Motherboard for 7800X3D?

eddiew

eddiew

eddiew

Soldato
Joined
26 Jan 2007
Posts
2,541
Location
Leeds
Hey folks,

So... in the exact opposite of all my plans to go micro ATX for once, I've seen the Fractal North in white and I'm basically just gonna wait until it is available in the UK. Because yeah I don't care about a couple of inches any more: that is the case I want, even if it is irrational and it doesn't exist in stores yet. Which means I can pick an ATX board instead of an mATX board. Which means I'm throwing all my careful research out the window.

Quite honestly, I've exhausted myself with it at this point. I'm looking at the MSI MPG B650 Edge WiFi because a) it has silver heatsinks which will look good especially if I get the windowed case variant, and b) it has a dragon on it, and c) it keeps the m.2 slots well away from the GPU as is sensible on a full sized board. Other than that, honestly, I just want to know it'll run a 7800X3D with 64gb 6000 and no messing. And more importantly, that it'll be up for an 8800X3D later, and maybe even a 9800X3D much later. There seems to be so little overclocking headroom on modern hardware that I honestly cannot be arsed this time around.

But my google skills are failing to turn up any reviews. Seems to be a common problem for motherboards of late, but it doesn't do my confidence any good. I've currently got a pack of this memory: https://www.gskill.com/product/165/377/1649234514/F5-6000J3040G32GX2-RS5W-F5-6000J3040G32GA2-RS5W sitting on my desk. I had to order it from the US because apparently we don't believe it exists here in England. As far as I can see, the black (K) version is on the support list, so the white (W) version logically also is but nobody has bothered to write it down.

Anyway, good choice / bad choice?

Thanks!
 
eddiew said:
But my google skills are failing to turn up any reviews. Seems to be a common problem for motherboards of late, but it doesn't do my confidence any good.
Click to expand...

The only large scale thermal/vrm testing that I'm aware of is the B650 roundup that hardware unboxed did and their results were that almost all the boards are going to be fine (and for gaming, more than fine). The exception was the low-end Asus Prime boards, which both overheated @ over 100 degrees (with a 7950X), partly due to their excessive CPU voltage. I have zero concern about the MSI B650 Edge for the 7800X3D or 8800X3D.
 
Tetras said:
The only large scale thermal/vrm testing that I'm aware of is the B650 roundup that hardware unboxed did and their results were that almost all the boards are going to be fine (and for gaming, more than fine). The exception was the low-end Asus Prime boards, which both overheated @ over 100 degrees (with a 7950X), partly due to their excessive CPU voltage. I have zero concern about the MSI B650 Edge for the 7800X3D or 8800X3D.
Click to expand...

Good to know, thank you :)

And yeah, I have glanced at the Asus Prime boards and... literally all of them have a) a decent layout that makes them interesting, but b) awful VRM heatsinks. The mATX version just forgets to have any on the upper section. Sorry but I'm just a little bit too savvy to think that's going to work out.. :/
 
Last edited:
When I researched I found:

  • Asus - overall bad (hardware unboxed).
  • Gigabyte good on Hardware unboxed but google coil whine on them it seems common. So I avoided.
  • MSI - good but some memory problems as reported on hardware unboxed and reddit. Need to tweak* / wait for better bios which is what I have been used to for MSI.

So I went for a MSI B650M Mortar.

*Possible fix: uclk=memclk in bios that I need to test.
 
Scooby-DoobyDoo said:
When I researched I found:

  • Asus - overall bad (hardware unboxed).
  • Gigabyte good on Hardware unboxed but google coil whine on them it seems common. So I avoided.
  • MSI - good but some memory problems as reported on hardware unboxed and reddit. Need to tweak* / wait for better bios which is what I have been used to for MSI.

So I went for a MSI B650M Mortar.

*Possible fix: uclk=memclk in bios that I need to test.
Click to expand...

Interesting... shame if true for Asus, usually consider them a fallback because they're usually good but often not best value for money.

Hopefully my 2x32 GSkill 6000 will "just work" on anything though. Been careful to pick something that's on a few compatibility lists, where normally I'd just assume that everything works even if it's not officially listed...
 
henry hoov3r said:
youtu.be

Cheapest AMD B650 Boards Tested, VRM Thermals: 100c+ Temps

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hardwareunboxedJoin us on Floatplane: https://www.floatplane.com/channel/HardwareUnboxedBuy relevant products ...
youtu.be youtu.be

In the same situation myself. The Gigabyte gaming x stands out to me.
Click to expand...
My only gripe with Gigabyte is they often decide to stick an m.2 slot right under the gpu slot - which from experience, just isn't very healthy for it. Blowing warm air at what are increasingly warm running components - or arguably worse, trapping warm air around the drive because your gpu vents length-wise - isn't really ideal.

That said, I've seen Intel mATX boards that manage to get an m.2 above the gpu where it's fine, and another down in the bottom right corner - also fine. The problem is aggravatingly prevalent in AMD boards and has been since my old Ryzen 1600X. If Raptor Lake was a bit less power hungry, and Intel kept their sockets around longer, I might have opted to go that way just for the drive layout.

