AM4 and VRMs

[eidairaman1]

Soooo AM4 was basically another 0-300 moment in terms of board development and the VRMs on the 300 series boards mostly sucked.
It didn't matter how mainstream or high end you picked, if you blindly picked any board it was 50/50 you were getting weird Intersil voltage controllers somewhere and it didn't even need to be ASRock.
Add the 105W+ overclock profiles and you would be risking a fire on some configs.
400 series turned out to mostly be middle of the road and then 500 series was overbuilt. Like REALLY overbuilt.
The 500 series boards were like the 2nd coming. The real stars of the show were the Vishay SiC639 and Infineon TDA21472 SMART stages.
There were probably enough of these on every mainstream board to support dual AM4 socket. The difference is unreal.

The trend continued well into AM5 as well. 600 series boards got more 50-60A controllers but there were also more SMART stages that broke triple digits. The Renesas RAA2201054 was one of these and is probably the standard in 800 series boards seeing how there doesn't really appear to be any reason to go any higher for a while. Comfy.

@buildzoid does videos on vrm phases, mitigations.

 

[DaemonForce]

Unfortunately at the very bottom of the stack there are a few unheatsinked double 3- and single 4-phase boards that are about as good as E-waste, for being incapable of even that level of sustained wattage.

Those unsinked VRMs deserve to be marked as a hate crime.
If I was on that production team seeing that, I would have quit on the spot.
The eWaste of 2000 got thrown out because of exploding caps and actual power related issues like the number of lunched power supplies I went through.
The eWaste of the 2010 era was eWaste because the chipset and storage controllers were junk and never got proper attention.
My Ryzen box was built Oct 2019 and we opened the 2020 era with the coof and a bunch of insufferable terminally online normies that somehow can't run a computer let alone their own workshops.

I should not be hearing about eWaste from the 2020 period until this decade of Rotting '20s is done and gone but we already know.
It's going to be these stupid production lots full of defective chips that never should have made it to store shelves.
It's going to be stupid power supply revisions with the 12VHPWR connector or whatever variation that spontaneously cooks itself at ~400W because Booboo the foo tried to chase the WR on his 5080 pumping out 200 Gigashits/s in Timespy and then running Furmark was the self destruct.
But mostly it's going to be all the gimped DX12/Vulkan "capable" video cards that can't actually run anything at 1080p on 8GB vram and worse.

what matx board do you recommend for a 5950x?

Any 500 series PRIME and TUF boards if you like ASUS, PRO board if you like to gamble but need a PCI slot.
Any 500 series GAMING board if you like MSI and having lots of borderline useless PCI-E x1 slots.
A520I if you like Gigglebyte, X570 UD if you like using PCI-E lanes, X570 I if you need a smol that goes like a rocket.
I don't know if you're into other options but I had my eye on Biostar at the start of X570 but they're MIA in this country. No sale.

@buildzoid does videos on vrm phases, mitigations.

Dude is smart. Listen to him.

 

[iuliug]

400 series turned out to mostly be middle of the road and then 500 series was overbuilt. Like REALLY overbuilt.

Because some content creators shit on 400 series brands that made theirs boards be good enough for the 2700x.

 

[Zach_01]

Hey. So I'm seriously considering a 5700x3d, and I came upon this VRM Tier List, and I really dislike other tier lists, so my question is basically what does that all mean? My current motherboard (Asrock B450M-HDV) is really far down on the list and it suggests it will not be able to run a 5700X3D at stock CPU speeds. Is that how it works? I've been wanting a new motherboard for some time now, mostly because of storage (second NVMe and more SATA ports mainly, secondly more PCIe slots), but I'm honestly not keen on it.

