People avoiding GB B450 & X470 boards?

[Mac29]

Am I correct that people are avoiding Gigabyte AMD 400 series boards because they think the VRMs & heatsinks, the bios, and warranty support/customer service is "worse" than others? I've read that but wonder if it's mainly non-fans of the bios. The VRMs and heatsinks seem to be widespread opinion. For support or warranty I have no idea.

Also, do you think in the near future B370 mobos will be priced any less than B450/X470, generally?


Thanks,

Mac

 

[kschendel]

No, I don't think you are correct. No doubt there are a few gigabyte avoiders, and I'm sure they are matched by the asus haters, asrock haters, MSI haters, ....

 

[Mac29]

That's good because I've just found some interesting GB boards, one of w/looks stellar. Don't know what to think between the GB bios detractors and the whole MSI 'MAX' bios thing.

 

[GhostPirateLeChuck]

That's good because I've just found some interesting GB boards, one of w/looks stellar. Don't know what to think between the GB bios detractors and the whole MSI 'MAX' bios thing.

For what it's worth, even though the Aorus Master I bought died 3 days after it arrived, I still like it. It seemed very well built (frankly over the top) the BIOS was mostly laid out logically (two or three BIOS features were poorly explained in the manual), and that 3900X at least seemed to do well with it. At least for a while.

I RMA'd it back to NewEgg, and even if they don't send a replacement, I'd honestly give that board another shot down the road. Maybe after a few more BIOS updates or version 1.1 comes out. If they do send me a replacement, I'm definitely not going to flash it with the latest BIOS right out of the gate again, if nothing more than to eliminate that as a potential cause.

For whatever reason, it started randomly freezing during a reboot, showing two codes on the debug LED that aren't listed in the manual. The final time it did that, the board refused to post. Not even the soft power switch, status and BIOS LEDs, nor the debug LED would light up, even while power was applied, switching to the backup BIOS did not, and trying to use the BIOS Flashback feature did nothing. . I was able to eliminate every component except the CPU and that PCH, but I didn't have a multimeter handy to check the voltage measurement points, nor another AM4 board to test the CPU with. Oh, and the RGB stopped working on that back panel 2-3 hours before it passed (not that I cared. Couldn't see it due to the NH-D15 CPU cooler anyway.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

No, I don't think you are correct. No doubt there are a few gigabyte avoiders, and I'm sure they are matched by the asus haters, asrock haters, MSI haters, ....

Yup. Board quality varies between models from the same vendor. And not a single one has superior quality across every model compared to the other major vendors. I have a B450 AORUS Elite that is rock solid. Of course it is in a full tower Phanteks with good cooling and a beefy PSU in a 75f room, none of which hurts. Does it have the best components on it? No, but it doesn't need them for my use. If you want to juice your stuff for every MHz you can get you should be buying boards recommended by the elite overclockers, and spare no expense. Doing it on cheap hardware is a crap shoot, and with outliers, always has been.

And stuff gets past QC that should not. Some sellers seem to get "bad batches" too. It happens. But with only a couple of exceptions, if I am the least bit concerned about longevity of PC hardware, I buy the squaretrade with it. The sale price absorbs the expense, and now I have 3-4yrs where I can get it fixed within 5 biz days or get a check for the full purchase price.

 

[Mac29]

This is interesting. I've read for years about people avoiding AsRock. I think a lot of people hate their support. But they have 2 boards on my list, one of which has the debug LED : p I'm wondering what the egg will do vs. replace.... They've definitely lost a step the last few years. Used to be golden. Not flashing right away sounds prudent, yeah.

The Arous Elite is on my short list. I won't OC hard but I figure if you want the ability to OC and/or drop in a hotter cpu you need a beefier board.
But I really appreciate hearing about squaretrade. Forgot about it in the whirl of tech I'm catching up on. But I'd researched it and it sounds legit.
I hate when companies scale back the warranty. I'll definitely use that in deciding.

Cheers.

 

[kschendel]

On any given day, some customer service rep somewhere, regardless of industry, will drop the ball and aggravate a situation. Or, sometimes a customer can't accept that DOA's happen. That's when you see "Brand X is worthless garbage and I'll never buy them again." You really need to see statistical failure rates to draw any useful conclusions, and you can't get that from reading retailer reviews.

 

[Mac29]

Love to find good failure rates for a few items. I do think some companies short the entire support side of things. Between cheap out & consider it an afterthought it's a wonder you can even contact someone. Or keep a line of communication up. Mass quantities. But usually customers catch up. I'll pay more for proper behavior, even if I encounter a dud. Somebody else can choose Alibaba.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Am I correct that people are avoiding Gigabyte AMD 400 series boards because they think the VRMs & heatsinks, the bios, and warranty support/customer service is "worse" than others? I've read that but wonder if it's mainly non-fans of the bios. The VRMs and heatsinks seem to be widespread opinion. For support or warranty I have no idea.

