People who daily drive an overclocking focussed motherboard - please respond here

JollyJamma · 5 May 2022 at 12:22

Hi all

Are there anyone here who daily drives an overclocking centric motherboard?

Eg gigabyte z690 aorus tachyon, MSi B550 Unify-X, Z690 Unify-X, EVGA Dark, etc

I want to know what the memory overclocking is like? Is it a case of just put in a set of digits and it works or is it more sensitive?

The reason i ask is that memory overclocking with my X570 Tomahawk and 3300X is painful. I struggle to get the FCLK to 1900 and I really can't get B Die to run CL14 14 14 easily. It might be the CPU not being great with memory but I doubt it would be that bad. I've seen overclocking results with the 3300X where it got some great results (Something like 3733CL14).

I'm getting a B550i Strix for memory overclocking/daily driving a small and out of the way rig but that got me thinking about what to do with my ATX rig. I will sell my Tomahawk and look for something more robust.

If I got an ATX rig in the future, how good would the gigabyte z690 aorus tachyon, MSi B550 Unify-X, Z690 Unify-X, EVGA Dark, etc be as a daily driver?

I don't care if it's AMD or Intel and actually, getting feedback on both would help me upgrade in the near future.

Orcvader · 5 May 2022 at 13:41

That motherboard is completely fine for overclocking RAM. It's more to do with the the CPU as the memory controller is there. Your expectations for 1900 FCLK is too high, not many CPUs can cope with that. Dial that down to 1800 (so RAM is 3600) and nearly all 3000 series CPU can cope with that. Not even the 5000 series can always cope with 1900, you need a really good chip for higher speeds.

Are you absolutely sure your Corsair kit is Samsung B-die? Mine is B-die too but from stock it's 3200 CL14 already. You can use something like HWiNFO64 to check.

JollyJamma · 5 May 2022 at 13:44

Orcvader said:
That motherboard is completely fine for overclocking RAM. It's more to do with the the CPU as the memory controller is there. Your expectations for 1900 FCLK is too high, not many CPUs can cope with that. Dial that down to 1800 (so RAM is 3600) and nearly all 3000 series CPU can cope with that. Not even the 5000 series can always cope with 1900, you need a really good chip for higher speeds.

Are you absolutely sure your Corsair kit is Samsung B-die? Mine is B-die too but from stock it's 3200 CL14 already. You can use something like HWiNFO64 to check.

Right! Ok cool so moving to a 5700X or 5800X would be best?

Happy to do so down the road.

Orcvader · 5 May 2022 at 13:48

JollyJamma said:
Right! Ok cool so moving to a 5700X or 5800X would be best?

Happy to do so down the road.

Even then it's not guaranteed you'll reach 1900. And from 5800X3D user reviews the case is the same there (they all use the same IO die, which is where the memory controller is). In terms of gaming though, any of those CPUs would give you a decent boost if that's what you're mainly after.

Did a quick search, ‎CMW32GX4M2C3200C16 is indeed B-die but it's apparently lower binned, so could also be another reason why it doesn't overclock as well compared to the higher binned 3200 CL14 stuff.

JollyJamma · 5 May 2022 at 15:18

Orcvader said:
Even then it's not guaranteed you'll reach 1900. And from 5800X3D user reviews the case is the same there (they all use the same IO die, which is where the memory controller is). In terms of gaming though, any of those CPUs would give you a decent boost if that's what you're mainly after.

Did a quick search, ‎CMW32GX4M2C3200C16 is indeed B-die but it's apparently lower binned, so could also be another reason why it doesn't overclock as well compared to the higher binned 3200 CL14 stuff.

Thank you for this.

Yes, my current set of DIMMs are poor quality B die but they still work.

I’ve got some TeamGroup 3600CL14 DIMMs to play around with.

I’ll try overclock with an Asrock B550i motherboard and the ASUs B550i motherboard when I get it and see which one works the best.

It’ll isolate the cpu, ram and motherboard at least.

JollyJamma · 5 May 2022 at 16:04

Just look at this beauty though

https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=121-AL-E699-KR

Joxeon · 5 May 2022 at 21:18

What sort of voltages are you putting through the B-die as my 3200/14 kit needed around 1.48v to run 3800/14 which I've been running first with a R5 3600 and now a 5800X on my lowly B450 tomahawk max.

JollyJamma · 6 May 2022 at 08:18

Joxeon said:
What sort of voltages are you putting through the B-die as my 3200/14 kit needed around 1.48v to run 3800/14 which I've been running first with a R5 3600 and now a 5800X on my lowly B450 tomahawk max.

The TeamGroup kit I have is rated for 3600CL14-15-15-34 T2 at 1.45v.

I tried the B550i motherboard yesterday and I can get the ram to 3600CL14-14-14-34 T1.

Tried 3800 CL14 at 1.5v and it didn’t like that.

Joxeon · 6 May 2022 at 13:25

JollyJamma said:
The TeamGroup kit I have is rated for 3600CL14-15-15-34 T2 at 1.45v.

I tried the B550i motherboard yesterday and I can get the ram to 3600CL14-14-14-34 T1.

