Question Zen 4 builders thread

[Markfw]

I know its early, but as someone pointed out, I better get my ram now before the scalpers are all over it.

To go with a 7950x, what do you think of this ram:

https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-32gb-288-pin-ddr5-sdram/p/N82E16820374369?Item=N82E16820374369

(edited for my best recommendation, 12/5/2023)

 

[blackangus]

Is pcie 5 x16 important to you? Then make sure it is a B650E board.
Is wifi?
Is a modern audio codec?

Yeah good point.
So B650E is the minimum Im looking at.
PCIe 5.0 x16 + at least 1 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVME slot.
Audio... it would be nice but honestly I have never had an onboard that was a good as a SB or external DAC so not required on that, Ill only be running 2.1 anyway.
USB 4 would be nice but again not enough to pay for a 500$ board. (The X670 Proart is tempting but just too much)
Wifi un-needed.
Really just trying to feel out what is solid and whats crap.

Thanks everyone!

 

[biostud]

Yeah good point.
So B650E is the minimum Im looking at.
PCIe 5.0 x16 + at least 1 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVME slot.
Audio... it would be nice but honestly I have never had an onboard that was a good as a SB or external DAC so not required on that, Ill only be running 2.1 anyway.
USB 4 would be nice but again not enough to pay for a 500$ board. (The X670 Proart is tempting but just too much)
Wifi un-needed.
Really just trying to feel out what is solid and whats crap.

Thanks everyone!

You can get a dud no matter what brand you choose. Personally I would simply make a shortlist of the boards that fulfill the my requirements. For me it was wifi, PCIe 5 x16, and low cost. Both the B650E and X670E boards that met these criteria was ASRock, so that is what I went with.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Both the B650E and X670E boards that met these criteria was ASRock, so that is what I went with.

Howdy, fellow ASROCKer!

 

[biostud]

Howdy, fellow ASROCKer!

And current board is also a 2014 board from ASRock

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

Yeah good point.
So B650E is the minimum Im looking at.
PCIe 5.0 x16 + at least 1 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVME slot.
Audio... it would be nice but honestly I have never had an onboard that was a good as a SB or external DAC so not required on that, Ill only be running 2.1 anyway.
USB 4 would be nice but again not enough to pay for a 500$ board. (The X670 Proart is tempting but just too much)
Wifi un-needed.
Really just trying to feel out what is solid and whats crap.

Thanks everyone!

Gigabyte has the best turnkey experience and performance with regards to memory/EXPO. The B650E Aorus Master I would have chosen over my X670E Aorus Master since they have practically identical feature sets minus the extra chipset. Of course it's relatively expensive for a B650E at $325 or $350.

Whatever choice you make, I am a big fan of AM5 in general at the moment despite many detractors criticizing its IO compared to Intel for some reason.

The soon-to-be-released MSI MAG X670E Tomahawk looks pretty interesting, as well. And only $310 on Newegg.

 

[biostud]

Delidding the 7000 CPU's using dental floss and an iron.

YouTuber Uses Dental Floss To Delid Ryzen 7000 | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)

 

[Kaluan]

Yeah good point.
So B650E is the minimum Im looking at.
PCIe 5.0 x16 + at least 1 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVME slot.
Audio... it would be nice but honestly I have never had an onboard that was a good as a SB or external DAC so not required on that, Ill only be running 2.1 anyway.
USB 4 would be nice but again not enough to pay for a 500$ board. (The X670 Proart is tempting but just too much)
Wifi un-needed.
Really just trying to feel out what is solid and whats crap.

Thanks everyone!

Only B650E w/ USB4 AFAIK is the ASRock Taichi (1x). But while the X670E (2x USB4) versions are priced pretty nicely, the B650E one is just 10% cheaper. So not worth it IMO, to anyone looking for such a feature, just spring for X670E like the Taichi, Hero or ProArt instead.

Anyway, looking to hone in on a feature packed/good value B650E myself, need great audio (so ALC4080 + AMP preferably), but I gave up on USB4. Otherwise great VRM and memory tuning capabilities are also on my top 3 features list. So far the Strix B650E-E is my go to, but due to some GPU delays and money problems I may end up looking up some other/future options as well.

Damn ASUS for pricing the Hero so high this generation.

 

[moinmoin]

Delidding the 7000 CPU's using dental floss and an iron.

YouTuber Uses Dental Floss To Delid Ryzen 7000 | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)

As some of us already know, dental floss is indeed the answer to all cooling separation needs. 😁

 

[Kaluan]

24GB DIMMs should be single rank. 48GB DIMMs should be dual rank.

So that would mean I'd need a 96GB kit to be 2R on 2x populated? Yikes, nope. 64GB is already excessive for me, but since the pricing has come down a lot, that's what I'll be aiming for.