A 105W TDP CPU from AMD has typically the following power/current specs

PPT: 142W
EDC: 140A
TDC: 90 or 95A

The important for board VRM is the EDC.
How much current the CPU will "ask" that VRMs have to let through

But all and I mean all X3Ds (5000/7000) are no where near those specs because of the thermal restrictions.
I believe that the 5700X3D will sit around 100A
In this case depends on what actual model of Asrock B450M-HDV you have

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

docs.google.com

 

[Ruru]

Soooo AM4 was basically another 0-300 moment in terms of board development and the VRMs on the 300 series boards mostly sucked.
It didn't matter how mainstream or high end you picked, if you blindly picked any board it was 50/50 you were getting weird Intersil voltage controllers somewhere and it didn't even need to be ASRock.
Add the 105W+ overclock profiles and you would be risking a fire on some configs.
400 series turned out to mostly be middle of the road and then 500 series was overbuilt. Like REALLY overbuilt.
The 500 series boards were like the 2nd coming. The real stars of the show were the Vishay SiC639 and Infineon TDA21472 SMART stages.
There were probably enough of these on every mainstream board to support dual AM4 socket. The difference is unreal.

The trend continued well into AM5 as well. 600 series boards got more 50-60A controllers but there were also more SMART stages that broke triple digits. The Renesas RAA2201054 was one of these and is probably the standard in 800 series boards seeing how there doesn't really appear to be any reason to go any higher for a while. Comfy.

I suppose that my Crosshair VII Hero is one of the best ones what it comes to 400 series boards?

 

[Zach_01]

I suppose that my Crosshair VII Hero is one of the best ones what it comes to 400 series boards?

Yup, among Taichi Ultimate and Aorus Gaming 7
VRM wise

Those 3 can easily do 200+A

 

[Ruru]

Yup, among Taichi Ultimate and Aorus Gaming 7
VRM wise

Those 3 can easily do 200+A

Nice that these are somewhat obsolete (PCIe 3.0) so these are pretty cheap these days.

Is a B450 Aorus Elite V2 more than enough for 2600X?

 

[Zach_01]

Nice that these are somewhat obsolete (PCIe 3.0) so these are pretty cheap these days.

Is a B450 Aorus Elite V2 more than enough for 2600X?

You can check it on the spreadsheet link I have above on #29.
The R5 2600X is a 95W TDP and if I remember correctly it’s a…

PPT: 125W
EDC: 120A

 

[eidairaman1]

Those unsinked VRMs deserve to be marked as a hate crime.
If I was on that production team seeing that, I would have quit on the spot.
The eWaste of 2000 got thrown out because of exploding caps and actual power related issues like the number of lunched power supplies I went through.
The eWaste of the 2010 era was eWaste because the chipset and storage controllers were junk and never got proper attention.
My Ryzen box was built Oct 2019 and we opened the 2020 era with the coof and a bunch of insufferable terminally online normies that somehow can't run a computer let alone their own workshops.

I should not be hearing about eWaste from the 2020 period until this decade of Rotting '20s is done and gone but we already know.
It's going to be these stupid production lots full of defective chips that never should have made it to store shelves.
It's going to be stupid power supply revisions with the 12VHPWR connector or whatever variation that spontaneously cooks itself at ~400W because Booboo the foo tried to chase the WR on his 5080 pumping out 200 Gigashits/s in Timespy and then running Furmark was the self destruct.
But mostly it's going to be all the gimped DX12/Vulkan "capable" video cards that can't actually run anything at 1080p on 8GB vram and worse.

Any 500 series PRIME and TUF boards if you like ASUS, PRO board if you like to gamble but need a PCI slot.
Any 500 series GAMING board if you like MSI and having lots of borderline useless PCI-E x1 slots.
A520I if you like Gigglebyte, X570 UD if you like using PCI-E lanes, X570 I if you need a smol that goes like a rocket.
I don't know if you're into other options but I had my eye on Biostar at the start of X570 but they're MIA in this country. No sale.

Dude is smart. Listen to him.

Interesting enough during skt A days I was thinking about heatsinks for vrms, now they typically are commonplace.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Interesting enough during skt A days I was thinking about heatsinks for vrms, now they typically are commonplace.