Tried 3800 CL14 at 1.5v and it didn’t like that.

Try leaving the ram at 3600 but try the fclk at 1900 in 2-1 mode and see if you can get that stable first.

JollyJamma · 6 May 2022 at 14:20

Joxeon said:
Try leaving the ram at 3600 but try the fclk at 1900 in 2-1 mode and see if you can get that stable first.

Will do. As far as I can tell, Asrock links the FCLK to the ram speed.

Very odd. I’m sure there’s methane in their madness.

Joxeon · 6 May 2022 at 14:42

JollyJamma said:
Will do. As far as I can tell, Asrock links the FCLK to the ram speed.

Very odd. I’m sure there’s methane in their madness.

There should be a setting to manually configure it.

JollyJamma · 6 May 2022 at 21:51

Joxeon said:
There should be a setting to manually configure it.

I manually set it but I still got errors with TM5.

Will have another fiddle tomorrow.

JollyJamma · 7 May 2022 at 12:30

Joxeon said:
Try leaving the ram at 3600 but try the fclk at 1900 in 2-1 mode and see if you can get that stable first.

I did this and managed to get the ram stable at 3733 CL14-15-14-34 T1 at 1.5v.

Going to try increase the FCLK now until I get to stock.

Thank you for your help.

The B550i is much stronger than the X570 Tomahawk.

SpudMaster · 19 May 2022 at 10:25

I can confirm the X570 Tomahawk is fine for overclocking RAM. I run my ran at 3600mhz 14-14-14-28 T1 at 1.45v. My RAM will do 3800mhz at same timings with 1.5v but noticed no difference other than in benchmarks so choose to ran at 3600mhz

JollyJamma · 19 May 2022 at 10:47

I’ve basically sold my Tomahawk and will set my B550i Strix board up this weekend to play around with.

I didn’t love the Tomahawk like I thought I would have and it’s huge.

Would still like to pick up a tachyon motherboard one of these lifetimes though. Kinda like have a trophy on the mantelpiece that you occasionally pick up for the feels.

SpudMaster · 19 May 2022 at 13:00

JollyJamma said:
I’ve basically sold my Tomahawk and will set my B550i Strix board up this weekend to play around with.

I didn’t love the Tomahawk like I thought I would have and it’s huge.

Would still like to pick up a tachyon motherboard one of these lifetimes though. Kinda like have a trophy on the mantelpiece that you occasionally pick up for the feels.

Only thing I'm not a fan of with the Tomahawk is it doesn't seem to recover every well from a failed post or boot if you enter bios settings it doesn't like, your forced to reset the CMOS. Well atleast what was the case of earlier bios', not tested with the later bios revisions. Pretty much every board I've owned in the past 10-15 years does back to default settings as 3 failed boots or POST's.

Dunno what you mean about huge, its just a standard sized ATX board. As for performance you you can't really get much better in this price range and VRM wise period

JollyJamma · 19 May 2022 at 13:42

SpudMaster said:
Only thing I'm not a fan of with the Tomahawk is it doesn't seem to recover every well from a failed post or boot if you enter bios settings it doesn't like, your forced to reset the CMOS. Well atleast what was the case of earlier bios', not tested with the later bios revisions. Pretty much every board I've owned in the past 10-15 years does back to default settings as 3 failed boots or POST's.

Dunno what you mean about huge, its just a standard sized ATX board. As for performance you you can't really get much better in this price range and VRM wise period

It's so bad at recovering from a bad POST. So so bad. Hated it for that reason too, I think.

I'm ok with a stupidly large board to stay in the cupboard until I want to try some OCing but ATX is too big for my daily driver for my personal taste.

Going to play around with the B550i until I get a stable OC and then leave it in a small chassis.

turbot1984 · 19 May 2022 at 13:52

My MEG Unify mobo has been brilliant, but how MSI justified almost doubling the cost in 18 months is scandalous. (£520 now on OCUK, £550 elsewhere!)

JollyJamma · 19 May 2022 at 15:01

turbot1984 said:
My MEG Unify mobo has been brilliant, but how MSI justified almost doubling the cost in 18 months is scandalous. (£520 now on OCUK, £550 elsewhere!)

I like the Unify and Unify-x. If I was to go DDR5, I would get a 2 DIMM motherboard. 1) for overclocking and 2) because Buildzoid says it's better.

JollyJamma · 23 May 2022 at 10:40

Fired up my B550i Strix and it instantly is able to do 14-15-15-35 T1 at 1.5v. Far stronger than the X570 tomahawk and better than the Asrock B550i board.

No idea how to use the Asus BIOS but that's an ID10T issue rather than the motherboards fault.

Very happy to keep using ITX builds going forward - the 2 DIMM board layout and increased DIMM speed support is far more to my liking. I don't neeeeeeed more than 1 PCI-e slot and ATX is just too big.

That being said, I'm still trying to get my post count up to 1500 to gain access to the second hand forum and I'll buy an Intel overclocking board as per the above.

I'll then have a dedicated overclocking/Hackintosh board for fun.