Buuuut since I'm kind of in love with the Fractal North and am clearly going to wait *however damn long* to get one... no point in worrying about mATX any more. I will take a gander at the Gaming X, only down side... no dragon logo. Is it terrible that I want a pretty motherboard as well as a competent one? :cry:
 
if you want a budget option I think one of the upper end B650 boards should do the trick, if money's not too much of a factor then definitely one of the X series boards depending on what you need specifically
 
Eddie, I can see on the gigabyte you mentioned one slot for an SSD just above the slot for the GPU.

Isn’t that an SSD slot?
 
IGBT said:
Eddie, I can see on the gigabyte you mentioned one slot for an SSD just above the slot for the GPU.
Click to expand...

With the mATX B650M Aorus Elite, I believe both slots are vertically below the GPU with one of them being stuck right behind it and the other in the 3rd space down. Only the Asus Prime mATX frees up that slot behind the GPU and sends an m.2 down to the bottom corner instead - but sadly the Asus Prime is awful and should be ignored :cry: Some of the Intel boards take that layout however, and idk what it is about AMD boards that make them want to put your pcie-4 nvme drive in a hot spot...

Not much of a problem with full sized boards; looking at the Gigabyte B650s, the heatshield covers 3 slots, but there's not actually an m.2 slot behind the top one, so the drives are actually positioned below the gpu :)
 
oweneades said:
My B650 Gaming X has 3 x M2 slots, one above the GPU and two beneath a single plate partially covered by the GPU. Doesn't cause any issues in real world use.
Click to expand...

Ah, that's excellent to know, thank you :)

Last time I had an m.2 behind a GPU was about 5 years ago, and unfortunately I was using a 960 Pro - which is quite a warm runner to start with, but the poor thing would hit 91 degrees under gaming load. With the same drive situated above a hotter GPU, it bounces off 71, which is still rather warm but below any danger point, and I'm blaming that on the poor airflow in the case.

The case issue is something I will be addressing in the next month or so when I build something new, although thinking on it, I should probably have done that a long time ago. It's just there's so many ugly, ugly cases that it's hard to get inspired to bother sometimes :D
 
Buildzoid was not too impressed with MSI only using 6 layer pcbs on their boards compared to the 8 layer boards from the others.

Unless the x670 Tomahawk turns up, which is 8 layer.
 
eddiew said:
Interesting... shame if true for Asus, usually consider them a fallback because they're usually good but often not best value for money.

Hopefully my 2x32 GSkill 6000 will "just work" on anything though. Been careful to pick something that's on a few compatibility lists, where normally I'd just assume that everything works even if it's not officially listed...
Click to expand...
Asus boards are fine.

It's only the prime boards that are rubbish but they were designed for budget builds.

The tuf gaming is fine vrm is reasonable.

I was going to get the gigabyte gaming x ax b650 board personally but then they suddenly went out of stock everywhere so went with the Asus tuf b650 plus in the end.

I was insistent on built in WiFi, so limited my choices I was then breaking my budget to spend extra on a GPU. So had to claw some money back so I looked into the budget end of b650 boards.

Asus and gigabyte were the only ones that tended to not have slow memory boots and had the least amount of issues. (Though none of the am5 boards are hugely fast due to the memory training it's more a case of who's not the slowest). The asrock boards seem to be good but have also had/have slow post times though the specs of the boards are usually pretty good.

With what I've read etc both Asus and gigabyte seem to be the ones most on top of the am5 platform straight out the gates. Asrock have done some bios updates to improve the speed. MSI have updates pending but not heard if they are released or not yet or when
 
Last edited:
eddiew said:
Oh. Poop I hadn't seen that. Back to the research...
Click to expand...

Perhaps @Brizzles can correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I can remember in some of the videos I watched, he said that 6 layers is a problem for two reasons: 1. it impacts memory stability and 2. it can lead to heat spots(?), particularly around the socket with high consumption CPUs, but since he is an (extreme?) overclocker, I think he's saying this from the perspective of reaching optimal memory speeds and using high draw CPUs (airflow restricted), so I would doubt that this is going to be a huge problem with a 7800X3D / 8800X3D and a sensible memory speed, especially since memory speed is less important with X3D models.
 
Tetras said:
Perhaps @Brizzles can correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I can remember in some of the videos I watched, he said that 6 layers is a problem for two reasons: 1. it impacts memory stability and 2. it can lead to heat spots(?), particularly around the socket with high consumption CPUs, but since he is an (extreme?) overclocker, I think he's saying this from the perspective of reaching optimal memory speeds and using high draw CPUs (airflow restricted), so I would doubt that this is going to be a huge problem with a 7800X3D / 8800X3D and a sensible memory speed, especially since memory speed is less important with X3D models.
Click to expand...

Point 1 was the main concern i picked up on, he didn't go into figures. And yes a 6 layer pcb is not going to fall apart, but when nearly all the other manufacturers are using 8 layers, why have MSI gone for 6 ?

Seems like cost-cutting, but the actual mobos are hardly cheaper than the competition so not sure what they have achieved ( other than putting people off ).
 
Last edited:
Brizzles said:
Point 1 was the main concern i picked up on, he didn't go into figures. And yes a 6 layer pcb is not going to fall apart, but when nearly all the other manufacturers are using 8 layers, why have MSI gone for 6 ?

Seems like cost-cutting, but the actual mobos are hardly cheaper than the competition so not sure what they have achieved ( other than putting people off ).
Click to expand...

Profit margin....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom