# AM4 (B450, X470, x570) mATX (micro ATX) Boards... best VRM ? (all re bad, but whats the best of them)



## neko77025 (Nov 8, 2019)

So... 

I want to upgrade my home server to AM4 socket, starting with  R5 3600 (maybe R7 3700x).  and later in life I want to move to R9 3900 or 3950.   I would really like to stay with my Matx case .... so not alot of choices.

So far looking around , I dont have faith in the AM4 Matx VRMs for handling the R9 39XX.  If you had to pick one .. what would it be.  


The best looking VRM seems to be the ASrock X570M PRO4. However the heatsink looks like A big chunk of metal and useless.

The next best looks maybe like the ASUS TUF B450M-PRO the heatsink looks kind of useful.

Other then that ... eh 


Dont plan on Overclocking much ... but due plan on running it hard .. VMs and a few other things 24/7


----------



## Space Lynx (Nov 8, 2019)

Asus has the best VRM on x570 platform, that has been confirmed for awhile now at all price ranges.


----------



## thesmokingman (Nov 8, 2019)

If you're not overclocking then it doesn't really matter.


----------



## tabascosauz (Nov 8, 2019)

Honestly, mATX AM4 power delivery is exactly the same as mATX AM3/AM3+ power delivery. Bargain basement, cost cutting, mediocrity at best. Find one with the most true/doubled phases and a big heatsink, and put lots of airflow on it.

@Nordic has 3900X on a X570M Pro4 and can tell you all about it. There are many, many PowIRstage/Smart Power Stage-clad mini-ITX and ATX boards that will laugh at any of the mATX offerings, but they are also many times more expensive. Ideally, you would want a board with better power delivery as long as there are no limitations holding you to mATX.

All I can say is that with how Ryzen 3000 is, you'll most likely be leaving it on stock boost settings and letting the chip (which is smart enough to) think for itself. That'll go a long way in making things work on crappy VRMs, as the chip will hold back its multipliers as the load spreads to more cores, to keep itself in check in the rough ballpark of its rated TDP. If you're running most of the cores at load for an extended period of time, you'll see the multipliers start to come down towards 4.0GHz as you approach all-core load. Because of Ryzen's intelligent boost mechanics, as long as you have decent cooling, things won't devolve into a fireball as they would have with a dodgy 770-series board and a FX-9370.

Just don't go trying to push 4.6GHz on all core manual frequency.


----------



## ShrimpBrime (Nov 8, 2019)

tabascosauz said:


> Honestly, mATX AM4 power delivery is exactly the same as mATX AM3/AM3+ power delivery. Bargain basement, cost cutting, mediocrity at best. Find one with the most true/doubled phases and a big heatsink, and put lots of airflow on it.
> 
> @Nordic has 3900X on a X570M Pro4 and can tell you all about it. There are many, many PowIRstage/Smart Power Stage-clad mini-ITX and ATX boards that will laugh at any of the mATX offerings, but they are also many times more expensive. Ideally, you would want a board with better power delivery as long as there are no limitations holding you to mATX.
> 
> ...



lol... no way dude...

Firstly, there's no such thing as a 220w socket AM4 processor, therefor the large power grid isn't needed. 

Secondly, you'd want to understand that you don't even really need 4 VRMs to run a cpu, you could do it with just 2.

I'd say Asus ROG would be the best VRM configuration setup and not bargain basement as the Caps and VRMs are of top quality.


----------



## tabascosauz (Nov 8, 2019)

ShrimpBrime said:


> lol... no way dude...
> 
> Firstly, there's no such thing as a 220w socket AM4 processor, therefor the large power grid isn't needed.
> 
> ...



Did you even read what I wrote?