 

[biostud]

Only B650E w/ USB4 AFAIK is the ASRock Taichi (1x). But while the X670E (2x USB4) versions are priced pretty nicely, the B650E one is just 10% cheaper. So not worth it IMO, to anyone looking for such a feature, just spring for X670E like the Taichi, Hero or ProArt instead.

Anyway, looking to hone in on a feature packed/good value B650E myself, need great audio (so ALC4080 + AMP preferably), but I gave up on USB4. Otherwise great VRM and memory tuning capabilities are also on my top 3 features list. So far the Strix B650E-E is my go to, but due to some GPU delays and money problems I may end up looking up some other/future options as well.

Damn ASUS for pricing the Hero so high this generation.

Personally I prefer my good audio in a soundcard or a DAC.

 

[IEC]

Posting from my X670E 7700X bundle I got from Newegg for $500.

ASRock X670E PG Lightning AM5 motherboard (4x NVMe)
Ryzen 7700X
G.Skill FlareX DDR-6000 CL36 (Samsung ICs) - F5-6000J3636F16GX2-FX5

Threw on a old Scythe Fuma 2 heatsink and put a bunch of the new 120mm Thermalright ARGB fans (<$5 ea) in the case and one to replace the CPU fan. This thing is barely audible at idle.

Few quibbles with ASRock BIOS so far - 1) it forces you to reset your RAM to JEDEC speeds to flash BIOS and 2) either PBO is broken or buggy in latest 1.18 BIOS, as enabling it tanked my CPU performance and kept it locked at 550MHz. I reset it to stock and no issues with everything scoring as it should both ST and MT.

Also RAM timings are different from what I'm used to with ASUS. For now I loaded EXPO settings and then selected "Aggressive" from the ASRock timing presets under the profile.

 

[IEC]

Default timings on Samsung CL36 EXPO kits suck. I verified MEMCLK=UCLK in BIOS and still mega fail at 69ns in AIDA64. Hopefully not unique to ASRock. Compare at ~59ns for Buildzoid's easy timings on Hynix M-Die at the same 6000 MT/s.

I changed TREFI from the stock 11K to 50K and immediately shaved 3ns off. 66ns is still pretty mediocre...

Think I'll just tweak a few subtimings and boost the frequency to 6200 and call it a day (assuming it passes testing)

 

[AdamK47]

Default timings on Samsung CL36 EXPO kits suck. I verified MEMCLK=UCLK in BIOS and still mega fail at 69ns in AIDA64. Hopefully not unique to ASRock. Compare at ~59ns for Buildzoid's easy timings on Hynix M-Die at the same 6000 MT/s.

I changed TREFI from the stock 11K to 50K and immediately shaved 3ns off. 66ns is still pretty mediocre...

Think I'll just tweak a few subtimings and boost the frequency to 6200 and call it a day (assuming it passes testing)

View attachment 78544

That's why I don't buy into the hype of EXPO memory. They are better than most DOCP profiles, but I'd still rather take good binned Hynix A-die that don't even come with an EXPO profile and tweak it manually. Much better performance and stability.

 

[IEC]

After some minor tweaking.
tREFI to 60K
FCLK to 2067 MHz
MEMCLK=UCLK
6200 MT/s
"Aggressive" subtimings preset from ASRock
VDDIO and VDD 1.37V
vSOC 1.25V



Edit: Looks like NB clock is half what it should be... buggy BIOS? Time for more tweaking.

 

[IEC]

Yep, looks like it defaults for 6200MT/s and above. UCLK=MEMCLK/2 and even after changing it in BIOS to UCLK=MEMCLK it doesn't appear to take effect.

Guess I'll settle for very slightly tuned 6000 MT/s with FCLK 2067MHz and tREFI 60K. Which is very much "meh" versus tuned Hynix M/A dies.

 

[AdamK47]

Bought a new PCI-E Gen 5 NVMe drive today. Micro Center's own Inland TD510. Didn't use the heatsink with buzzy fan it came with (plus it looks god awful). Put it in the Gen-Z.2 card. It gets plenty of airflow on the heatsink. Don't need to worry about thermal throttling.

A funny thing happened when I was in the store. I was talking with one of the Micro Center reps about the drive and behind me was an actual employee from Phison that did test validation using various motherboards. He overheard that I wanted to take the heatsink and fan off of it. He interrupted by saying don't do that. I told him that I have the Asus X670E Crosshair Extreme and was planning to use the Gen-Z.2 card. He said that it will work fine with the drive. Apparently, he tested the combination with this board and combinations with many other boards.

 

[CP5670]

Gigabyte has the best turnkey experience and performance with regards to memory/EXPO. The B650E Aorus Master I would have chosen over my X670E Aorus Master since they have practically identical feature sets minus the extra chipset. Of course it's relatively expensive for a B650E at $325 or $350.

