AMD Zen Discussion Thread

djivide_

b450 tomahawk max is still a great board and down to about 90-100 sterling in a few places.

savemejebus

X470 gaming plus max is also good

K.O.Kiki

EoinHef wrote: »

What would be the best budget board to stick a 3600 into these days?

Only looking to spend about €140-€150

ASUS Prime B550M-A [WI-FI] is around 110, worth a consideration.

MidlanderMan

EoinHef wrote: »

What would be the best budget board to stick a 3600 into these days?

Only looking to spend about €140-€150

At that price just get a b550 tomahawk or gaming plus from msi.

djivide_

MidlanderMan wrote: »

At that price just get a b550 tomahawk or gaming plus from msi.

id steer clear of the gaming plus models, probably the worst vrm design of any b550/x570 motherboards. I know it probably wont make a difference for a 3600 and or normal desktop usage but who's to say a 5950x wont be dropped into the motherboard down the road.

MidlanderMan

djivide_ wrote: »

id steer clear of the gaming plus models, probably the worst vrm design of any b550/x570 motherboards. I know it probably wont make a difference for a 3600 and or normal desktop usage but who's to say a 5950x wont be dropped into the motherboard down the road.

The MSI b550 gaming plus has an upgraded version of the VRM on the A-Pro and an upgraded heatsink, and more PCB layers. For better memory tuning, and more IO.

The A Pro is routinely cited as the best budget B550.

The gaming plus VRM will handle a 5950x absolutely no problem.

The Gigabyte B450 Gaming Plus was a terrible VRM, but was made by a different company.

MidlanderMan

5800x in Max Burns.

slightly over MSRP at €501 but sure look.

Samuel T. Cogley

Amazon have had stock for a while on some of the 5000 series too

.G.

Anyone who has a 5000 series, upgrade your bios with the latest AGESA version if its available. Got mine yesterday and its actually stable now and allows me to use the full suite of PBO enhancements without frequent WHEA BSODs.

kingtiger

.G. wrote: »

s without frequent WHEA BSODs.

still nothing for the b550 tomahawk apart from the Beta bios that caused random WHEA shutdowns

Downgraded to the previous AGESA 1.1.0.0 and all back to normal

batmansDad

Anyone have any experience using Q Flash on X570-I-AORUS-PRO-WIFI

There is no leds or indicators to confirm it's working or worked. While I can see the USB Stick light blinking for a few seconds the psu never starts so I have my doubts.

I've done similar using Strix X570 without much issue.

Any ideas?

cromelex

batmansDad wrote: »

Anyone have any experience using Q Flash on X570-I-AORUS-PRO-WIFI

There is no leds or indicators to confirm it's working or worked. While I can see the USB Stick light blinking for a few seconds the psu never starts so I have my doubts.

Have this motherboard and did this. My PSU did start.
My USB stick doesn't even have a LED, I am 99.9% sure there was a flashing light on the motherboard itself?

It definitely took 3+ minutes.

Maybe you didn't rename the file correctly or similar?

Found this random video that seems to show the whole process with another gigabyte board, hopefully it will help you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9uGfIFufZI

Squall

I flashed my Aorus Ultra X570 yesterday using QFLASH. Was pretty straightforward. The bios file needs to be renamed GIGABYTE.bin

Does your PSU maybe have a minimum power draw before it switches on? (Not something I have come across with any PSU myself but saw it mentioned in a few posts)

The other suggestion was to only plug in the 24 pin connector to the board when flashing i.e. none of the rest of the power cables. That's what I did yesterday and it worked ok

There was an LED right next to the QFLASH button that flashed during the process. Checked the manual for your board and it has one as well

https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_x570-aorus-pro-wifi_v2_e.pdf

Squall

As a separate question, anyone that has a X570 board. How do you find the fan noise from the PCH fan?

I'm waiting on components so haven't build the machine yet but when I was flashing the BIOS yesterday the PCH fan was loud!