Also, do you think in the near future B370 mobos will be priced any less than B450/X470, generally?


Thanks,

Mac

Count me as one, Gigabyte has been my last choice for anything since my FX build with the Gigabyte board that failed 3 times within approximately 9 months.
1st board doa, two ram slots wouldn’t work
2 & 3 boards both had video failures after a few months.
Thank god I accidentally bought the Microcenter extended warranty
After that fiasco I refuse to give Gigabyte my money. No excuse to put out such crappy boards.

 

[Iron Woode]

And stuff gets past QC that should not. Some sellers seem to get "bad batches" too. It happens. But with only a couple of exceptions, if I am the least bit concerned about longevity of PC hardware, I buy the squaretrade with it. The sale price absorbs the expense, and now I have 3-4yrs where I can get it fixed within 5 biz days or get a check for the full purchase price.

I still remember the "bad cap" issue back in the mid 2000's. I stopped buying MSI because of that.

 

[flagmonkey47]

I am one of those who just hates Gigabyte and I have satisfactory explanation and proof for that. Here is the proof-
https://community.amd.com/thread/227041
Being an owner of Gigabyte board (AB350M GAMING 3) I know how much I have suffered. It is not about defects but the BIOS. For eg. they use HPET till today ,when AMD has recommended to disable it. If I disable it I start receiving memory crash dumps from games. Even if I turn it on the overall performance of the board is just crap.

 

[DrMrLordX]

For what it's worth, even though the Aorus Master I bought died 3 days after it arrived, I still like it.

Have you found anyone else with the same problems? Not that an x570 board problem is entirely on-topic, mind you, but at least it's Gigabyte.

 

[alexruiz]

On AM4, I am personally a fan of Gigabyte boards, they are usually my first choice.
In general, well made, good features, good performance and good fan control.

On the downside, the UEFI is always buggier for the first iterations on a newer AGESA branch. The X370 / B350 didn't fix a few issues until the release of AGESA RavenPi 1.0.0.7.
B450 / X470 really shined after AGESA PinnaclePi 1.0.0.4.

The B450 Arous ProWiFi has to be the best value for the money for a Ryzen 2000 series. On AGESA PinnaclePi 1.0.0.6 the board is simply amazing. Great balance between aggressive boost with reasonable fan noise, and for RAM it will will run on anything DDR4.

For Ryzen 3000? Cycle repeats, right now I would say Gigabyte is behind everyone, but I am sure that by AGESA ComboPI 1.0.0.7 or so it will be leading again

PS.
Owner of B450 Aorus Pro WiFi, B450 Aorus M, X470 Aorus ultra gaming.
Former owner of AB350 Gaming 3, AB350M Gaming 3 and X370 Gaming K5.

 

[alexruiz]

I am one of those who just hates Gigabyte and I have satisfactory explanation and proof for that. Here is the proof-
https://community.amd.com/thread/227041
Being an owner of Gigabyte board (AB350M GAMING 3) I know how much I have suffered. It is not about defects but the BIOS. For eg. they use HPET till today ,when AMD has recommended to disable it. If I disable it I start receiving memory crash dumps from games. Even if I turn it on the overall performance of the board is just crap.

What BIOS version are you running?

 

[flagmonkey47]

What BIOS version are you running?

F31. I updated to the F41a BIOS too but I liked F31 more. Still HPET is enabled by default in both BIOS. And do see the link I posted. Have you ever tried disabling HPET on your Gigabyte board? If yes then did you notice the difference?

 

[Mac29]

This is good stuff. Still finding GB detractors on sites, and an OC site says the B450 elite, etc. have worse caps vs. X470. I've crossed off a few boards but I may reconsider.

Is there a consensus on using HPET nowadays?

 

[flagmonkey47]

This is good stuff. Still finding GB detractors on sites, and an OC site says the B450 elite, etc. have worse caps vs. X470. I've crossed off a few boards but I may reconsider.

Is there a consensus on using HPET nowadays?

I was wrong about HPET. It has zero impact now. I have now tested again and confirmed it. However I still oppose buying Gigabyte products as I believe that my GPU is underperforming on this board. Also I get weird errors with this board in games and after changing all components except motherboard I still get the errors. So I think it is Gigabyte's poor software.

