Pairing an R7 with a B350 motherboard is not a bad thing, just the R7 is more of an enthusiast cpu, and generally you see them paired with an enthusiast motherboard. The only thing you will lose is some PCI channels with the B350. But a good solid B350 motherboard paired with say R7 1700 will provide you with good solid performance across your range of usages and applications.
Was wondering if this motherboard is a good budget pairing with the r7 1700. I might add a mild overclock in the future, but nothing much. I also don't need any of the bling features, sli support, inbuilt wireless, bluetooth, or good quality sound (since i have an external usb audio card) that come with the more expensive x370 boards.
I just completed a new build using the Asrock AB350 Pro 4. Of course I paired it with an R5 1600 and I'm only shooting for a modest overclock i.e. running the 1600 at 1600X speeds. So far I'm only up to 3.7 Ghz with the stock AMD cooler and stock voltage and will probably need something better before going beyond that.
Anyway, its working great so far. Of course its only been running for 3 days so we will see as time goes by as far as this board goes. Of course it was only $39 bundled with the CPU so its hard to go wrong.
As far as chipset goes, I just looked at the extras that the x370 had to offer and decided I didn't need them for my purposes and only really looked at the B350.
I wanted to edit my order to the asus board, but did not make it in time, so decided to just go with the ab350 pro4. Linux booted up fine (though there sometimes seems to be a bit of a lag before the monitor lits up) and the cpu is whisper quite with this cooler compared to my previous x4 860k cpu with the stock cooler. The only problem i'm having is that there seems to be no way to update the bios without a windows installer. My previous asrock fm2a88x board was able to update itself through the bios lan connection, without any installers, but i don't see such an option here. I wonder if running windows on a virtual machine and installing drivers that way would work?
Looks like your having fun. If you increase the cpu voltage get a better cooler!
you cant update the bios from within the bios itself?
Updating the Bios: ASrock boards usually have an "Instant flash" option inside the bios itself that lets you update from a flash drive. However the BIOS mine had when it came out of the box did not have that option (after I updated it to the latest version : 2.2. it did have the option). On the download page there are three different installers. One for Windows (which I used), one for Instant Flash and one for DOS. For the DOS one, I'm assuming you would need to first figure out how to make a bootable DOS flash drive or cd...which I couldn't tell you how to do from Linux but when I google it, there seems to be instructions all over.
Or, if you have a windows machine available there are a number of free utilities that will create a dos boot flash drive. I use one called Rufus. See:
https://www.howtogeek.com/136987/how-to-create-a-bootable-dos-usb-drive/
Another option I didn't notice until later is that if you hit F11 to go to the boot menu there is an instant flash option there too. Only thing is, I don't know if that was available in the out of the box bios since I didn't look there.
I'm usually cautious about buying bottom of the line components. If I were on a budget I'd still try to fit one of the entry level X370 motherboards for a build. ASRock X370 Killer SLI is only $140 after rebate, Sure, it's a bit more than B350 prices, but if you want to build something dependable and lasting (5+ years) then it's worth to buy better quality.
now that you have that initial update done you should have the instantaneously option available in the bios.Ok, so i remembered that i have a laptop, that i just bought and have not deleted the filthy windows partition. Thank you Ratman6161 for the freeDos suggestion, i quickly made the freedos bootable usb, threw in the dos file, booted up freedos and proceeded to execute the asrock executable. All went smoothly and now i have the 2.2 version bios.
now that you have that initial update done you should have the instantaneously option available in the bios.
Yup, I was surprised too as I have another Asrock based system where I've got an FX8320 and 99OFX chipset tha's several years old. So I was expecting this board to have all the same settings etc that I'm used to on that system....but no. They must have been really rushed to be not including features that Asrock has been including on AMD boards for years. All's well that ends well I guess since its fine after getting it through that initial update.Yes, and a bunch of other stuff that was not there initially. Very strange that they would release the bios in such an unfinished state.
Sorry for the late reply, but this old overclockers link does a good job of explaining the differences and benefits:Sorry for the triple post, but don't want anyone to think that i had the right idea, looking at this website, it seems the situation is more nuanced than i thought:
https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f12/am4-mainboard-vrm-liste-1155146.html
The "ASRock AB350 Pro4" has only a 3 real phases instead of the 4 on the "MSI B350 Tomahawk" . This forum lists the "ASUS PRIME X370-PRO" as the price/performance king, since it actually has 6 real phases at 160 dollars/euros. Wish i could read German, since the translator makes it a bit of a mess.
Would be interesting to hear from someone who could explain the difference (in performance) between 3x2 vs 4 vs 6 phase designs.
UPDATE: Last night I discovered that there is a new bios out: 2.50 (up from 2.20).
In the description it says "Update Agesa Version string "SummitPI-AM4 1.0.0.4a""
But the previous 2.2 version said ".Update AGESA to 1.0.0.4a"
So any idea what the actual differences are? Is there an actual change log somewhere I'm missing?
Its a big update, better memory support, boots faster, lower latency on the memory, new memory overclocking menu. My Corsair 3000mhz kit booted at 2667 with the new 2.50 Asrock bios, before that it stayed at 2133.
Ill say. my RAM is Crucial Balistix 16x2 DDR4 2400, 16-16-16-16-38. Its dual rank modules. So I was not really expecting too much due to all the memory issues I've been reading about. But mine booted up first time with the RAM properly recognized at its stock speeds, so I thought I was doing pretty well. I even managed to reduce the timings to 15-15-15-15. All attempts at DDR4 2666 failed. But with the new BIOS suddenly my run of the mill RAM will do DDR4 2666 16-16-16-16-38. This required upping the voltage to 1.35. Then I got greedy and tried for 2934 - but that didn't work. Still, getting 2666 out of my 2400 RAM seems like a pretty nice "upgrade" from just a BIOS update.
This is the first time I've built a system with DDR4. Everything I've read says that raising the voltage from 1.2v up to 1.35 shouldn't be a big deal. True or false???