*** AMD "Zen" thread (inc AM4/APU discussion) ***

[DragonQ]

Or build up enough stock of failed 8-core chips.

Of the two CPUs I've owned that had locked cores, one was absolutely fine when unlocked. The other had l3 cache that only becaame properly functional when fed an over-specced CPU-NB voltage.

Unlocking 4c8t Ryzens could be fun if it turns out to be possible.

Remember that each CCX is 4 cores. We don't know yet that 4c/8t parts will indeed feature a fully disabled second CCX or if it's a design variant. 6c/8t will almost certainly be a dual-CCX chip with potential to unlock to 8c/16t.

 

[five8five]

That's good actually, on par with Intel's 8 core chips. The real question is whether the 6 and 4 core parts can clock higher or not...in fact that may be one of the reasons they aren't releasing them straight away, in order to buy more time to improve the clocks.

That's only a 100Mhz overclock though?

 

[Bonjour]

Doubt it. Count the VRMs. Only the Asus Crosshair, ASRock X370 Taichi, & ASRock Fatal1ty X370 Professional Gaming seem to be sporting high-end VRMs.

Hmm. Might switch over to the Taichi.

 

[mmj_uk]

VRM's shouldn't be very important with 65-95W TDP chips so they must be pulling a lot of power, where's the reviews when you need them.

 

[five8five]

I don't doubt 8-Pack or the methods used when testing in this, I'm simply in agreement that on and alleged low TDP part, VRM on lower end boards struggling so much could be quite the eye opener.

I think Gibbo said the overclock was requiring quite a lot of volts but didn't say how many - probably NDA

 

[Hagar]

Silver Arrow? I have this on my 2500k @4.5. Temps Never go above 55 while playing games

Close, It is the Silverstone HE01. A great cooler but unlikely to be AM4 compatible.

 

[Zeed]

I just love how some people here dont believe small test that Gibbo/8pack did FOR US so we know what to order.
I bet those 2 are total overclocking noobs D

 

[DragonQ]

That's only a 100Mhz overclock though?

Technically 200 MHz since XFR isn't guaranteed.

 

[drunkenmaster]

To infer that that OC don't understand cooling is frankly ridiculous! Are you plucking these things out of thin air or out of an Xmas cracker!

Have you considered that the boards just aren't up to it? Wht not contact Gibbo or 8 Pack directly with your reservations.

Edit - I see 8 Pack has responded.

Yeah, and maybe seeing as 99% of customers would whack an AIO on and do not set up a fan, that is how most sensible retailers would test such a system to know how it runs in the case that the majority of customers would use. But go ahead, jump to conclusions all you want.

If I was testing systems out to give advice, I'd use a setup most customers use, not the one most don't, and potentially give advice based on that.


However, meh, personally I've found 8packs comments saying gaming is all about single thread completely out dated, I've also worked for online computer stores, met ln2 overclockers... just because you work somewhere doesn't mean you know everything, just because you overclock hardcore on ln2 and can't see past the best and most expensive boards doesn't automatically mean every other board is ****.

I've met people who run online computer retailers who don't know the first thing about the stuff they sell and LN2 guys who go for world records who look on lower clock speeds and midrange equipment as if it doesn't even work right.

Over 20 years of reviewing, personal experience with hundreds of motherboards, working in an RMA department for an online store, being buttered up and given free samples for reviewing and in meetings with sales reps.... across 20 years of seeing recommendations that to really overclock you have to get the very best motherboard, memory, psu, case, in 99.9% of cases a normal 24/7 overclock differs by maybe a couple of percent. When talking about best overclocks on Ln2, that is when in my experience significant VRM improvements make the difference, for 24/7 overclocks and gaming... meh.

Zen itself has a fairly heavy on die voltage regulation system in place already and personally I simply don't believe that compared to every other motherboard and CPU in existence, lower and higher power chips, that suddenly now, with 95W tdps, Zen is the chip that suddenly brings with it a massive difference between the usually monumentally over specced and almost entirely unused(for most users and overclocks) power regulation and the more standard ones that have for decades allowed plenty of great overclocking.

