until about 3200mhz. Anything beyond that is just nonsense for tertiary timings, unless you have a really good motherboard, a binned kit of memory, and an IMC that can take a beating. Making 3600 C14-14-14-28-2 work was a chore in and of itself, and took months to make it completely stable. Even then, stability is always fleeting in our world, so one day, this kit will fail me and need to be adjusted once more. When that day comes, I'll trade lower frequency for even tighter tertiary timings. Bandwidth will suffer, but latency will remain exactly the same.

 

For quad-channel users, focus entirely on taming that horrendous latency. As more channels are added, latency seems to get worse across them. Working on tertiary timings becomes even more important, and IMC quality becomes the be all, end all for improving ram. Very rare to see quad channel users hit anything above 3000 without suffering in latency as a result. I'd say, a tight 2800 kit would do well for both bandwidth and latency, just be very mindful of tREFI. That many DIMM's (assuming all slots are populated) is sure to cause some trouble once tREFI goes high. At that point, you better hope your board can handle low tRFC, lol. 

[HelplmChoking]

Yes! Great to see some love being given to SFF boards. I despise large machines, I think they're bulky, ugly and annoying. Looking forward to a whole new PC build possibly with one of those ITX boards.

On another note, do people even bother with BTC mining anymore? I thought the difficulty level made it kinda pointless (don't talk about power costs, NZ power is super cheap and 97% renewable).

Better off mining ETH or something alone those lines.

[SCHISCHKA]

are 10G nics going to be normal on boards now?

Im gona have to upgrade all my shit

[MageTank]

3 hours ago, DildorTheDecent said:

go ahead. 3000 c14 would still be quicker than 3200 c16 tho. 

what so-dimm kit in a 32GB or 64GB capacity has 3000MHz 15-15-15? or maybe 15-16-16 at a pinch. haven't seen one yet tbh. 

 

Both of these kits are Samsung B die (designated by that A500 on the serial) and both have a ton of overclocking headroom. Understand, the latency on these SO-DIMMS are so loose, because they are working in a very confined VDIMM window. This is because ram, in laptops, lack any sort of active cooling. Combine this with laptop motherboards poor ram power delivery, and it's understandable why they do this. On a desktop board with a VRM segment dedicated entirely to ram, in a case that's designed to have at least some air-flow going over the ram, one could easily throw 1.4 VDIMM at these babies, and do just as good as the Samsung B-Die I use every day in my system.

 

That being said... there is an extreme premium for high-performance SO-DIMMs. Going this route with normal fast, high-capacity DDR4 would not only cost a fortune (my 3200 C14 2x16GB kit already costs $320+ on Newegg), it would cost even more to do it in a SO-DIMM form factor ($350 on newegg for the 3000 C16 kit). The 3200 C16 kit is currently unavailable to the general public, and is only being loaned out to specific people to test. That being said, it uses the exact same IC's as the 3000 C16 kit, and flashing the SPD information from the 3200 kit on to the 3000 kit (using Thaiphoon burner), resulted in the exact same performance and stability. 

 

Sorry for hijacking this thread with my ram nonsense, just noticed more people were talking about ram. Would have answered this first had I bothered to read the full thread, and not what I was just summoned for.

[DildorTheDecent]

7 minutes ago, MageTank said:

 

nice nice. Didn't expect them to use B-die since that's usually super fast kits on desktop right? 

 

Just annoyed at the lack of variety that SO-DIMMs have. Like for out-of-box-not-really-bothered-with-RAM-OC stuff it doesn't look all that great. But like you said SPD flash or OC and you've got it sorted. 

 

That 3200 kit is near identical to my desktop kit though. Just wish it had the fancy heatsink. But laptops and all. 

[MageTank]

Just now, DildorTheDecent said:

nice nice. Didn't expect them to use B-die since that's usually super fast kits on desktop right? 

 

Just annoyed at the lack of variety that SO-DIMMs have. Like for out-of-box-not-really-bothered-with-RAM-OC stuff it doesn't look all that great. But like you said SPD flash or OC and you've got it sorted. 

 

That 3200 kit is near identical to my desktop kit though. Just wish it had the fancy heatsink. But laptops and all. 

There is a reason they don't. Outside of very specific Sager/Clevo laptops, no laptop motherboard will even bother to load their SPD's. Alienware, MSI, Gigabyte, all of their "premium gaming laptops" top out at 2400mhz. Some have gone as high as 2800 with some hackery, but that's about it. You have guys like Prema from Premamod modding MSI barebones into using these aforementioned kits, but it's still a drop in the bucket when comparing the entire laptop market. The fact that G-Skill is even humoring the thought of fast memory in a laptop, is a testament to my respect towards them. 

 

You honestly cannot find a better SO-DIMM kit than the ones I linked in those photo's. They simply do not exist, and until laptop manufacturers catch up to the rest of the world, you likely won't see anything faster. By default, the stock sager/clevo bios caps out at about 2800-3000mhz. You get access to primary timings and vDIMM, but that's it. No special tweaking to help make these kits work at their designated SPD speeds. With the custom Prema bios, you get access to secondary timings on top of the default primary timings, and an unlocked memory multiplier and memory reference clock to allow you to adjust frequency beyond SPD profiles. I believe the SVET bios can do similar things, just not to the same degree.

 

I imagine ASRock's BIOS support, with their record of robust memory VRM's and great trace topology, you could do some serious work with these SO-DIMMS, they just come at a very heavy cost ($700 for 64gb)

[rn8686]

9 hours ago, Droidbot said:

not with our power prices, haha

I'l agree they are very expensive (25c/KWh), its still very profitable for me. I can still earn about $1800 AUD or so per annum after power costs with my 1070. 

[TheRandomness]

42 minutes ago, MageTank said:

With modern ram speeds, latency is far more important. We've achieved bandwidth that eclipses any modern consumer storage medium, upwards of 40GB/s in dual channel on modestly clocked DDR4. Your fastest RAID 0 NVMe drives are limited to 4GB/s (1/10th of that) due to PCIE/DMI limitations.

-snip-

Ah, alright. Too bad my 2800 kit can't actually do 2800 (G-Skill Ripjaws 1x8GB) because of the H110 chipset, so latencies are all I have to play with  Kinda suck as well, due to the fact that they're B-die.

[flukey]

1 hour ago, MageTank said:

You honestly cannot find a better SO-DIMM kit than the ones I linked in those photo's.

@MageTank As someone who's seriously considering the related motherboard for my next build I'm looking around at the best SO-DIMM memory and found the choice between the g-skill set you linked and the corsair set:

http://www.ebuyer.com/767781-corsair-vengeance-32gb-kit-ddr4-sodimm-3000mhz-laptop-memory-cmsx32gx4m2a3000c16

Do you know this set to have sloppy timings (post OC)/be generally worse? I think the price seems pretty decent.