MidlanderMan

Squall wrote: »

As a separate question, anyone that has a X570 board. How do you find the fan noise from the PCH fan?

I'm waiting on components so haven't build the machine yet but when I was flashing the BIOS yesterday the PCH fan was loud!

There won't be noise audible over other fans tbh.

wotzgoingon

Squall wrote: »

As a separate question, anyone that has a X570 board. How do you find the fan noise from the PCH fan?

I'm waiting on components so haven't build the machine yet but when I was flashing the BIOS yesterday the PCH fan was loud!

Yep, set it to silent profile in bios and you will not hear it. It does spin up fast for a few seconds at start up which probably what you were hearing.

batmansDad

cromelex wrote: »

Have this motherboard and did this. My PSU did start.
My USB stick doesn't even have a LED, I am 99.9% sure there was a flashing light on the motherboard itself?

It definitely took 3+ minutes.

Maybe you didn't rename the file correctly or similar?

Found this random video that seems to show the whole process with another gigabyte board, hopefully it will help you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9uGfIFufZI

So the only indicator that I have that power is being drawn is the USB Led, which flashes when the power is turned on, and eventually stops.

When I push the QFlash Plus button the little pin hole beside it doesn't show any LED flashing and I can't see any LED's on the board itself. The LED for the USB stick flashes for maybe 10 seconds and then stops.

What I have tried:
- 4 differnt USB sticks (32gb, 8gb, 2gb and 256mb)
- I have tried to rename the file to GIGABYTE.bin, GIGABYTE.BIN, gigabyte.bin
- I have tried formating the usbs to FAT32 in windows
- I have tried formatting the usbs to FAT32 using a 3rd party tool (some guy had success with WindowsXP, go figure)
- I have shorted the CMOS and tried the whole process again
- I have tried the paperclip test on the psu to verify it does cycle on
- I have tried 2 different PSU's
- I have rebuilt the PC 3 times now to and each time all fans spin, all rgb non sense turn on but still no post, I can hear the AIO pump etc.

I compared my steps against:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cQLYROKJ_Q&t=528s

The only other thing I can think of is to remove the the System Battery and leave it out for an hour or so to clear the cmos. I had a look athe removing the heatsync and it does seem somewhat more involved that I would like

Squall wrote: »

There was an LED right next to the QFLASH button that flashed during the process. Checked the manual for your board and it has one as well

https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_x570-aorus-pro-wifi_v2_e.pdf

I've never seen it light up, which has me concerned.

Any other suggestions, I'm tempted to buy a 3700 and another motherboard to see if I can salvage this board and then upgrade an existing pc. While I'm ordering I might buy a motherboard speaker just to have for future troubleshooting.

Squall

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the QFLED only lights up once the flash has started. I used a USB with an indicator light and it was on for a few seconds then the QFLED came on. Presume that was the board reading the file then starting the flash. It sounds to me like in your case its not recognizing the bios file so not starting the flash.

Sounds like you have eliminated a lot of the variables. Were the USB sticks 2.0 or 3.0? I saw mention of people having problems with USB 3.0 when trying to flash. A small capacity USB 2.0 seems to be what most people have luck with

I followed that same vid... only thing I did slightly different is only using the 24 pin connector. I didn't plug in the the other 8 pin (manual says one CPU power connector should be plugged in as well but users on other forums had luck with just the 24 pin). Could try that

From this thread it sounds like the boards can be really picky about USB sticks...

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/threads/help-q-flash-wont-work.18907064/page-2

Here's where they mention only using the 24 pin (Dawned on me there that I just pulled the 24 pin from my old machine and plugged it into the new board. Left all the rest of the cabled plugged into the old machine)

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1272021-the-q-flash-plus-on-my-x570-aorus-elite-wifi-isnt-working/

Seems to be total trial and error!

