Best mATX AM4 board for cpu/ram overclocking out/coming soon?

[TheHerbMon]

Been trying to find a good mATX motherboard for heavily overclocking my CPU & RAM, I don't have much experience overclocking but have been doing lots of reading about it and fully intend on pushing my chip to the edge of its capability on an AIO. Honestly none of the mATX boards have really stood out to me as being a good all round board, not only that but I'm not the most knowledgeable about VRM's, just now learning that more isn't necessarily better. Ideally I'm looking for a board with solid VRM's and good UEFI updates for RAM compatibility, as I intend on trying to push as far as I can past 3200mhz.

 

This is my current part list; https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/GmtZm8 

 

Had originally chosen the Asrock board because of the 9 phase VRM but after reading more into it, saw some people claiming they were getting better overclocks on other boards with less VRM's (due to vrm temps).

 

Any help with this is greatly appreciated, really interested in expanding my knowledge here.

[DocSwag]

MSI mortar perhaps?

 

The Asrock board isn't really a 9 phase, it's actually a 3+3 phase, Asrock basically stuffed a bunch of inductors down a 3 phase voltage controller without using doublers so it's really just a 3+3 phase. So you only have 3 phases going into the CPU cores, the other 3 are for SoC. I believe the mortar is a 4+2 which would be better for OCing.

[Damascus]

3 minutes ago, TheHerbMon said:

9 phase VRM

It's actually a 3+3 not a 6+3

 

ie. Its a 6 phase.

[Droidbot]

Doesn't really matter that much for Ryzen. 

Most mATX have 4-5phase VRM.

All chips hit a wall at 4Ghz, 4.1 if you're lucky. 

[TheHerbMon]

1 minute ago, DocSwag said:

MSI mortar perhaps?

 

The Asrock board isn't really a 9 phase, it's actually a 3+3 phase, Asrock basically stuffed a bunch of inductors down a 3 phase voltage controller without using doublers so it's really just a 3+3 phase. So you only have 3 phases going into the CPU cores, the other 3 are for SoC. I believe the mortar is a 4+2 which would be better for OCing.

 

Just now, Damascus said:

It's actually a 3+3 not a 6+3

 

ie. Its a 6 phase.

 

Thanks, how does one actually figure that out though? If Asrock is advertising a 9 phase but it's really only 3+3 I'm not sure how I'm supposed to tell.. especially when I see what looks to be 9 phases on the board to my untrained eyes.

1 minute ago, Droidbot said:

Doesn't really matter that much for Ryzen. 

Most mATX have 4-5phase VRM.

All chips hit a wall at 4Ghz, 4.1 if you're lucky. 

 

Thank you, I'm aware of the general limits on ryzen chips, but I'm not actually aware of whats required to get there stable. For example, if me getting a board with beefier VRM's means the difference between 3.95 and 4.05 I want the better VRM's. Then again, if i can hit 4.1 independent of the motherboard and it's just silicon lottery then I guess I'll just ignore the VRM's and go for ram support.

[DocSwag]

5 minutes ago, TheHerbMon said:

Thanks, how does one actually figure that out though? If Asrock is advertising a 9 phase but it's really only 3+3 I'm not sure how I'm supposed to tell.. especially when I see what looks to be 9 phases on the board to my untrained eyes.

Quite honestly there's not an easy way to know . I only know because of Buildzoid (runs a youtube channel called Actually Hardcore Overclocking), as he did a vrm analysis of the b350 pro4 boards. He also did a b350 board roundup so you can figure out what the phase count of all the b350 boards are from that. All the b350 boards are 3 or 4 phase for the cpu cores. For MOST mobos the part on the left side of the cpu is vcore vrm and the top is SoC vrm or whatever. From that you can usually tell if a b350 board is 3 or 4 phase (if there's 3 or 6 inductors to the left of the cpu then it's a 3 phase, if there's 4 or 8 it's a 4 phase)/

[TheHerbMon]

3 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Quite honestly there's not an easy way to know . I only know because of Buildzoid (runs a youtube channel called Actually Hardcore Overclocking), as he did a vrm analysis of the b350 pro4 boards. He also did a b350 board roundup so you can figure out what the phase count of all the b350 boards are from that. All the b350 boards are 3 or 4 phase for the cpu cores. For MOST mobos the part on the left side of the cpu is vcore vrm and the top is SoC vrm or whatever. From that you can usually tell if a b350 board is 3 or 4 phase (if there's 3 or 6 inductors to the left of the cpu then it's a 3 phase, if there's 4 or 8 it's a 4 phase)/

Ah that clears things up a bit if B350 boards are all 3/4 phase.. I assume one of the 4 phase b350's should be fully capable of overclocking a ryzen chip to it's maximum potential considering they don't offer ones with more phases, or are you expected to get an X370 board? I should have decent airflow over the motherboard, going to be doing push/pull on the top half of the 240 and push/pull on the 120 in the back.

