B450: MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, ASRock boards review... Hardware Unboxed.

Caporegime
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The selection of £100 mid range Ryzen boards put to the test, including (and i would argue the most important test of boards in this price range) VRM temperature testing

In a sentence: the MSI Tomahawk is best, the Gigabyte Aorus Pro is worst, turns out the Gigabyte is all about looks with really junk VMRs, don't buy it.

 
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81c and 100c pumping 1.4 on a 2700 running 4.2ghz . My aorus 7 hits higher then the MSI B450 with 4.1ghz at same voltage .. and thats a 10 phase design .

see if i can dig both boards later in the month and see for myself .

know asus is 4 + 2 (8+2) doubled and seems MSI is 6+2 - but cant see if its doubled or not

shouldn't be to hard to find IR parts and Controllers used on all the boards.

If it true, gutting for Strix and aorus . dman nice board. though MSI branded PC in background helps :D

also... site with close links to Asus

https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/asus_rog_strix_b450-f_gaming_review/15

more like it :D
 
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I think the MSI is a 4 phase CPU VRM, as is the Aorus but there is a difference between them, the MSI board has 2 high side MosFets per inductor so 8 total, the Aorus has 8 Inductors but only 1 high side MosFet per pair with a doubler, so 4 high side MosFets, that's why the Aorus VRMs run at 120c where as the MSI VRM only runs at 85c under the same conditions, its the high side MosFets that take all the load and the MSI board has twice as many.
 
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Soldato
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TTL is a shill influencer though, isn't he?
i'd wait for more objective reviews on b450 before passing judgement :p

to be fair, not influencer as much but asus do 'sponsor them' in a such - known about but they do offer honest opinion and dont often leave a branded PC in the back ground then they rate or slate a product as with hardware unboxed.

me personal, If any one gave me a free MSI tomhawk, ASUS Strix, Aorus Pro or ASRock 4 i'd take it in a heat beat and happily slap in a 2600 or 2700 and OC to 4.1 - 1.4v happily and game on it all day long . If i was going to do Geomapping or work that involves avx calculations then damn straight it would be a flagship X470, even if its running on stock clocks.
Why people are expecting X470 class components on budget £100 boards i'll never know.

wonder when GN will get these boards and stick some thermal probes to them :D
 
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hope this helps, will post more of the other boards

4200ghz with 1.44v !!!! vs 1.4 volts in the video above

Aorus

https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_b450_aorus_pro_review,18.html

MSI

https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_b450_tomahawk_review,18.html

I do need to mention that the stock cooler is blowing air over this area.

Which is fine if you're looking to use the stock down-draft cooler which blows air over the VRMs.

I don't think Guru3D understood why people asked them to do VRM temperature testing, had they understood it they would have used an AIO or a horizontal stand up cooler like 90% of people will and probably got very different results.
 
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Right ^^^ and all the B350 / B450 boards largely copies of eachother, the Gaming K4 is the same as the Pro 4 that i have, they are literally just a different colour, the smaller boards are the same as the ATX ones only smaller some also with smaller VRM Heat Sinks, the B450 versions of them are the same as the B350 just with cosmetic tweaks, its cost saving.
Like the MSI board they don't have any RGB, they don't have designer plastic all over them, they don't really look that nice, they look functional.

Compare them to the Asus Gaming-F and Aorus Pro which do look really good are worse where i would argue it matters most, in the VRM department.

But i think that's fine, at the end of the day these are £100 boards, all of them run even the 2700X perfectly fine, as long as you're not overclocking on the Asus and Gigabyte boards.
I just think what we are seeing here are two different approaches, Gigabyte and Asus have budgeted for looks where as MSI and ASRock are all about performance.

At the end of the day board vendors for the bast 5+ years are not used to making mid range boards capable of overclocking, all Intel mid tier Chip-Sets are locked so they didn't need to worry about VRM performance.
 
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Which is fine if you're looking to use the stock down-draft cooler which blows air over the VRMs.

I don't think Guru3D understood why people asked them to do VRM temperature testing, had they understood it they would have used an AIO or a horizontal stand up cooler like 90% of people will and probably got very different results.

90% of AMD sales use stock cooler. only people like us on forum that uses 3RD party coolers and even less with AIO.

ask gibbo or one of sales team and secure they can give rough figure of every full build or cpu bought or combo- did it come with 3rd party cooler.

and with AMD unlike intel- 90% of users dont or wont add a cooler as they'll just let the stock cooler do its job .

im guessings its 1 in every 30 AMD chip sets that has a 3rd party cooler on it .... specially when bought pre-built , from high street or from your average person .

saw figures for Z vs B/H intel chipsets - slightly off topic - but in EU. something like 10-1 is non K boards . half of that is OEM whom either use K chips or non K chips with stock coolers! :(

MSi have got it right with 2x M.2 slots in the mATX form factor. The asrock doesn't count since the second slot is sata only like the old B350.