Bios's are buggy, Intel chipsets have barely changed over the years, the architecture hasn't fundamentally changed, that means even with a 'new' Z270 chipset, the mobo makers have 99.5% of everything the need to know about it from previous boards. There is going to teething problems with a new platform people are just forgetting that because we haven't had a genuinely new platform(architecture and mobos) for donkeys years. There are going to be buggier boards and more bios tweaking needed. The focus at launch won't be on overclocking but stability and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see a £250 board get the brunt of the attention from mobo makers for launch. It doesn't to me say you HAVE to have a £250 board to overclock at all well, it says to me, right now the £250 boards are more finished, but the £100 boards will be just fine in not too long, as always.

 

[jigger]

VRM's shouldn't be very important with 65-95W TDP chips so they must be pulling a lot of power, where's the reviews when you need them.

Of course the VRM's are important. Overclocking a 8 core 16 thread chip will still require stable voltages across lots of phases.

 

[smogsy]

Seems like a throwback...higher end CPU coolers have been tower-style for a decade, right?

i got one of these on my 5930K running 4.2+ nicely
My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Noctua NH-C14S Top-Flow Flexible CPU Cooler - 140mm= £64.99

Total: £73.69
(includes shipping: £8.70)



​

 

[Bonjour]

VRMs will be of more concern if going with the 1700 and looking for a hefty overclock to 4Ghz+, surely?

Less of an issue if going with 1700x / 1800x.

 

[Hagar]

The ASUS Prime X370 Pro would get my vote from previous experience with ASUS non ROG but higher end boards (until I see some reviews at least). The spec looks good and it is £160.

Also allegedly Silverstone may in fact support AM4 so that is saving to me of £50+ Ryzen is getting more affordable.

 

[Smudge]

Yeah, and maybe seeing as 99% of customers would whack an AIO on and do not set up a fan, that is how most sensible retailers would test such a system to know how it runs in the case that the majority of customers would use. But go ahead, jump to conclusions all you want.

If I was testing systems out to give advice, I'd use a setup most customers use, not the one most don't, and potentially give advice based on that.


However, meh, personally I've found 8packs comments saying gaming is all about single thread completely out dated, I've also worked for online computer stores, met ln2 overclockers... just because you work somewhere doesn't mean you know everything, just because you overclock hardcore on ln2 and can't see past the best and most expensive boards doesn't automatically mean every other board is ****.

I've met people who run online computer retailers who don't know the first thing about the stuff they sell and LN2 guys who go for world records who look on lower clock speeds and midrange equipment as if it doesn't even work right.

Over 20 years of reviewing, personal experience with hundreds of motherboards, working in an RMA department for an online store, being buttered up and given free samples for reviewing and in meetings with sales reps.... across 20 years of seeing recommendations that to really overclock you have to get the very best motherboard, memory, psu, case, in 99.9% of cases a normal 24/7 overclock differs by maybe a couple of percent. When talking about best overclocks on Ln2, that is when in my experience significant VRM improvements make the difference, for 24/7 overclocks and gaming... meh.

Zen itself has a fairly heavy on die voltage regulation system in place already and personally I simply don't believe that compared to every other motherboard and CPU in existence, lower and higher power chips, that suddenly now, with 95W tdps, Zen is the chip that suddenly brings with it a massive difference between the usually monumentally over specced and almost entirely unused(for most users and overclocks) power regulation and the more standard ones that have for decades allowed plenty of great overclocking.

Bios's are buggy, Intel chipsets have barely changed over the years, the architecture hasn't fundamentally changed, that means even with a 'new' Z270 chipset, the mobo makers have 99.5% of everything the need to know about it from previous boards. There is going to teething problems with a new platform people are just forgetting that because we haven't had a genuinely new platform(architecture and mobos) for donkeys years. There are going to be buggier boards and more bios tweaking needed. The focus at launch won't be on overclocking but stability and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see a £250 board get the brunt of the attention from mobo makers for launch. It doesn't to me say you HAVE to have a £250 board to overclock at all well, it says to me, right now the £250 boards are more finished, but the £100 boards will be just fine in not too long, as always.

Totally agree. I made a comment earlier in the thread about the current pre order options of going with a cheap mobo+1800x vs. expensive mobo+1700, to get to 4Ghz and them both being the same price. Whats to say in a few months, after a few bios updates, the B350 boards at the lower end cant OC an 1800x? If you dont need dual front and back case soundblaster support, wifi, "killer" lan, fancy RGB disco going off in your case, why bother with it?