My late M3A32 MVP Plus wifi came with heat pipes and a clip on blower for when using water cooling and overclocking. Case badges and door hanger, some other swag gear. Board had to weigh 8 pounds man haha.

We cooled socket A vrms by just putting a fan on them. Was usually enough. AM2 era was big heatsinks from manufacturers. Fun times. Got what you paid for.

 

[eidairaman1]

My late M3A32 MVP Plus wifi came with heat pipes and a clip on blower for when using water cooling and overclocking. Case badges and door hanger, some other swag gear. Board had to weigh 8 pounds man haha.

We cooled socket A vrms by just putting a fan on them. Was usually enough. AM2 era was big heatsinks from manufacturers. Fun times. Got what you paid for.

DFI LP NF2 Ultra-B I still have, I bought heatsinks, never got around to putting them on as I thought about using a silicone sealant around any metal contacts so I could use AS5 with AS Epoxy in a 50/50 ratio so If I wanted to change them I could

 

[ShrimpBrime]

DFI LP NF2 Ultra-B I still have, I bought heatsinks, never got around to putting them on as I thought about using a silicone sealant around any metal contacts so I could use AS5 with AS Epoxy in a 50/50 ratio so If I wanted to change them I could

You know I had someone make fun of me for putting one of those little square stick on heatsinks to the Bios chip Of my LanParty 939 boards. Yeah well I found out the bios was corrupting from the heat, not my settings. I mean it wasn't blazing hot or anything, but it seemed that dissipating the heat helped a lot. That was running XMS Expert. Them sticks would do 2-2-2-2 240mhz man, no joke.

Alas, I don't have patience to run those old platforms much anymore. They are so dang slow compared to modern gear.... But I do miss it sometimes. All the old gear is slim pickings and becoming way more expensive than their actual computational worth. Collectors are niche like overclockers. I assume this is hand in hand though.

 

[mb194dc]

Just put a 5800x3d in an asus prime b350 plus and it works great. Had a gen 1 1600 with all core OC 3.9ghz at 1.45v ish in it before. Both seem to draw similar W...

The default voltage was too high on the 3D, cut it 75mv and it performs better and runs cooler. Seems have to use curve optimizer in software on this board as its not in the bios.

Owned that 1600 since they first came out, the 5800x3d was £220 on ebay, pretty impressed...

 

[eidairaman1]

You know I had someone make fun of me for putting one of those little square stick on heatsinks to the Bios chip Of my LanParty 939 boards. Yeah well I found out the bios was corrupting from the heat, not my settings. I mean it wasn't blazing hot or anything, but it seemed that dissipating the heat helped a lot. That was running XMS Expert. Them sticks would do 2-2-2-2 240mhz man, no joke.

Alas, I don't have patience to run those old platforms much anymore. They are so dang slow compared to modern gear.... But I do miss it sometimes. All the old gear is slim pickings and becoming way more expensive than their actual computational worth. Collectors are niche like overclockers. I assume this is hand in hand though.

I ran the skt A up until 2014 when I moved. Now I want to revisit it with an SSD, Max out the ram (if I can get a 2 GB module by itself) that rig then ran COD4 at max with a x1950 Pro AGP, maybe find a 4670 or 3850 for it

 

[harm9963]

If you have a 5950X , you want ASUS 570 DARK HERO , main reason for me DOCS , ASUS 570 EXTREME has it as well , can't find one less than 1000 dollar's new , even DARK HERO new is around 500 dollars still , I would not buy buy used .

 

[Ruru]

I ran the skt A up until 2014 when I moved. Now I want to revisit it with an SSD, Max out the ram (if I can get a 2 GB module by itself) that rig then ran COD4 at max with a x1950 Pro AGP, maybe find a 4670 or 3850 for it

DAMN!

Just thinking that maybe S462 chips are too slow since those later AGP cards have pretty much driver overhead. I've read the same when people have tested them on P4 platform.

