I've replaced the R5 1600 to 2600. The boost wasn't as big as I expected, but it was there nonetheless. Really depended on the games that I play. I got extra 200-400MHz out of that, but there was no improvement on my current memory I think. Since I'm running E-die, it cannot be pushed much farther than 3200MHz with reasonable voltage and timings. I can also forget tighter timings, as those are even harder to get stable, and the motherboard isn't even remotely helpful in that regard. However, I want to upgrade my motherboard to something with nicer VRMs and BIOS.
My AB350M Pro4 served me well up until it had no per-core clock speed control like Ryzen Master does. What if I only want to run two primary cores with 4.2GHz and others at stock? I can't. LLC is uncontrollable, and there are a couple of overclocking settings completely missing. It's a basic budget OC board, I hoped I could get much more out of it, but I'm hitting the limit of what it can do.
It sounds very simple to just side-grade the board, right? Well, I have a uATX case. The X470 boards are all mostly ATX exclusive (only ASUS has a single ITX variant). So I can't buy a motherboard that I want. What a shame, they're reserving uATX motherboards for the B450 chipset, which will only release two months later, and there will probably be no X470 uATX variants.
Why do manufacturers think uATX is a form factor for budget oriented people and releasing AM4 boards with lesser components. It's a valid choice for everyone. They can definitely fit everything on one with more PCB layers, so space isn't a limiting factor for sure.
The AB350M Pro4 is near perfect, but it has a defective PCB for some production runs, the on-board sound is trash and the BIOS is lackluster and not as user-friendly. Those would be a nice change for the next boards AsRock releases, a variant with true 6+2 phase VRM with beefier high density heatsinks would be really really nice. Yet none of the manufacturers are making such a dream board for uATX when it is possible. Price would be no object to most as it would definitely be worth every penny. It's basically the uATX variant of the boards that higher-end ATX already has.
The good things it has going for it are having a better VRM section than most other boards out there for AM4 (even though it's not a true 6 or even 4 phase), enough RGB headers to make your head spin, 2 m.2's even though their configuration is wonky because one of them shares off-of SATA I think, and it looks pretty damn good. One of the best looking boards they made, along with the Taichi, it looks very clean inside the case.
I don't need 3 PCI-E slots, and a crap ton of M.2's, that's why it's almost perfect. There's little compromise when owning a uATX board, provided manufacturers don't skimp on features. Is a uATX board with decent on-board sound, good VRM (and heatsinks), a few m.2 connections, a few RGB lighting headers and 1 extra PWM fan header too much to ask?
It even looks like the motherboard making divisions aren't even competing, as one surely would want to gain the upper hand over another one and release something that competition doesn't have.
jk Yeah, thought it will involve LN2. How much for LN2 in this day & age?