I compared the quality of the AM4 mATX power delivery to that of AM3+ mATX power delivery because the components used are pretty much of the same quality, as far as vendors are concerned. But on the other hand, I stated that Ryzen is so much smarter and more efficient than FX that despite the quality of the VRMs, the thermal situation won't nearly be as dire, hence my recommendation to find a board with a larger heatsink. The conclusion? There's always better, but as long as it's heatsinked and you aren't fucking with fixed frequencies at boost speeds, things'll be fine.

*OP literally asked about mATX boards, and no ROG AM4 mATX boards exist. *High end AM4 mATX also doesn't exist. I don't think the Impact will fall into his desired price range, either.

The TUF B450M-Pro will be just fine.


----------



## mbeeston (Nov 8, 2019)

AM4 Vcore VRM Ratings v1.4 (2019-11-07) - Google Drive
					






					docs.google.com


----------



## Athlonite (Nov 8, 2019)

Both of the Asus TUF X470 & B450 have the shitest VRM they also  have weird placement for 4 of the 6 SATA ports and most of the time you can't get the ASUS software to work (or install) so you can control any RGB


----------



## R-T-B (Nov 8, 2019)

mbeeston said:


> AM4 Vcore VRM Ratings v1.4 (2019-11-07) - Google Drive
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Basically, this is what you want to reference.


----------



## ShrimpBrime (Nov 8, 2019)

tabascosauz said:


> Did you even read what I wrote?
> 
> I compared the quality of the AM4 mATX power delivery to that of AM3+ mATX power delivery because the components used are pretty much of the same quality, as far as vendors are concerned. But on the other hand, I stated that Ryzen is so much smarter and more efficient than FX that despite the quality of the VRMs, the thermal situation won't nearly be as dire, hence my recommendation to find a board with a larger heatsink. The conclusion? There's always better, but as long as it's heatsinked and you aren't fucking with fixed frequencies at boost speeds, things'll be fine.
> 
> ...



Umm Asus Strix ROG B450-I gaming is mATX and the exact board that I use. Its power delivery is much better than most all mATX B450 boards.

Still have no idea why youd compare any AM4 to AM3. Totally different in so many ways. Even the chipsets use less wattage on B459 boards. 
I fail to see your point, my apologies.


----------



## sepheronx (Nov 8, 2019)

Hopefully this is helpful as I look at it:






						AM4 Vcore VRM Ratings v1.4 (2019-11-07) - Google Drive
					






					docs.google.com


----------



## DeathtoGnomes (Nov 8, 2019)

sepheronx said:


> Hopefully this is helpful as I look at it:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


if you read the thread, thats been posted already.


----------



## tabascosauz (Nov 8, 2019)

ShrimpBrime said:


> Umm Asus Strix ROG B450-I gaming is mATX and the exact board that I use. Its power delivery is much better than most all mATX B450 boards.
> 
> Still have no idea why youd compare any AM4 to AM3. Totally different in so many ways. Even the chipsets use less wattage on B459 boards.
> I fail to see your point, my apologies.



How.......do you own a mini-ITX board for an extended period of time and fail to realize that it is, in fact, mini-ITX form factor? I'm speechless. *MicroATX.*

I mean, it's right there in the name. Did you think the "I" stood for something else?

Your board runs a 6+1 with a IR35201 and IR3553s PowIRs. That's light-years beyond what any 4C10N-clad mATX AM4 board can hope for.

If you still don't understand that I'm making a point about mATX's general position in the AM4 product stack, and what that means for power delivery across the board, then I've got nothing. Nobody except ASRock (once) put discrete MOSFETs on an ITX AM4 board, in the interest of space.


----------



## thesmokingman (Nov 8, 2019)

You guys are taking this way too seriously.


----------



## sepheronx (Nov 8, 2019)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> if you read the thread, thats been posted already.


I'll admit I didn't. I know, shame on me.


----------



## ShrimpBrime (Nov 8, 2019)

tabascosauz said:


> How.......do you own a mini-ITX board for an extended period of time and fail to realize that it is, in fact, mini-ITX form factor? I'm speechless. *MicroATX.*
> 
> I mean, it's right there in the name. Did you think the "I" stood for something else?
> 
> ...