If you have a 5950X , you want ASUS 570 DARK HERO , main reason for me DOCS , ASUS 570 EXTREME has it as well , can't find one less than 1000 dollar's new , even DARK HERO new is around 500 dollars still , I would not buy buy used .

500USD for a previous socket's motherboard is beyond insane. OP isn't looking for an enthusiast-level board.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Even on the lower end boards, VRM concerns are pretty overblown on AM4......

This! Even the A320 boards have very safe MOSFETs. I've installed 3900X on them. Not ideal, but it worked and the MOSFETs were fine.

the VRMs on the 300 series boards mostly sucked.

No they didn't. Quite the opposite. There were only a few(and there always are) that were lacking.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Nice that these are somewhat obsolete (PCIe 3.0) so these are pretty cheap these days.

Is a B450 Aorus Elite V2 more than enough for 2600X?

My practical experience with the OG model - It has seen my son through 3 college degrees and many 1000s of hours of gaming the last 6yrs. It has been running a Ryzen 3700X + 4x8GB 3200MT/s for a 4 years? now. Phantek Enthoo Full Tower.

 

[Ruru]

My practical experience with the OG model - It has seen my son through 3 college degrees and many 1000s of hours of gaming the last 6yrs. It has been running a Ryzen 3700X + 4x8GB 3200MT/s for a 4 years? now. Phantek Enthoo Full Tower.

Nice to hear. I'm just going to enable PBO and undervolt as much as the CPU allows.

I could get a decent mATX B450 board as I have a good mATX case, but as I'm upgrading my 2nd PC, ATX is my choice.

 

[eidairaman1]

DAMN!

Just thinking that maybe S462 chips are too slow since those later AGP cards have pretty much driver overhead. I've read the same when people have tested them on P4 platform.


500USD for a previous socket's motherboard is beyond insane. OP isn't looking for an enthusiast-level board.

I had a headache with Intel so I moved to AMD with the NF2 motherboard, it ran well and I had no gaming issues on it, at the time nv abandoned the gart for vista so there was none but i think someone made 1 to work on W7

 

[Frick]

If you have to replace the board and buy a new CPU will it really be worth investing in an older platform?

A 7600X is about £10 more expensive than the 5700X3D, but according to TPU review is slightly faster than the 5800X3D in relative game performance @1080p
If you are going to spend at least £120 on a decent AM4 board you may as well go the bit extra and get a B650 AM5 board, just need some DDR5 6000, 32Gb can be got for under £100

Sell your current parts to recoup some costs and you could always upgrade the CPU later for a far faster X3D chip that is still recent.

Where I live the 7600 is pretty identically priced to the 5700X3D. AM5 motherboards cost more, the Asrock B650M-HDV is twice what I paid for my B450M-HDV. <€300 in total is now getting close to €500 in total if I go AM5 and the 7600 will not beat the 5700X3D in simulation games.

 

[DaemonForce]

No they didn't. Quite the opposite. There were only a few(and there always are) that were lacking.

I didn't have access to any decent 300 series boards when I started looking into Ryzen (Zen 2) and still don't. If there were any good ones, I didn't see them.
By the time I got in, most of the sub-$200 boards fell out of favor due to bad VRMs and then the whole general compatibility with 3000 issue.
Even now I would just avoid them entirely. Like, where are you getting your boards?
One of my favorite streamers runs a 5600X in a A320M/AC and I'm like....It's perfectly fine, just don't change anything.
Check it out. Looks like it competes with the ASUS Prime A320M-K, which I find cheap in every sense.

Her GTX1660 was dropping frames at 1080p so a 3070 was thankfully a painless swap.
We don't have to worry about power delivery issues but JFC this design makes me want to screech lightning.
She uses tons of multi-USB quick connects because of course she does. The headers would help if she ever used them.

I'm not saying it's untrustworthy but this is what people usually get even when the price on same generation stuff is better.
Then they cram it with energy vampires and wonder why stuff won't turn on anymore. Gee I wonder...

Biostar had a banger with the X370GTN but no market. MSI's usual armory theme makes me question things but the B350M Bazooka looks good.
Maybe the B450M Mortar MAX if you can find it. Looks peak for all of AM4.
So yeah I would just avoid 300 series boards as they don't really add value outside of cheap replacement for what are often prebuilt nightmares.
I wouldn't try cramming a 5900X in here either. I'm not going to build an AM4 system with it and neither should you.
Not for the meme. Not for the YT video.

the 7600 will not beat the 5700X3D in simulation games.

So, there you go. 5700X3D pl0x.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I didn't have access to any decent 300 series boards when I started looking into Ryzen (Zen 2) and still don't. If there were any good ones, I didn't see them.
By the time I got in, most of the sub-$200 boards fell out of favor due to bad VRMs and then the whole general compatibility with 3000 issue.
Even now I would just avoid them entirely. Like, where are you getting your boards?
One of my favorite streamers runs a 5600X in a A320M/AC and I'm like....It's perfectly fine, just don't change anything.
Check it out. Looks like it competes with the ASUS Prime A320M-K, which I find cheap in every sense.

View attachment 362616

Her GTX1660 was dropping frames at 1080p so a 3070 was thankfully a painless swap.
We don't have to worry about power delivery issues but JFC this design makes me want to screech lightning.
She uses tons of multi-USB quick connects because of course she does. The headers would help if she ever used them.

I'm not saying it's untrustworthy but this is what people usually get even when the price on same generation stuff is better.
Then they cram it with energy vampires and wonder why stuff won't turn on anymore. Gee I wonder...

Biostar had a banger with the X370GTN but no market. MSI's usual armory theme makes me question things but the B350M Bazooka looks good.
Maybe the B450M Mortar MAX if you can find it. Looks peak for all of AM4.
So yeah I would just avoid 300 series boards as they don't really add value outside of cheap replacement for what are often prebuilt nightmares.
I wouldn't try cramming a 5900X in here either. I'm not going to build an AM4 system with it and neither should you.
Not for the meme. Not for the YT video.

So, there you go. 5700X3D pl0x.

8/10 rant, would read again.

I have used dozens of AM4 boards and CPUs. Built quite a few systems for others too. I used a Ryzen 3600 in a MSI A320M-A Pro I got off their Ebay store for $50 back when Zen 2 was current. I used it with a 3600 and 2x8GB 3200MT/s just to mess around with before selling it on. Marathon sessions of AC:Odyssey, one of the most CPU intensive games at the time, thanks Denuvo! /s And it ran perfectly. I imagine if I crammed it in a tiny case with bad airflow and no downdraft cooler, it could have throttled, but as I had it setup it was a brilliant budget gamer.

 

[lexluthermiester]

By the time I got in, most of the sub-$200 boards fell out of favor due to bad VRMs and then the whole general compatibility with 3000 issue.

Both of those situations were blown way out of proportion and most people never actually encountered them.

Like, where are you getting your boards?

Normal places, normal suppliers.

Check it out. Looks like it competes with the ASUS Prime A320M-K, which I find cheap in every sense.

See, I look at that board and see a really good base for a budget MATX build. Fairly certain I've used that model board. Solid & reliable. AsRock makes good stuff!

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Where I live the 7600 is pretty identically priced to the 5700X3D. AM5 motherboards cost more, the Asrock B650M-HDV is twice what I paid for my B450M-HDV. <€300 in total is now getting close to €500 in total if I go AM5 and the 7600 will not beat the 5700X3D in simulation games.

Just get the 5700X/3D w/e and toss it in the board. But just do a favor to whomever, put a fan straight on the VRM package area. They typically run hot with tower coolers and AIO. And it should be ok for a while. I see no point in buying a new board unless you're upgrading 9000 series.