AMD Zen Discussion Thread

BloodBath

Finally going to make the jump to Ryzen.

Any improvements I can make to this list around the same price?

The board needs to support at least 6 sata for 4 hdd's and 2 sata ssd's as well as the 1tb nvme ssd. Is there a better faster nvme ssd around the same price?

Also needs to have good power delivery so I can go to 12+ cores down the line.

Will be used for gaming and 3d rendering.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£166.98 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports DUO CPU Cooler (£36.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 GAMING X ATX AM4 Motherboard (£135.95 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£119.97 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£97.58 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £557.47
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-01-15 19:31 GMT+0000

wotzgoingon

BloodBath wrote: »

Finally going to make the jump to Ryzen.

Any improvements I can make to this list around the same price?

The board needs to support at least 6 sata for 4 hdd's and 2 sata ssd's as well as the 1tb nvme ssd. Is there a better faster nvme ssd around the same price?

Also needs to have good power delivery so I can go to 12+ cores down the line.

Will be used for gaming and 3d rendering.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£166.98 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports DUO CPU Cooler (£36.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 GAMING X ATX AM4 Motherboard (£135.95 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£119.97 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£97.58 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £557.47
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-01-15 19:31 GMT+0000

That's not a NVMe SSD it is a sata speed, M2 SSD.

edit: Unless the picture is wrong on PCpart picker. I didn't actually look up the specs just went by the speeds on the box of a picture they have on there.

BloodBath

Ah yes. I missed that. The board is not very good either. Fairly crap features for the price. Bad sound and it looks brown unlike the misleading marketing pictures that make it look black. I think this has always been a thing with dark gigabyte boards.

I'd be more than happy with an x470 or even b450 if it supported Ryzen 3000 without needing an older cpu to update. The ones I was looking at need it.

Also needs to support the use of all 6 sata ports with the nvme ssd. Some disable 2 when using it.

Polar101

wotzgoingon wrote: »

That's not a NVMe SSD it is a sata speed, M2 SSD.

edit: Unless the picture is wrong on PCpart picker. I didn't actually look up the specs just went by the speeds on the box of a picture they have on there.

You're right, it's not NVMe. I've got one of those WD Blues, definitely not the fastest thing around.

Kimbot

BloodBath wrote: »

Ah yes. I missed that. The board is not very good either. Fairly crap features for the price. Bad sound and it looks brown unlike the misleading marketing pictures that make it look black. I think this has always been a thing with dark gigabyte boards.

I'd be more than happy with an x470 or even b450 if it supported Ryzen 3000 without needing an older cpu to update. The ones I was looking at need it.

Also needs to support the use of all 6 sata ports with the nvme ssd. Some disable 2 when using it.

b450 Tomohawk max could be a runner so, 6 sata ports and an m2 connection.

Outkast_IRE

Kimbot wrote: »

b450 Tomohawk max could be a runner so, 6 sata ports and an m2 connection.

have the b450 tomohawk - Would gladly reccomend it - Nice board to work with.

z0oT

BloodBath wrote: »

Also needs to support the use of all 6 sata ports with the nvme ssd. Some disable 2 when using it.

Any X470 or X570 board with 6 SATA ports is what you want.

Stay away from B450 boards with 6 SATA ports - They typically disable the M.2 to support the 6 ports. The reason being that the B450 chipset only has 4 SATA ports natively.

Cuddlesworth

z0oT wrote: »

Actually, temperature numbers like 105C on the VRMs is probably just fine too.

Just one example I found quick - Take the ASUS X570-Pro for instance:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/asus-prime-x570-pro/4.html

The VRMs have a 125C max rated temperature. See the datasheet of the ICs in question below. Page 3, Absolute Max Ratings - Max ambient of 125C.
https://www.vishay.com/docs/76784/sic634.pdf

I agree lower is certainly better, but VRM temperatures like 105C should be just fine from a long term reliability point of view - it's still well within what the manafacturer says is okay. (At least in the above example, I suspect most of the ICs used have similiar temperature ratings)

Should be worth pointing out, if your buying a cheaper board and not bothering overclocking, which is mostly pointless for the 3xxx series, the supplied wraith coolers draw air over directly over the VRM's which is exactly how the boards are designed to work.

yoshiktk

BloodBath wrote: »

Ah yes. I missed that. The board is not very good either. Fairly crap features for the price. Bad sound and it looks brown unlike the misleading marketing pictures that make it look black. I think this has always been a thing with dark gigabyte boards.

I'd be more than happy with an x470 or even b450 if it supported Ryzen 3000 without needing an older cpu to update. The ones I was looking at need it.

Also needs to support the use of all 6 sata ports with the nvme ssd. Some disable 2 when using it.

Something like this Asrock X470 Taichi?
Have it, can't complain.

Redfox25

Got this recently, X570 AORUS ELITE, happy with it so far, Bios looks good and the build quality seems good.