 

[alexruiz]

F31. I updated to the F41a BIOS too but I liked F31 more. Still HPET is enabled by default in both BIOS. And do see the link I posted. Have you ever tried disabling HPET on your Gigabyte board? If yes then did you notice the difference?

Yes I read what you posted on reddit.

I do not touch the HPET option, I always let windows handle the timer. Remember, even if HPET is enabled at the BIOS doesn't mean that windows will use it.
Case in point:
HPET was an option in BIOS as the initial version of Ryzen Master used HPET. You installed Ryzen master, you had to reboot as HPET would then get enabled at the OS level. Just because the UEFI had HPET "enabled" didn't mean windows would use it.

So, no, I have not touched that setting at the UEFI, but why should I? In my builds, Gigabyte B450 boards consistently score higher than the competition, the boosts are more aggressive.

If you are having issues, your overclock is at fault. You already admitted that you are overclocking, so in every single system issue, a botched overclock is always the first suspect.

If you have a Ryzen 2000 series CPU, you should NOT be on a UEFI higher than F25 for the AB350M Gaming 3. That UEFI is AGESA PinnaclePi 1.0.0.6.

 

[Shmee]

I have had no issues with my AB350M Gaming 3. Been pretty solid for a B350 board. Going to put my Ryzen 2700X in it now that I have a 3700X in my Asrock.

 

[flagmonkey47]

Yes I read what you posted on reddit.

I do not touch the HPET option, I always let windows handle the timer. Remember, even if HPET is enabled at the BIOS doesn't mean that windows will use it.
Case in point:
HPET was an option in BIOS as the initial version of Ryzen Master used HPET. You installed Ryzen master, you had to reboot as HPET would then get enabled at the OS level. Just because the UEFI had HPET "enabled" didn't mean windows would use it.

So, no, I have not touched that setting at the UEFI, but why should I? In my builds, Gigabyte B450 boards consistently score higher than the competition, the boosts are more aggressive.

If you are having issues, your overclock is at fault. You already admitted that you are overclocking, so in every single system issue, a botched overclock is always the first suspect.

If you have a Ryzen 2000 series CPU, you should NOT be on a UEFI higher than F25 for the AB350M Gaming 3. That UEFI is AGESA PinnaclePi 1.0.0.6.

When did I say I was overclocking, I am running at stock speeds. And I have a Ryzen 1st gen CPU.

 

[flagmonkey47]

I have had no issues with my AB350M Gaming 3. Been pretty solid for a B350 board. Going to put my Ryzen 2700X in it now that I have a 3700X in my Asrock.

I don't know but I am having issues with this board in games. They stuuter a lot. And my PSU(CX 450) should not be a problem. And the main thing is that each time I update BIOS I have different experience. Which BIOS are you using? Also because I have 1st gen Ryzen does it mean that I should not update to those BIOSes which are meant for next gen Ryzen?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I don't know but I am having issues with this board in games. They stuuter a lot. And my PSU(CX 450) should not be a problem. And the main thing is that each time I update BIOS I have different experience. Which BIOS are you using? Also because I have 1st gen Ryzen does it mean that I should not update to those BIOSes which are meant for next gen Ryzen?

I dunno, 450 watt power supply for a modern system sounds sort of weak to me.

 

[flagmonkey47]

I dunno, 450 watt power supply for a modern system sounds sort of weak to me.

It is nowhere near modern I have Ryzen 3 1200 and RX 460.

 

[BUTCH1]

I don't know but I am having issues with this board in games. They stuuter a lot. And my PSU(CX 450) should not be a problem. And the main thing is that each time I update BIOS I have different experience. Which BIOS are you using? Also because I have 1st gen Ryzen does it mean that I should not update to those BIOSes which are meant for next gen Ryzen?

I wouldent, I have an Asrock B450 proM, it works just fine with the 5 1600 I'm running and even accepted the "Teamforce" memory I installed without issue. I was disappointed with the crappy manual, print was so light it was very tough to read and ZERO information on BIOS settings. The BIOS has a QR code you can scan for "more information", WTF, I have to use a smartphone to get information that should be already included. That being said, it would seem profit margins are slim in Mobo's so cost-cutting is becoming the norm.

 

[flagmonkey47]

I wouldent, I have an Asrock B450 proM, it works just fine with the 5 1600 I'm running and even accepted the "Teamforce" memory I installed without issue. I was disappointed with the crappy manual, print was so light it was very tough to read and ZERO information on BIOS settings. The BIOS has a QR code you can scan for "more information", WTF, I have to use a smartphone to get information that should be already included. That being said, it would seem profit margins are slim in Mobo's so cost-cutting is becoming the norm.

I think I should switch to ASUS boards. I heard that recently they had some security issues. Are those fixed now?