UPDATE: Bios F40 has been released a bit ago bringing support for 3rd gen Ryzen. Not sure if it brings any new functionality but things seems shifted a bit in the bios. Also Gigabite has released a list of the supported cpu's which includes to my surprise really the 16c 32 thread monster.
UPDATE: New F30 bios has been released for this board and therefor some or all of what is written in this post may no longer be valid. I need to test things further and time is not something I have a lot at the moment so it will be a while.
So i bought this board recently because it fitted my budget and it was the only b450 mATX board within that budget with the proper PCIe layout to fit both my vega 64 and my Xonar Essence STX soundcard as angled riser cards are difficult to find here in DKK from shops i actually trust for price that makes sense (you want what? 100 pounds? what?!? The mining boom is over dude.).
I actually don't regret this purchase anymore.. So yaa for that
Biggest issues:
1) No direct voltage control, only offset which is bad when you are trying to overclock a non x ryzen cpu due to the lower stock voltage it has. If you want voltage control you have to do it through p-state overclocking.
2) No control over host clock aka "BCLK". -Host control added in bios F30
3)The host clock("bclk) will not stay fixed at 100mhz and are usually going down as fare as 99.0. - F30 - Host clock seems to stay fixed if you set it manually to 100 which is good.
4)and this is the worse part of this board, NO LLC controls. The vdroop is terrible. I have to feed around 1.41volts through p-state overclocking for it to boot at 4,050 mhz. But put under stress from cinebench, prime, whwatever really, it drops to a 1.36v. WHAT?!? - F40 - Vdroop till leaves a lot to be desired, i will need to test this to see how it does after tweaking but for now using stock settings the vdroop on my board is 0.07v under load.
Minor issues:
1) No heatsink on the top vrms/soc. Fixed this myself. Pretty easy and temps are fine now
2) The onboard sound quality is ****, very very bad. Thank god for my xonar essence stx.
3) overall bios layout is silly and messy and there are menu's within the main menu with just 1 more menu inside then and then 1 or 2 options inside that.. Complete waste. F30-F40 things seems to have been improved a little. So for now disregard this minor issue.
Yet again i'm to slow to get things tested. Good thing i am not trying to be a professional reviewer then
. The board has been performing well ever since the f30 bios update. The F40 update is no different, works well and no issues. My cold boot problems are gone as well. The fact that gigabyte has enabled host control and improved on the stability of it is a big plus in my book. Sure vdroop is not looking too good but you can work around it. Overall the board has been a champ as of late for the small amount i paid. Well done Gigabyte, the faith I lost in you, back in the x58 days, are slowly coming back.
So @GIGA-Manperhaps it's time for a change and some fixes. Cause if that happened the board is actually pretty good. Lots of changes so thanks to the gigabyte team.
EDIT: Just a small update as of 15th of April 2021. Several bios have been released since with included support for Ryzen 5000 series and SAM/REBAR which works great atm with my 6700xt. The board has been absolutely stable and just trucking through on bios F60 and there is even a newer one fixing some issues with Ryzen 5000 series CPUs. The fact that they keep supporting the board with new updates coupled with how well the board has been running is the sole reason while I most likely will be looking at a gigabyte board the next time I'm in for an upgrade.
UPDATE: New F30 bios has been released for this board and therefor some or all of what is written in this post may no longer be valid. I need to test things further and time is not something I have a lot at the moment so it will be a while.
So i bought this board recently because it fitted my budget and it was the only b450 mATX board within that budget with the proper PCIe layout to fit both my vega 64 and my Xonar Essence STX soundcard as angled riser cards are difficult to find here in DKK from shops i actually trust for price that makes sense (you want what? 100 pounds? what?!? The mining boom is over dude.).
I actually don't regret this purchase anymore.. So yaa for that
Biggest issues:
1) No direct voltage control, only offset which is bad when you are trying to overclock a non x ryzen cpu due to the lower stock voltage it has. If you want voltage control you have to do it through p-state overclocking.
2)
3)
4)
Minor issues:
1) No heatsink on the top vrms/soc. Fixed this myself. Pretty easy and temps are fine now
2) The onboard sound quality is ****, very very bad. Thank god for my xonar essence stx.
Yet again i'm to slow to get things tested. Good thing i am not trying to be a professional reviewer then
. The board has been performing well ever since the f30 bios update. The F40 update is no different, works well and no issues. My cold boot problems are gone as well. The fact that gigabyte has enabled host control and improved on the stability of it is a big plus in my book. Sure vdroop is not looking too good but you can work around it. Overall the board has been a champ as of late for the small amount i paid. Well done Gigabyte, the faith I lost in you, back in the x58 days, are slowly coming back.A new conclusion has to wait until i have tested this new F30 bios a lot more.. I am excited however, very excited. If nothing else but the ability to set host control has been added then it's still a win for me and at least a small sign that perhaps Gigabyte is listening.
Overall i cannot recommend this board if overclocking is something you want to do. I'd wish i had gone through the hassle and bought a MSI or an Asrock board instead and a riser cable for my soundcard. The board works fine out of the box. Performance has been good but there are too many idiot decisions taken with this board and it's bios design that i cannot recommend it personally. The latest BIOS(F2, F3) didn't fix any of these annoyances for me. If Gigabyte were to fix the issues under "Biggest issues", especially 2,3 and 4, it would be a whole other vibe this post would have and it would actually get an approval from me.
So @GIGA-Man
EDIT: Just a small update as of 15th of April 2021. Several bios have been released since with included support for Ryzen 5000 series and SAM/REBAR which works great atm with my 6700xt. The board has been absolutely stable and just trucking through on bios F60 and there is even a newer one fixing some issues with Ryzen 5000 series CPUs. The fact that they keep supporting the board with new updates coupled with how well the board has been running is the sole reason while I most likely will be looking at a gigabyte board the next time I'm in for an upgrade.
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whatever you end up with please give us some feedback. Would certainly help future buyers.