BloodBath

Thanks for the replies guys. So basically all b450 disable 2 sata ports if using the nvme? So that's a non runner. All x470 and x570 will support what I'm looking for then?

yoshiktk wrote: »

Something like this Asrock X470 Taichi?
Have it, can't complain.

Yes it's nice I'm sure but also nearly 200 pounds. I'd be able to get a good x570 for that price.

Redfox25 wrote: »

Got this recently, X570 AORUS ELITE, happy with it so far, Bios looks good and the build quality seems good.

Looks good but also pricey. I'd feel bad spending more on the board than the cpu. I'd sooner put the extra cash into getting a 3700 over the 3600.

Don't need anything overspecced. No need for wifi, 10gbit lan, pcie4. Just ideally decent sound chip, usb 3.2, support for the storage solution i want, good vrm's and cooling and under 150 pounds. Does that even exist. It's hard to get good info on motherboards.

Ther'es only 13 x470/x570 mobos under £150 on pcpartpicker. Are any of them worth a damn or should I spend more?

K.O.Kiki

BloodBath wrote: »

Thanks for the replies guys. So basically all b450 disable 2 sata ports if using the nvme? So that's a non runner. All x470 and x570 will support what I'm looking for then?

Yes it's nice I'm sure but also nearly 200 pounds. I'd be able to get a good x570 for that price.

Looks good but also pricey. I'd feel bad spending more on the board than the cpu. I'd sooner put the extra cash into getting a 3700 over the 3600.

Don't need anything overspecced. No need for wifi, 10gbit lan, pcie4. Just ideally decent sound chip, usb 3.2, support for the storage solution i want, good vrm's and cooling and under 150 pounds. Does that even exist. It's hard to get good info on motherboards.

Ther'es only 13 x470/x570 mobos under £150 on pcpartpicker. Are any of them worth a damn or should I spend more?

tl;dw
good: Gigabyte X570 Gaming X (£142) - could run toasty
alternate: ASUS Prime X470-PRO (£135) - 8-core max, may not have correct BIOS installed
alt2: MSI "MAX" range
better: ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus (£176) - sub-200 champ

yoshiktk

BloodBath wrote: »

Thanks for the replies guys. So basically all b450 disable 2 sata ports if using the nvme? So that's a non runner. All x470 and x570 will support what I'm looking for then?



Yes it's nice I'm sure but also nearly 200 pounds. I'd be able to get a good x570 for that price.



Looks good but also pricey. I'd feel bad spending more on the board than the cpu. I'd sooner put the extra cash into getting a 3700 over the 3600.

Don't need anything overspecced. No need for wifi, 10gbit lan, pcie4. Just ideally decent sound chip, usb 3.2, support for the storage solution i want, good vrm's and cooling and under 150 pounds. Does that even exist. It's hard to get good info on motherboards.

Ther'es only 13 x470/x570 mobos under £150 on pcpartpicker. Are any of them worth a damn or should I spend more?

Reality is that sometimes its good to pay more. In some way You can think about it as long term investment. I've sold few "premium" mobos after few years of usage, still for a good amount of money.
You can check Buildzoids videos, he gives good information about the x470/x570 boards.

BloodBath

Yeah you are probably right especially on this platform. I would like to go to 12 or even 16 cores down the line.

If that would be doable on the same board all the sweeter.

So Asus Tuf X570 is the way to go? Thanks. I'll look into it.

Do you know what the best budget 1TB NVME SSD is K.O.Kiki?

I'm guessing the PCIE4 ones cost a fortune atm. Is there any speed increase on older gen ones that were maxing the bandwidth of PCIE3?

K.O.Kiki

Intel 660p is a decent SSD, it's only mid-tier in performance & uses QLC NAND but it's the only 1Tb under £90

Next would be WD Blue SN550 (£100) then the really fast stuff (3400MB/s read) at £110-125+ with Phison PS5012 / E12 controllers - they're all practically the same.

z0oT

BloodBath wrote: »

Thanks for the replies guys. So basically all b450 disable 2 sata ports if using the nvme? So that's a non runner. All x470 and x570 will support what I'm looking for then?

B450 does that for the reason that chipset itself only has 4 SATA ports. Neither X470 or X570 have that limitation. Here's a handy table on Wikipedia for reference on the numbers of SATA ports or PCIe lanes etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_chipsets#AM4_chipsets

Sidenote - I wish I'd known before I put a B450 board into my server. I would have liked to have put the OS on an M.2 instead, and packed another big HDD into it instead.

K.O.Kiki

z0oT wrote: »

B450 does that for the reason that chipset itself only has 4 SATA ports. Neither X470 or X570 have that limitation. Here's a handy table on Wikipedia for reference on the numbers of SATA ports or PCIe lanes etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_chipsets#AM4_chipsets

Sidenote - I wish I'd known before I put a B450 board into my server. I would have liked to have put the OS on an M.2 instead, and packed another big HDD into it instead.

Just get a PCI-e to (dual) M.2 adapter, or a SATA card.