Oh I think I see what you are saying much better now.
And thanks for the correction on the form factor. I wasn't paying close enough attention. 

But, let me say that because I have 6+1 VRMs with better quality..... It did NOT maximize any overclocking that I've done on any of the Ryzen processors I have.
So my point to you was.... In the end it doesn't really matter. You get a cheap board that OCs the same as an expensive board (speaking strictly cpu) VRM amount and quality. 

And now it doesn't matter the general power delivery on mATX boards is "crap" (I'll go ahead and agree to this then) because the wall is in the CPU, not the board's power delivery system.
Hope you can see what I'm, saying here. It's basically a moot point. 4C10N-clad has proven longevity, though cheaper and not quite as robust, it does the job for Ryzen processors just fine.
Think about it. The majority of Ryzen chips sold are not 110w (Think outside of gaming,, Dell, HP, mobiles ect.) and even then, cheap is what people want to buy. We are a very few select bunch of people. Out of what some 7-8 BILLION people on the planet, there's what, A few thousand people that build High end gaming rigs and would care to know about VRM package area on their gaming rig. 

But, I get your point, I feel the same way about power supplies.


----------



## GorbazTheDragon (Nov 10, 2019)

Not going to back any of the Asus recommendations... Even though the 3900x is far from a power hog and I doubt the 3950x will be much different, the heatsinks on the Asus boards combined with the worse performance of those mosfets (4mOhm vs 2.8 mOhm RDSon) would make me uncomfortable putting anything over 75A on it. That is for the best-case, the B450M TUF gaming pro... Lobbing off one of the high sides for the plus is probably not going to make it that much worse, but putting all 4 phases under the same heatsink is, and it's already not a good VRM at all...

The MSI boards (Bazooka *Plus*, Mortar, and Gaming Plus) I would much more comfortably recommend, they have shown up better in practical testing as well.

The other option is just to go for the ITX/DTX boards... Unfortunately mATX is a bit of a dead form factor, it's spiralled downwards with the marginal advantage in compactness reducing the attractiveness, leading to lower sales, meaning less mATX hardware gets to market, meaning more people are driven from the form factor....


----------



## A Computer Guy (Nov 20, 2019)

Home server, mATX,  perhaps the AsRock Rack X470D4U will work for you?  Website shows it supports 3900X 105w  so it might also support 3950X.  I could've sworn I saw youtube reviews that showed 3950X power consumption is actually better despite having 4 more cores.


----------



## neko77025 (Nov 20, 2019)

A Computer Guy said:


> Home server, mATX,  perhaps the AsRock Rack X470D4U will work for you?  Website shows it supports 3900X 105w  so it might also support 3950X.  I could've sworn I saw youtube reviews that showed 3950X power consumption is actually better despite having 4 more cores.



yea .. been looking at it ... 8x sata ports , +m.2 sata +pice m.2 , 2x 8x PCIe3.0 + x4 Pcie3.0  ... Ipmi .. it seems like its worth the 260.00 

I did get A askrok b450m pro4 .. and having all kinds of issues with the sata ports ... taking it back tomarrow.


----------



## A Computer Guy (Nov 20, 2019)

What BIOS version are you at with b450m pro4 ?
And by any chance did you pick the ASRock board because of ECC suppport?


----------



## neko77025 (Nov 20, 2019)

A Computer Guy said:


> What BIOS version are you at with b450m pro4 ?
> And by any chance did you pick the ASRock board because of ECC suppport?



I picked it because it was the best VRM out of my choices ...  it came with 3.4 and I updated to 3.6 .. I assume my board is bad ... been working on it for a few days now.   Only has issues if I use something threw any of the sata interfaces


----------



## A Computer Guy (Nov 20, 2019)

Yea sounds like bad board.  Good luck.  If you get the X470D4U I'd be interested in hearing your experiences and if it worked out for you.


----------