Whatever choice you make, I am a big fan of AM5 in general at the moment despite many detractors criticizing its IO compared to Intel for some reason.

The soon-to-be-released MSI MAG X670E Tomahawk looks pretty interesting, as well. And only $310 on Newegg.

This one looks attractive. It has most of the features of their Carbon board but at a reasonable price for X670E. The VRM is a bit weaker but they are all more than enough for the X3Ds.

I was also looking at the Asus B650E-E but don't like how using all four M.2 slots cuts down the main PCIE slot's bandwidth.

 

[DisEnchantment]

New AGESA , but as usual no idea what the heck changed.

MPG X670E CARBON WIFI

Offering colorful customization with Mystic Light, tuned for better performance by 18 Duet Rail Power System, DDR5 memory with Memory Boost, Lightning Gen5 M.2 & PCIe, Premium Thermal Solution, Screwless M.2 Shield Frozr, Wi-Fi 6E, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2

www.msi.com

But quite stable for me, and boot in 6 seconds, with memory context restore and XMP enabled. Quite happy now.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

New AGESA , but as usual no idea what the heck changed.
View attachment 78726

MPG X670E CARBON WIFI

Offering colorful customization with Mystic Light, tuned for better performance by 18 Duet Rail Power System, DDR5 memory with Memory Boost, Lightning Gen5 M.2 & PCIe, Premium Thermal Solution, Screwless M.2 Shield Frozr, Wi-Fi 6E, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2

www.msi.com

But quite stable for me, and boot in 6 seconds, with memory context restore and XMP enabled. Quite happy now.

I hope it fixes the PBO enabled scheduling issues for the 7900/7950X3D. Whenever I enable PBO no matter how I configure it, it just randomly schedules all singlethread workloads on the V$ CCD. Workloads that when PBO is disabled actually get scheduled on the fast cores of the speed CCD. Guess I'll find out.

 

[eek2121]

Large DIMM support, at least on ASUS boards. I don’t have a kit to test how well it works.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

I hope it fixes the PBO enabled scheduling issues for the 7900/7950X3D. Whenever I enable PBO no matter how I configure it, it just randomly schedules all singlethread workloads on the V$ CCD. Workloads that when PBO is disabled actually get scheduled on the fast cores of the speed CCD. Guess I'll find out.

Update: it doesn't fix the PBO enabled scheduling bug. Might need a chipset driver update as well but nothing yet since X3D launch.

 

[CP5670]

New AGESA , but as usual no idea what the heck changed.
View attachment 78726

MPG X670E CARBON WIFI

Offering colorful customization with Mystic Light, tuned for better performance by 18 Duet Rail Power System, DDR5 memory with Memory Boost, Lightning Gen5 M.2 & PCIe, Premium Thermal Solution, Screwless M.2 Shield Frozr, Wi-Fi 6E, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2

www.msi.com

But quite stable for me, and boot in 6 seconds, with memory context restore and XMP enabled. Quite happy now.

Can you turn off the memory retraining after the first boot?

This board is overpriced (even on sale it's $440 or so) but I'll probably go for it anyway. Every other board I was looking at has some obscure issue or limitation, and I've had a good experience with my existing Carbon board and already have the MSI software set up.

 

[DisEnchantment]

Can you turn off the memory retraining after the first boot?

Yes, it is called Memory Context Restore on MSI X670E. Only first boot is slow.

Ryzen 7000-series boot time

Hi everybody I am looking into building a 7900X system & donating my 5900X to my son. I have watched a lot of reviews and i'm aware of the "memory training" that Zen4 performs when you : boot up your new build for the first time after enabling the EXPO profile or changing ram after a power loss...

community.amd.com

 

[In2Photos]

New AGESA , but as usual no idea what the heck changed.
View attachment 78726

MPG X670E CARBON WIFI

Offering colorful customization with Mystic Light, tuned for better performance by 18 Duet Rail Power System, DDR5 memory with Memory Boost, Lightning Gen5 M.2 & PCIe, Premium Thermal Solution, Screwless M.2 Shield Frozr, Wi-Fi 6E, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2

www.msi.com

But quite stable for me, and boot in 6 seconds, with memory context restore and XMP enabled. Quite happy now.

Do you use PBO? After the BIOS update do you have to manually re-enter your PBO information? I've tried saving the profile both in BIOS and to a USB drive. During a restore it restores my RAM settings, but not my PBO settings. They stay at default so I have to manually enter them in. Not too big of a deal, but I can't figure out why they wouldn't be stored in the profile.

 

[Timmah!]

Who says i'm only doing overclocking and benchmarking ?
View attachment 78378

And here i thought my 331 hours of Sins of a Solar Empire after 11 years was a lot :-D