Cuddlesworth

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Intel 660p is a decent SSD, it's only mid-tier in performance & uses QLC NAND but it's the only 1Tb under £90

Next would be WD Blue SN550 (£100) then the really fast stuff (3400MB/s read) at £110-125+ with Phison PS5012 / E12 controllers - they're all practically the same.

And without synthetic benchmarks, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between any of them.

z0oT

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Just get a PCI-e to (dual) M.2 adapter, or a SATA card.

I ended up getting a PCIe card with 4 SATA ports which is good enough for what I want.

It's a bit of a shame though. The X570 chipset can support up to 12 SATA ports, but there's no motherboard maker that's implemented that. Most have gone down the road of implementing various implementations of multiple M.2 drives, the most you can get is a measly 6 SATA ports.

K.O.Kiki

z0oT wrote: »

I ended up getting a PCIe card with 4 SATA ports which is good enough for what I want.

It's a bit of a shame though. The X570 chipset can support up to 12 SATA ports, but there's no motherboard maker that's implemented that. Most have gone down the road of implementing various implementations of multiple M.2 drives, the most you can get is a measly 6 SATA ports.

Lots of boards with 8x SATA.

But TBH if you have that many HDDs they want you to buy Threadripper.

It's the same situation for Intel

z0oT

There were X370 boards with 8 ports, but I don't think there were any X470 boards with 8 SATA ports, just 6. Good to see there's boards with 8 SATA ports again when it comes to X570.

Threadripper would be total overkill. Maybe for a bunch of SSDs, but the HDDs in my server see very little I/O.

To be honest, I probably should have gone with something like this. It would have pushed up the cost quite a bit though.
https://www.gigabyte.com/Server-Motherboard/MZ01-CE0-rev-2x

EDIT: Or this:
https://www.gigabyte.com/Server-Motherboard/MB51-PS0-rev-10#ov

K.O.Kiki

MSI X470 Gaming Pro carbon & ASRock X470 Taichi have 8x SATA ports.
Don't buy them now obviously, since they're the same price as X570.

Inviere

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

MSI X470 Gaming Pro carbon & ASRock X470 Taichi have 8x SATA ports.
Don't buy them now obviously, since they're the same price as X570.

Just on these, do you lose a sata port or two if you utilise one of the M.2 connectors?

z0oT

Inviere wrote: »

Just on these, do you lose a sata port or two if you utilise one of the M.2 connectors?

On X470 or X570 boards you shouldn't. On B450 with 6 SATA ports chances are that you will lose 2 SATA ports if you use the M.2 slot.

(B450 only natively has 4 SATA ports)

savemejebus

so i'd planned to get a B450 Mortar Max or, if not in stock, a Tomahawk but today I notice that for the same price I can get the X470 Gaming Plus Max.

Is there any good reason not to go x470 seeing as it's all the same price?

Cuddlesworth

savemejebus wrote: »

so i'd planned to get a B450 Mortar Max or, if not in stock, a Tomahawk but today I notice that for the same price I can get the X470 Gaming Plus Max.

Is there any good reason not to go x470 seeing as it's all the same price?

Gives you better options, can't why you wouldn't.

.G.

.G. wrote: »

Daily BSOD's and game crashes on my sons 3600 PC, driving me demented. All drivers up to date, newest BIOS from MSI flashed although thats not saying much given the issues with they've had, RAM passing several runs on memtest at its rated speeds and lower.


I'll have to start digging through dump files to find out whats going on which is never fun:rolleyes::(

Finally got around to checking this. He's still having regular game crashes and a few BSOD's. All temps and voltages etc are fine while gaming. I've checked the minidump files and all of them are coming back as "memory corruption".

So I need to run memtest for a long time and see what occurs but looking likely the ram is at fault.

EDIT:- can only do 4 passes on the free version of Memtest, it's already passed those before :rolleyes:

Kimbot

.G. wrote: »

Finally got around to checking this. He's still having regular game crashes and a few BSOD's. All temps and voltages etc are fine while gaming. I've checked the minidump files and all of them are coming back as "memory corruption".

So I need to run memtest for a long time and see what occurs but looking likely the ram is at fault.

EDIT:- can only do 4 passes on the free version of Memtest, it's already passed those before :rolleyes:

Whats the full spec of the build?

savemejebus

.G. wrote: »

EDIT:- can only do 4 passes on the free version of Memtest, it's already passed those before :rolleyes:

What about the old old version from http://www.memtest.org/, i think that has no limit on passes.

.G.

Kimbot wrote: »

Whats the full spec of the build?

Ryzen 5 3600, 16GB 3200mhz ram on a MSI B450 Gaming Plus mobo, GTX 1080.

savemejebus wrote: »

What about the old old version from http://www.memtest.org/, i think that has no limit on passes.

Got a copy of the full version, ran 13 passes overnight, no errors. thinking now it might be Virtual memory causing the issues. I've got an Intel build with slower DDR4 in it than his, I'm going to put my RAM in his machine and his in mine and see how it goes for a while. Defo rule it out hat way although after the memtest overnight I'm sure its not a hardware issue with the sticks.