[DocSwag]

2 minutes ago, TheHerbMon said:

Ah that clears things up a bit if B350 boards are all 3/4 phase.. I assume one of the 4 phase b350's should be fully capable of overclocking a ryzen chip to it's maximum potential considering they don't offer ones with more phases, or are you expected to get an X370 board? I should have decent airflow over the motherboard, going to be doing push/pull on the top half of the 240 and push/pull on the 120 in the back.

Quite honestly there aren't any x370 mATX boards , so b350 is your only option . 4 phase is the highest you can go, it should be enough though.

[Damascus]

1 hour ago, DocSwag said:

Quite honestly there aren't any x370 mATX boards , so b350 is your only option . 4 phase is the highest you can go, it should be enough though.

Lol there is one and I own it.  Its a 4 + 3 and it's decent, had no issues so far other than an led that was advertised wrong.

 

Oh it only OC's using p-state.

 

Biostar x370 gt3 btw.

[TheHerbMon]

So I watched the video DocSwag mentioned and from what I gather, all the 4+2 boards can run a 6 core maxed out and probably even an 8 core, apparently this really isn't much of an issue. That being said I'm still on the hunt for whichever 4+2 phase is able to run ram at the highest speeds.

8 minutes ago, Damascus said:

Lol there is one and I own it.  Its a 4 + 3 and it's decent, had no issues so far other than an led that was advertised wrong.

 

Oh it only OC's using p-state.

 

That's the Biostar right? From the little I've read about those boards they aren't good with BIOS updates and getting ram up to high speeds, not sure how true that is though, could just be people crapping on a lesser known brand.

[YongKang]

You know what? TweakTown has just released today an AM4 motherboard buyers guide which details everything you should look for on an AM4 board. Check it out!

http://www.tweaktown.com/guides/8243/amd-am4-ryzen-motherboard-buyers-guide/index.html

 

Hope this helps!

[DocSwag]

11 hours ago, Damascus said:

Lol there is one and I own it.  Its a 4 + 3 and it's decent, had no issues so far other than an led that was advertised wrong.

 

Oh it only OC's using p-state.

 

Biostar x370 gt3 btw.

Oh it's mATX?

 

Still only 4 phase for v core though , and I tend to dislike using biostar because of things I've heard about the bios.

11 hours ago, TheHerbMon said:

So I watched the video DocSwag mentioned and from what I gather, all the 4+2 boards can run a 6 core maxed out and probably even an 8 core, apparently this really isn't much of an issue. That being said I'm still on the hunt for whichever 4+2 phase is able to run ram at the highest speeds.

At the moment the memory qvl list is probably where you should look at then. I've found that MSI's memory qvl list seems to be pretty good (basically list of all the ram kits that are compatible with the board which basically tells you those kits are guaranteed to run at their rated frequency with the board), I believe Asrock's is also decent but I'm not sure about Gigabyte. Asus's seems to be a bit lacking when it comes to high frequency kits.

 

At the same time though there's the AGESA 1.0.0.6 update for am4 boards that's rolling out right now. It's supposed to greatly improve ram compatibility and also gives you access to more timings. I've heard that people that could only get around 2400 MHz before now can reach 2933. Unfortunately all the high end boards are getting it first, and I don't think any b350 boards have it yet. It should come soon though.

[Damascus]

2 hours ago, DocSwag said:

bios

Legitimately the worst part of the mobo, it's a potato that wants look like a stupid racecar.

[DocSwag]

Just now, Damascus said:

Legitimately the worst part of the mobo, it's a potato that wants look like a stupid racecar.

Outta curiosity, what parts of it are bad? I heard that a lot is badly translated English but what else is there that's meh about it?

[Damascus]

Just now, DocSwag said:

Outta curiosity, what parts of it are bad? I heard that a lot is badly translated English but what else is there that's meh about it?

Actually the Grammer is like 90% ok.  

 

The issues are mostly just stupid stuff like no controllable fan curves on 4 pin (only bizarre presets and an awful controller)

[TheHerbMon]

7 hours ago, DocSwag said:

Oh it's mATX?

 

Still only 4 phase for v core though , and I tend to dislike using biostar because of things I've heard about the bios.

At the moment the memory qvl list is probably where you should look at then. I've found that MSI's memory qvl list seems to be pretty good (basically list of all the ram kits that are compatible with the board which basically tells you those kits are guaranteed to run at their rated frequency with the board), I believe Asrock's is also decent but I'm not sure about Gigabyte. Asus's seems to be a bit lacking when it comes to high frequency kits.

 

At the same time though there's the AGESA 1.0.0.6 update for am4 boards that's rolling out right now. It's supposed to greatly improve ram compatibility and also gives you access to more timings. I've heard that people that could only get around 2400 MHz before now can reach 2933. Unfortunately all the high end boards are getting it first, and I don't think any b350 boards have it yet. It should come soon though.

 

Unfortunately all the qvl lists seem like crap atm, the only 3200mhz kit qualified for these MSI boards costs slightly more than the 3600mhz kit I originally chose. This is with agesa 1.0.0.6 which is what's listed as the most recent update for at least a few of these MSI boards. I still have a couple weeks to wait so hopefully I'll have more 3200mhz options in the future.