If you have no joy... you could try requesting a boot kit from AMD

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/pa-105

batmansDad

No joy sadly, going to RMA the board and see if I can request a boot kit from AMD

K.O.Kiki

CTR: A Review and a Warning

Slutmonkey57b

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

CTR: A Review and a Warning

Well that's not good at all. And a very poor response from 1usmus. I think the central point of the article is entirely fair : you can't on the one hand position the tool as a simple 1 click "anyman" tool and on the other hand allow massive overvolting to take place then complain the users didn't understand the manual properly.

tazzzZ

https://www.igorslab.de/en/clock-tuner-for-ryzen-2-0-tutorial-new-version-with-support-for-ryzen-5000-hybrid-oc-phoenix-mode-and-much-more/3/

Different article on CTR 2.0. They have a full guide on how to use it and have given it a glowing recommendation. Make no mistake its no 1 click tune like they said in the first article. I know this is what 1USMUS ultimately wants. Its still RC software and I know he has a roadmap to 2.2 or 2.3 and will make full use of curve optimiser.

EDIT
Seems to have gotten a 14.2% gain at full pelt. power efficiency not being considered etc.
for reference my 5950x gets 9900 CB20... his after the tune was 12292.

Redfox25

I think his response of did you read the instructions was a valid query.
You take a risk on altering things like voltages and the likes. Give it time, as its a free program there is little need to kick someone who is working to build a program to get people the potential of better performance.

tazzzZ

Just finished going through the whole process with CTR 2.0

My earlier reference to 9900 in CBR20 was with pbo enabled and curve optimiser too. So essentially you are required to put everything to stock then run the tests. Unfortunately I have a bronze sample chip. I started out at ~9500. It gave me ~10800 under profile 1.... which is basically as fast as it can go at 1.1V (CCX1- 4.325Ghz, CCX2- 4.15Ghz) and then profile 2 topped out at 11485 at 1.25v (CCX1- 4.575Ghz, CCX2- 4.425Ghz)

So I have left this on and with hybrid mode I should essentially have 3 profiles active... PBO, P1 and P2. one you hit the parameters for P1 you go to that profile and likewise for P2. So under heavy load on smaller amounts of cores PBO remains active, then medium high core count loads P2 is active and full load on all cores will engage P1. I'm delighted with the results.

Be aware do not use this if you use Heavy AVX work loads. I dont so im happy to run it like this. Like anything to do with OCing its a risk. But i like seeing what my chip is capable of... even if i was disappointed to see its a bronze sample.

H3llR4iser

Yeah I've tried CTR myself, after seeing all the raving reviews from the various tech channels, and had the exact same results as the author of that article - multiple times. Please note - I DID read the manual, followed 1usmus' tutorial to the letter and let it run its course on a 3900x.

According to CTR itself, everything had gone smoothly - and looking at the report there was no reason to think otherwise. IIRC it applied a rather nice undervolting (around 1.25v, IIRC) and managed to "push" the cores in CCX1 to something like 4.35 Ghz, with the others between 4.2 and 4.15. Consider my CPU, stock, settles to 4.1 on all cores during load, this looked like a great result - CB20 reflected the improvement.

The system LOOKED like it was working fine, CB20 would run indefinitely without issues, normal use, a game etc; YET, I decided I wanted to make sure the whole thing was "rock solid" - and it was NOT by any definition - OCCT started reprting errors within 1 minute of testing and Prime95 small FFT test would instantly push the CPU to the thermal limit (Kraken X62, under stock conditions the CPU rarely reaches 75c under load, 80 with small FFT).

I've retried the CTR process multiple times, checking BIOS settings, double checking the instructions, every time with the same exact result.
Now, it could probably be made to work if one really throws a lot of time tweaking the process and resulting settings, but frankly I can't be bothered to do that and went back to the standard PBO setting.