worth checking out how its wired to chipset/pcie lanes. having it still at second gen speed is better then nothing and again, most people wouldnt tell difference running max speed
 
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90% of AMD sales use stock cooler. only people like us on forum that uses 3RD party coolers and even less with AIO.

ask gibbo or one of sales team and secure they can give rough figure of every full build or cpu bought or combo- did it come with 3rd party cooler.

and with AMD unlike intel- 90% of users dont or wont add a cooler as they'll just let the stock cooler do its job .

im guessings its 1 in every 30 AMD chip sets that has a 3rd party cooler on it .... specially when bought pre-built , from high street or from your average person .

saw figures for Z vs B/H intel chipsets - slightly off topic - but in EU. something like 10-1 is non K boards . half of that is OEM whom either use K chips or non K chips with stock coolers! :(



worth checking out how its wired to chipset/pcie lanes. having it still at second gen speed is better then nothing and again, most people wouldnt tell difference running max speed

Fair enough, do you think Asus and Gigabyte are treating B3/450 like Intel's H series, which are locked, just make them look nice and don't worry too much about VRM performance?
As i said above there is as much of a difference in the looks of the MSI and ASRock vs Asus and Gigabyte as there is VRM performance, which is fine for the latter two if you're not overclocking, or indeed using after market cooling.
 
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worth checking out how its wired to chipset/pcie lanes. having it still at second gen speed is better then nothing and again, most people wouldnt tell difference running max speed

Yeah, the second slot is gen 2 lanes from the pch as you'd expect. But that's fine for usually slower, larger capacity secondary storage.

Would be better with the gigabyte heatshields.
 
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Yeah, the second slot is gen 2 lanes from the pch as you'd expect. But that's fine for usually slower, larger capacity secondary storage.

Would be better with the gigabyte heatshields.

might be good for StoreMI- had a lot of drives form samsung. completely forgot to test 25gb NVMe powering a 1tb SSD... haha


Fair enough, do you think Asus and Gigabyte are treating B3/450 like Intel's H series, which are locked, just make them look nice and don't worry too much about VRM performance?
As i said above there is as much of a difference in the looks of the MSI and ASRock vs Asus and Gigabyte as there is VRM performance, which is fine for the latter two if you're not overclocking, or indeed using after market cooling.

I think AMD are hoping to get OEM on board, allow XFR to do its thing and let them ship it either with 2400 or 3000 ram. For use lot or 'enthusiasts' as we are classed - hoping that we are just gaming not not doing heavy workloads or splashing cash on NVMe drives which doesn't effect gaming really and allowing us to push as much cash onto GPUs .

from a business sense its smart not NOT lock the B350/450 as it gets marketshare , even if it takes away profit from X370/470- we all know they need it... and they are getting it.
Now if your smart... you'll lock B550 down, but allow Ram OC or max 3200hz with ZEN 2 and A*** will be locked for 2666hz . As they now have the marketshare.. they now need max £££

MSI really need to cash in on good low budget Boards they been doing and crack on with getting High end boards noticed . Asus needs to remove themselves from their rear end and drop some prices, as they have been increasing profits now, dont want to cut off your own hand. Gigabyte needs to get a 10 year old to show them how a UI looks for Bios and ASrock get more marketing and bundle deals out there
 
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might be good for StoreMI- had a lot of drives form samsung. completely forgot to test 25gb NVMe powering a 1tb SSD... haha

Yeah, a fast nvme drive plus a larger storage ssd is the best use case for the software and something I'd like to have a go with.

Maybe optane 128gb + 1tb tlc nvme + 2gb ram to make best use of the free version with the board.
 
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Yeah, a fast nvme drive plus a larger storage ssd is the best use case for the software and something I'd like to have a go with.

Maybe optane 128gb + 1tb tlc nvme + 2gb ram to make best use of the free version with the board.

I found it funny optane was better on AMD system then Intel haha. forgot about 2GB of ram that can be used and seems is the key .

will admit, Firestrike benchmark - or the loading of scenes, nvme was a godsend !
 
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@humbug

seems MSI have done the same thing , 16 phases when really its doubled - still not a lie but not full story .

Believe X3900 Aorus Gaming 7 and Zenith were 8 pahses, and new Aorus Extreme is 10 phases- but this time Gigabyte have stated correctly- though again phases are doubled

odd how companies name one thing right, another another not- and some get pulled up and others done haha
 
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I think gigabyte were pulled up this time because there was only 1 high mosfet (think it was high), so you really can't claim that it's doubled without stretching the truth too far.
 
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I think gigabyte were pulled up this time because there was only 1 high mosfet (think it was high), so you really can't claim that it's doubled without stretching the truth too far.

quite a few brands do it, but dont publicly state it . Stating Hybrid is fine but saying 8 would have been the stretch instead of Big 4 .
 
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