[DocSwag]

20 minutes ago, TheHerbMon said:

 

Unfortunately all the qvl lists seem like crap atm, the only 3200mhz kit qualified for these MSI boards costs slightly more than the 3600mhz kit I originally chose. This is with agesa 1.0.0.6 which is what's listed as the most recent update for at least a few of these MSI boards. I still have a couple weeks to wait so hopefully I'll have more 3200mhz options in the future.

Agesa 1.0.0.6 doesn't necessarily improve memory qvl lists, instead it improves likelihood of a kit not on the qvl list working at its frequency.

 

I believe this kit of ram is on MSI's memory qvl lists, it's a bit cheaper than 3600 MHz options.

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/qGqbt6/gskill-memory-f43200c16d16gvgb

[TheHerbMon]

2 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Agesa 1.0.0.6 doesn't necessarily improve memory qvl lists, instead it improves likelihood of a kit not on the qvl list working at its frequency.

 

I believe this kit of ram is on MSI's memory qvl lists, it's a bit cheaper than 3600 MHz options.

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/qGqbt6/gskill-memory-f43200c16d16gvgb

I was actually looking at that exact kit, unfortunately it's not on the qvl list for any of the B350 boards, it's all X299. The only 3200 kit on the list is Flare X. Do you think qvl lists might be updated in the next couple weeks to show what this new update is doing for ram or are the lists usually done once then forgotten? Thanks again 

[DocSwag]

13 minutes ago, TheHerbMon said:

I was actually looking at that exact kit, unfortunately it's not on the qvl list for any of the B350 boards, it's all X299. The only 3200 kit on the list is Flare X. Do you think qvl lists might be updated in the next couple weeks to show what this new update is doing for ram or are the lists usually done once then forgotten? Thanks again 

You sure? I'm looking at the qvl list for the MSI b350 pc mate right now and I'm seeing this kit listed.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231977

 

Model is listed as "F4-3200C16D-16GVRB" in the list, it's 1.35v and the chipset is SK Hynix.

[TheHerbMon]

6 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

You sure? I'm looking at the qvl list for the MSI b350 pc mate right now and I'm seeing this kit listed.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231977

 

Model is listed as "F4-3200C16D-16GVRB" in the list, it's 1.35v and the chipset is SK Hynix.

 

Yeah the PC Mate is ATX, I didn't even bother looking at it I only checked the mATX boards. Unlesss your saying since it works at 3200 on one of the msi b350's it should do all of them with the same agesa update.

 

Actually I just checked the PC mate too, it also only lists flare X, I'm looking at the g.skill ram configuration is there somewhere else i should be looking?

[DocSwag]

6 minutes ago, TheHerbMon said:

 

Yeah the PC Mate is ATX, I didn't even bother looking at it I only checked the mATX boards. Unlesss your saying since it works at 3200 on one of the msi b350's it should do all of them with the same agesa update.

 

Actually I just checked the PC mate too, it also only lists flare X, I'm looking at the g.skill ram configuration is there somewhere else i should be looking?

Hm you sure. This is the MSI mortar (list is same as the pc mate tho)

Note the kit at the top of the screenshot, the model name is the same as the ripjaws v kit I linked earlier.

[TheHerbMon]

10 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Hm you sure. This is the MSI mortar (list is same as the pc mate tho)

-snip-

Note the kit at the top of the screenshot, the model name is the same as the ripjaws v kit I linked earlier.

 

 Where is this list from? Doesn't look like the list I found on g.skills site

[DocSwag]

12 minutes ago, TheHerbMon said:

 

 Where is this list from? Doesn't look like the list I found on g.skills site

Ohhhhhh you're looking at G skill's site  

 

That's not where you should look, you should look at the motherboard manufacturer's website  

[TheHerbMon]

1 hour ago, DocSwag said:

Ohhhhhh you're looking at G skill's site  

 

That's not where you should look, you should look at the motherboard manufacturer's website  

 

Thanks, finally found MSI's qvl I was looking for it before but got to the point where I didn't think there was one. (For anyone else looking: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/B350M-MORTAR.html#support-mem-2 )

 

The VGB kit should work just like the VRB kit right? I think the difference is just red vs black, but all they list is the red kit.

 

Looks like this is what I've come up with https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/qZcd7h the board should be able to clock the 6 core to the max and it should run the ram at 3200mhz as far as I'm aware.

[DocSwag]

2 minutes ago, TheHerbMon said:

 

Thanks, finally found MSI's qvl I was looking for it before but got to the point where I didn't think there was one. (For anyone else looking: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/B350M-MORTAR.html#support-mem-2 )

 

The VGB kit should work just like the VRB kit right? I think the difference is just red vs black, but all they list is the red kit.

 

Looks like this is what I've come up with https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/qZcd7h the board should be able to clock the 6 core to the max and it should run the ram at 3200mhz as far as I'm aware.

Yeah, color of the heatsink doesn't matter so the kit will work just as well.

 

The build looks great, only thing I might think about is that when you add a high end aio with the 1600 you're getting super near 7700k/1700 territory instead, so either you might want to consider a cheaper cooler or just making the leap to one of those CPUs instead.