The argument about the tool being talked about as a "1 click everyman OC solution!" is very relevant - and I haven't seen any of the tech channels perform a proper test; 1usmus replies under that article are frankly idiotic in tone, sounding like a preschooler - namecalling on the very first line, and then the icing on the cake - "To my great regret your processor didn’t burn out. ".

tazzzZ

H3llR4iser wrote: »

Yeah I've tried CTR myself, after seeing all the raving reviews from the various tech channels, and had the exact same results as the author of that article - multiple times. Please note - I DID read the manual, followed 1usmus' tutorial to the letter and let it run its course on a 3900x.

According to CTR itself, everything had gone smoothly - and looking at the report there was no reason to think otherwise. IIRC it applied a rather nice undervolting (around 1.25v, IIRC) and managed to "push" the cores in CCX1 to something like 4.35 Ghz, with the others between 4.2 and 4.15. Consider my CPU, stock, settles to 4.1 on all cores during load, this looked like a great result - CB20 reflected the improvement.

The system LOOKED like it was working fine, CB20 would run indefinitely without issues, normal use, a game etc; YET, I decided I wanted to make sure the whole thing was "rock solid" - and it was NOT by any definition - OCCT started reprting errors within 1 minute of testing and Prime95 small FFT test would instantly push the CPU to the thermal limit (Kraken X62, under stock conditions the CPU rarely reaches 75c under load, 80 with small FFT).

I've retried the CTR process multiple times, checking BIOS settings, double checking the instructions, every time with the same exact result.
Now, it could probably be made to work if one really throws a lot of time tweaking the process and resulting settings, but frankly I can't be bothered to do that and went back to the standard PBO setting.

The argument about the tool being talked about as a "1 click everyman OC solution!" is very relevant - and I haven't seen any of the tech channels perform a proper test; 1usmus replies under that article are frankly idiotic in tone, sounding like a preschooler - namecalling on the very first line, and then the icing on the cake - "To my great regret your processor didn’t burn out. ".

From Igorslab review

If I could find fault with anything, it would only be the persistent lack of an “AVX Heavy” test mode. Even though only a very small part of the user base might have a use for this, such edge cases can often become critical. If you start a heavy AVX workload like Prime95 small-ffts with AVX or LinpackXtreme, the system always crashes with an “AVX Light” tested profile. The only workaround is to increase the voltage for the P1 and P2 profiles by 75-100 mV and then manually test for stability for these cases. For the vast majority of games and applications you wouldn’t need it, of course, but if you did need it, you’d wish you’d known about it beforehand.

But Yuri already has this and many more items on his roadmap for upcoming releases mentioned at the beginning. CTR 2.1 with many features around the Ryzen 5000 boost innovations has even been unveiled and is available for testing for its Patreon backers already. So Ryzen owners can be happy about the new 2.0 release today and at the same time look forward to upcoming features that are already in development or testing. For such a commitment to the community one gladly leaves a Patreon subscription!

I completely agree with you about 1USMUS and his comments on that review. Should have said nothing IMO and let the reviews speak for themselves. Plenty of good ones out there. At the end of the day it is only a release candidate of the tool. Its not the finished article so to speak. For me this wasnt far off a 1 click tune. I had to reset my pbo and curve optimiser to stock... which is reasonable. Then just click diagnostic... then tune then save the profile. done. If you want the hybrid mode then tune again and save profile 2. Mine works exactly as intended. I would say Igorslab walk through is far more user friendly and gives you the warnings about the heavy AVX workloads. As I said in my first comment about my experience it suits my needs perfectly. It definitely isn't for everyone and you need to be careful about how you load the processor but then again it isnt the final product.

H3llR4iser

tazzzZ wrote: »

From Igorslab review

If I could find fault with anything, it would only be the persistent lack of an “AVX Heavy” test mode. Even though only a very small part of the user base might have a use for this, such edge cases can often become critical. If you start a heavy AVX workload like Prime95 small-ffts with AVX or LinpackXtreme, the system always crashes with an “AVX Light” tested profile. The only workaround is to increase the voltage for the P1 and P2 profiles by 75-100 mV and then manually test for stability for these cases. For the vast majority of games and applications you wouldn’t need it, of course, but if you did need it, you’d wish you’d known about it beforehand.