I have a crappy gigabyte £35 quid board in this current rig thats kept a 2500k at 4.2 for years. I'm just not buying it that you need the most expensive boards on the market to overclock these new chips.

 

[mmj_uk]

Of course the VRM's are important. Overclocking a 8 core 16 thread chip will still require stable voltages across lots of phases.

If the chip was super power efficient you wouldn't need loads of phases, Intel mainstream is 90W TDP and manages happily on cheap motherboards. There's no correlation between number of cores and number phases it's based on power requirements and the more power you draw the more heat that needs to be dissipated.

It might be that the 65/95W ratings are stock without XFR enabled but as there are no reviews currently we have no idea. To me, lower end VRM's struggling and 140W stock coolers points to a similar real world TDP as LGA2011.

 

[labbby]

Totally agree. I made a comment earlier in the thread about the current pre order options of going with a cheap mobo+1800x vs. expensive mobo+1700, to get to 4Ghz and them both being the same price. Whats to say in a few months, after a few bios updates, the B350 boards at the lower end cant OC an 1800x? If you dont need dual front and back case soundblaster support, wifi, "killer" lan, fancy RGB disco going off in your case, why bother with it?

I have a crappy gigabyte £35 quid board in this current rig thats kept a 2500k at 4.2 for years. I'm just not buying it that you need the most expensive boards on the market to overclock these new chips.

I got sucked in by the RGB disco lights

 

[drunkenmaster]

Of course the VRM's are important. Overclocking a 8 core 16 thread chip will still require stable voltages across lots of phases.

Why does 8 cores matter? Did we need better VRMs when we had 125W dual cores over 125W single cores, just because more cores? Did we need much better VRMs to be able to overclock a quad core at 125W over a dual core at 125W? Nope, cheap mobos with 'basic' VRMs performed near identically outside of extreme LN2/phase change overclocks, so why does a 95W octo core need better circuitry than... I don't know, 140W octo core Bulldozers, just because? Cores doesn't matter, power usage does, this uses less power than Bulldozer did at launch by over 40%, but now only a £250 mobo will overclock it?

Totally agree. I made a comment earlier in the thread about the current pre order options of going with a cheap mobo+1800x vs. expensive mobo+1700, to get to 4Ghz and them both being the same price. Whats to say in a few months, after a few bios updates, the B350 boards at the lower end cant OC an 1800x? If you dont need dual front and back case soundblaster support, wifi, "killer" lan, fancy RGB disco going off in your case, why bother with it?

I have a crappy gigabyte £35 quid board in this current rig thats kept a 2500k at 4.2 for years. I'm just not buying it that you need the most expensive boards on the market to overclock these new chips.

But if you'd spent £250 on a mobo, you could have gotten 4.22Ghz, therefore your motherboard was rubbish

The real killer, as I've mentioned, is I'd like a x370 with all the sata ports, without the RGB, without all the stupid attempting to be designer looking heatsinks (that I believe have worse cooling due to airflow patterns they cause), I wouldn't mind a higher quality audio chip IF it really brings higher quality audio... but I'll be honest, I haven't noticed much difference in onboard audio in the past decade. A little better maybe, but not much.

The B350 boards seem to have been purposefully designed badly, it was common to get a cheap £5 extra sata controller to get more ports but that seems to be completely absent on those boards. LIkewise most of the B350 boards seem to have the sata ports facing upwards from the board meaning okay messy cabling isn't a huge issue but can be in the way of fitting a big gpu in some of the pci-e slots.

The sensibly priced x370 with value upgrades but no pointless random added crap seem to be missing, as are the B350 boards that with £10-15 more could be great value.

 

[five8five]

Technically 200 MHz since XFR isn't guaranteed.

If the cooling is good enough and it will overclock by 200MHz doesn't that mean it will also overclock by 100Mhz or am I missing something?

 

[Trusty]

When is the 1600x out? i think that will be my new build, haven't had a proper desktop for 2 years .. If reports are to believed, that 1600x looks pretty good. Will it be £200ish?

 

[ljt]

When is the 1600x out? i think that will be my new build, haven't had a proper desktop for 2 years .. If reports are to believed, that 1600x looks pretty good. Will it be £200ish?

Rumoured to be about £250-260 I believe

That's if our exchange rate stays as it currently is!