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XoR_
[H]ard|Gawd
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What a great timing.
I was searching today for comprehensive list of AM4 VRM ratings for my next purchase
I was searching today for comprehensive list of AM4 VRM ratings for my next purchase
- Joined
- May 18, 1997
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Pieter3dnow
Supreme [H]ardness
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- Jul 29, 2009
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Yes indeed, may just stick the 3900x in her which should have zero issues overall, put the 2700 in the Biostar board retiring my second 1700x or sell it on eBay.That is what most people said about C6H that it was overkill as well
chameleoneel
Supreme [H]ardness
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Techpowerup tested VRM temps on a B350 board----with an overclocked 3900x
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-9-3900x-tested-on-cheap-b350-motherboard/4.html
The TLDR is use an air cooler for your CPU or point some case fans at the CPU socket/VRM area, if you watercool. And then things are generally fine and functional. Although of course, a slightly better board is recommend. As it did temp throttle in a couple of especially brutal tests.
Looks like a stock 3900x would be just fine.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-9-3900x-tested-on-cheap-b350-motherboard/4.html
The TLDR is use an air cooler for your CPU or point some case fans at the CPU socket/VRM area, if you watercool. And then things are generally fine and functional. Although of course, a slightly better board is recommend. As it did temp throttle in a couple of especially brutal tests.
Looks like a stock 3900x would be just fine.
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Amazing! Now I have no idea why some of the X570 boards have such beefy VRMs. Some are reporting at Overclock.net that the ASUS newest ASUS Crosshair 6 Hero also has PCIe 4 options - not sure if one can enable or not or how stable it would be.
kamikazi
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2006
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- 1,575
I found it interesting that Asus uses no doublers on the power phases and instead uses up to 3 mosfets per phase. So, one of their "12 +2 phase dr mos" designs has 4 primary phases with 3 mosfets per phase. Is that cool? Seems most other companies are using doublers for almost all of their designs with a few exceptions.
Be really careful with Gigabyte and their claimed phases. Buildzoid did a video not too far back where he criticized them for basically advertising phases in a way that is basically deceptive. I guess MSI was doing the same thing for a while until he called them out on it and they took it out of their product descriptions.
dragonstongue
2[H]4U
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- Nov 18, 2008
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Easy answer .. trust no one and read up on various reviews with certain keywords such as what voltage regulators are being used on X Y or Z etc
I try to always look over many places so I can justify the information is at least credibly correct
I try to always look over many places so I can justify the information is at least credibly correct
Yeah, beware of reviews that basically just regurgitate the specs from the back of the box. Look for reviews that take the heatsinks off the VRMs to see what is actually beneath them.
Buildzoid's youtube channel can be a good source of info but he tends to ramble a bit and he isn't given hardware to review most of the time so you won't always find info about all the boards you might want (he does sometimes go over images of naked boards which helps). He also spends a weird amount of time sticking random coolers on random old GPUs.
If you want my general understanding from the research I've done lately:
Asus: probably best in terms of quality in terms of VRMs and such, but more expensive and fairly terrible customer service if you ever need to use their warranty.
Asrock: sometimes really good, sometimes really bad, often more features for your money, not very good BIOS interface.
Gigabyte: pretty good overall but their claims about their power phases are borderline deceptive and as far as I know they haven't changed them even after being called out about it.
MSI: pretty good overall. Their VRMs tend be lower quality than those that Asus uses, but they also see to use much better heatsinks than other brands which makes up for it (lower efficiency leads to higher temperatures but is countered by better cooling).
Of course, results vary wildly depending on particular motherboard model.
Buildzoid's youtube channel can be a good source of info but he tends to ramble a bit and he isn't given hardware to review most of the time so you won't always find info about all the boards you might want (he does sometimes go over images of naked boards which helps). He also spends a weird amount of time sticking random coolers on random old GPUs.
If you want my general understanding from the research I've done lately:
Asus: probably best in terms of quality in terms of VRMs and such, but more expensive and fairly terrible customer service if you ever need to use their warranty.
Asrock: sometimes really good, sometimes really bad, often more features for your money, not very good BIOS interface.
Gigabyte: pretty good overall but their claims about their power phases are borderline deceptive and as far as I know they haven't changed them even after being called out about it.
MSI: pretty good overall. Their VRMs tend be lower quality than those that Asus uses, but they also see to use much better heatsinks than other brands which makes up for it (lower efficiency leads to higher temperatures but is countered by better cooling).
Of course, results vary wildly depending on particular motherboard model.
Dayaks
[H]F Junkie
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If someone tells me they have 12 phases I expect 12 equally spaced phases. Putting three mosfets on a phase doesn't make it 3 phases... if I am reading what your wrote correctly. It's just one phase with (in an ideal world) 3x the current capability.
Yeah your assumption is correct. As buildzoid explains in some of his videos -- you get a bit better transient response by not using the doublers. You can just ramp the frequency of the VRM if you wanted but honestly it's a perfectly fine solution.
One question I have about this is... how likely are VRMs to fail?
If you say run a 2700X on a cheapo A320 and use it for rendering workloads...?
I'm guessing that more than a few people have tried to save a buy by doing this, and there would be an uproar if these things failed en masse.
I think, stock would be no problem, but at the same time, PBO doesn't pull too much power over stock either, right?
If you say run a 2700X on a cheapo A320 and use it for rendering workloads...?
I'm guessing that more than a few people have tried to save a buy by doing this, and there would be an uproar if these things failed en masse.
I think, stock would be no problem, but at the same time, PBO doesn't pull too much power over stock either, right?
funkydmunky
2[H]4U
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Or watch his current video's where he goes over the X570 boards. This is not the case.
Every company makes a bad board. All of them do. Do not brand a company because they put out a shit board, as Buildzoid explains, they all have turds in their line-up.
Gigabyte's X570 seems to be the best so far. Buildzoid basically declared it the perfect board but said he would never buy it because like all flag-ship X570 boards, it is ridiculously over priced.
Honestly there isn't anything wrong with using doublers, or doubling up the mosfets on a phase like ASUS is doing. There are some disadvantages with these methods of course vs running lots of native phases, but they aren't huge. Namely some minor losses in efficiency at low loads or worse transient response time, but these are minor things in practice. There are only 2 boards on the market that have high phase count and all native phases -- the Gigabyte X570 Master and the Extreme. There are very good VRM's on other boards though, for example the MSI Creation X570 uses a doubled 7 phase for the CPU, but the Gigabyte Extreme uses a native 14 phase. The MSI creation actually uses better mosfets (IR3555 vs IR3556) that handle 60A per phase instead of 50A (14 on each board). Which one is better? Well they both have pros and cons but the MSI creation will be able to supply more current hands down (although either one is overkill for any AM4 cpu, so there's that). The 'smart' doublers used on many boards actually can do load balancing and are effectively no different than native phases. I mean all else being the same I'd take the native phases over the doublers, BUT don't discount a VRM just because it uses doublers. Using doubers or double mosfets (without doublers) doesn't inherently make a VRM BAD. Remember, a motherboard as a WHOLE is the product you are buying so you need to take a lot of things into account, and frankly all of the mid to high end boards on X570 have good VRM's, so you won't go wrong with any of them, even if one or another is a tiny bit better.
This thread was about 300 and 400 series motherboards and their VRM quality and ability to handle Zen 2 CPUs. Why would I go watch videos about X570? I don't even know that the Gigabyte boards in question where bad, only that Buildzoid called them out for shady shit.
funkydmunky
2[H]4U
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My apologizes. No offense intended, just thought it was relevant.