But Yuri already has this and many more items on his roadmap for upcoming releases mentioned at the beginning. CTR 2.1 with many features around the Ryzen 5000 boost innovations has even been unveiled and is available for testing for its Patreon backers already. So Ryzen owners can be happy about the new 2.0 release today and at the same time look forward to upcoming features that are already in development or testing. For such a commitment to the community one gladly leaves a Patreon subscription!

I completely agree with you about 1USMUS and his comments on that review. Should have said nothing IMO and let the reviews speak for themselves. Plenty of good ones out there. At the end of the day it is only a release candidate of the tool. Its not the finished article so to speak. For me this wasnt far off a 1 click tune. I had to reset my pbo and curve optimiser to stock... which is reasonable. Then just click diagnostic... then tune then save the profile. done. If you want the hybrid mode then tune again and save profile 2. Mine works exactly as intended. I would say Igorslab walk through is far more user friendly and gives you the warnings about the heavy AVX workloads. As I said in my first comment about my experience it suits my needs perfectly. It definitely isn't for everyone and you need to be careful about how you load the processor but then again it isnt the final product.

Yeah but the fact stands - the tool basically creates unstable overclocks while being advertised as a "1 stop(click) solution", which is not even remotely true.

The whole "works for most scenarios" argument is a bit of an odd one to make, overclocks need to be "rock solid" under any circumstances to be called proper - unless one is chasing silly record scores.

There's one hell of a valid argument to be made about something like CTR being more of a "score chaser" tool, because...well, considering how it works in terms of testing, it COULD have been made in a way that prioritized stability ahead of Cinebench scores.

Again, as you say this would've been all academic and a bit pointless being that we're talking about a free tool, that's under development AND that most people wouldn't even know about, but it has become an issue due to the publicity and the author's horrendous attitude.

tazzzZ

I think it could be the 1 stop solution. But not as it stands right now. And I feel its closer than you probably think it is but im no coder.. I think just extra profiles that identify the specific workloads could solve the issues.

I think its perfectly fine in most cases, gaming, general use, or score chasing... just not heavy AVX workloads. And thats enough for it not to be for general consumption by those its aimed at (people looking for easy overclocking), as they wont know why they are having issues and could be causing damage to their cpu in the process.

Ultimately I think the software should not be a Release Candidate... I feel its still very much BETA software. This would at least make more sense. If you want to use it you really need to educate yourself fully of all the caveats about it.

1USMUS really needs to be able to control himself a better too. I sympathise with him in one sense.... He's made this potentially really great software (for free, unless you count patreon) which many media outlets have been able to use with little to no issue and give it glowing reviews but then this one media outlet slate it for the issues they experienced when (in 1USMUS's opinion but who knows) they didnt use it properly. I'd probably be pissed about it too but im aware they are entitled to their opinion and this is indicative of what others may experience. But no way would I ever publicly talk to anyone like that. By all means answer them or whatever... but at least be professional about it and try help the situation... His attitude just makes it worse.

Slutmonkey57b

I would be more sympathetic if it weren't for the fact that 1usmus has been extremely critical and condescending about supposedly concrete issues he's uncovered when developing the software - from AMD's code, to BIOS implementations, he's even ranked mobo suppliers and effectively told people not to buy AsRock boards because their voltage regulation supposedly isn't good enough. All while providing no proof of any of it or reproducible tests. If that's what you're going to dish out, then you'd better be clean as a whistle yourself. What's happened here is that he's received an extremely fair, balanced review that has uncovered a serious issue that the intended users of the software aren't aware of, and which the software itself does not allow you to uncover (because you can't switch out of AVX Light testing). He's absolutely gone off the deep end, when what he could have done is take a step back, look at the feedback, and do something about it.

I am also not on board with the "overclock at your own risk" argument either, for the simple reason that even at the first Alpha stage, when he was seeding it to the likes of Linus Tech Tips, the messaging was very heavy on the "one click, safe, lower voltages, anyone can do it" idea. The software is doing what looks to a lay user like very extensive testing, very carefully, and making recommendations so confidently that it's suggesting you force the parameters at startup. When actually, it's left a glaring hole in its testing that can seriously damage your system. A glaring hole that PBO protects you from. 1usmus has also been heavily rubbishing PBO.

So the risk to me is that many new builders (or new to Ryzen builders, or builders like me who were 10+ years out of the loop) have got a huge PR campaign, which has run across boards like this, and popular youtubers, which is telling them

• AMD's PBO is low quality and doesn't control voltages well
• Some MOBO manufacturers aren't building their boards properly
• This new software from an expert overclocking ubermensch does it all for you, better than PBO or your motherboard's auto-overclock and you should use it instead, especially if you're a newbie.

Whereas it appears that the truth is that the software is fine for certain types of testing but is not actually a tool that can be trusted to set up your system safely, doesn't test your CPU across a reasonable range of scenarios, and the author isn't interested in maintaining a floor level of safety/quality in what he's offering; which puts it back in the class of "some overclockers use tools like this, oh by the way, overclocking is extremely dangerous and unless you're very experienced and desperate for extra performance you can't pay for, you probably shouldn't try it."

tazzzZ

I agree and disagree with you... With regards to the PR campaign. These media outlets are there to give their consumers an unbiased and fair opinion. I'm not naive enough to believe this is always the case (recent Nvidia issues show this) but surely 1USMUS is far from someone they are concerned about burning bridges with(again the media pushing back against Nvidia would show this should be the case). And the damage it could do with their userbase due to a bias review would be far more detrimental to them. So as much as yes 1USMUS may be asking them to sell it that way... its their responsibility to give the truth of their experience. And i'm sure 1USMUS doesnt review or censor the media outlets in that regard. I actually went back and looked at the LTT video on it. They didn't review it, but gave impressions of CTR 1. They never said it was safe and mentioned having a few BSOD's during the process but their impressions of the software was about consistent with what I experienced with CTR 2.0 tbh.

I'm just not ready to slate his tool just yet. I obviously went and used this software and was fully aware of all the issues I could encounter and as such I encountered 0 issues. I also knew not to use it and run heavy AVX workloads (CTR 1 had AVX heavy testing you could do so its likely on the way). I researched all of this before I used it. The information is there And in all honesty anyone who decides to overclock should research what they are doing. 1 stop solution or not if you are taking the risk you need to know the risk. Same way before I enabled PBO and curve optimiser I researched the reasonable settings to start at and could push it from there as I wished. At your own risk is always the bottom line when you overclock. Overclocking and safe dont exist together which is why even when you use AMD's own tools to overclock you void your warranty. Ryzen Master literally displays this every time you open it, my mobo gives me the notice every time I go into the AMD overclocking utility and so does CTR. You cant hold this software to a different set of rules.

100% agree that if 1USMUS is critical of others he needs to accept it when he gets it in return. And if he feels compelled to respond he should at least show a certain level of professionalism about it and just address the issues. Im not completely familiar with all the things he has criticised in the past ie PBO and ASRock (im a fan of PBO and curve optimiser). I have seen the little digs he's made with regard to the lack of support from AMD to help his development but did state that they provided him a few CPU's for testing. His response was awful to that review and made him look like a defensive child. My only point about him was that this appears to be more than just a job to him and is clearly a labour of love. Dont get me wrong there is no excuse for the way he dealt with it but he is clearly very emotionally invested in it and cant remove his emotions from it when he is getting criticised, as a professional should.