AMD Zen Discussion Thread

Polar101

So.. on an MSI B450 motherboard, only need to do the following:

- Disconnect reset button or it won't boot properly
- Turn off PBO
- Set voltage to 'normal' and not 'auto'
- Set CPU max power to 99% and minimum to 0% in Windows power settings (bye boost)
- Update to latest AMD chipset drivers
- Try to avoid using programs such as GeForce Experience
- Don't play Destiny 2 (all right with me)
- Wait for a new BIOS even after v19, because the current one is a "lite" version due to a 16MB size limit - new version supposedly returns things to normal but limits support to Ryzen 3000s.

I feel like I am interviewing for an unpaid beta tester's job.

Polar101

Amazon emailed me to say my 3700x will be delivered on July 26th instead of 16th. Pretty slow delivery now.

Finally saw a 3800x review, benchmarks looked very similar to 3700x. I wonder why they didn't name these 3700 and 3700x.

witnessmenow

Polar101 wrote: »

Amazon emailed me to say my 3700x will be delivered on July 26th instead of 16th. Pretty slow delivery now.

Finally saw a 3800x review, benchmarks looked very similar to 3700x. I wonder why they didn't name these 3700 and 3700x.

3700X is available on Overclockers at the moment for £320 + £8 delivery, should be here by the weekend. You should be able to cancel your amazon order if it hasnt been dispatched yet.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/amd-ryzen-7-3700x-eight-core-4.4ghz-socket-am4-processor-retail-cp-3b7-am.html

Zadkiel

witnessmenow wrote: »

3700X is available on Overclockers at the moment for £320 + £8 delivery, should be here by the weekend. You should be able to cancel your amazon order if it hasnt been dispatched yet.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/amd-ryzen-7-3700x-eight-core-4.4ghz-socket-am4-processor-retail-cp-3b7-am.html

Same, I ordered mine together with an EVGA RTX 2070 Super from Scan UK and had mine within two days. Still in stock today.

H3llR4iser

Delivery for Ryzen 9 "between 1 and 2 months" on Amazon now. All other outlets in "preorder" or "overdue" status. It's actually out of stock even on the AMD website directly (yep, they sell the 3900x directly).

Probably for the better, my wallet doesn't have a face but I can swear it's smiling there on the desk...

Samuel T. Cogley

Well blow me - disconnecting the reset switch does seem to give me faster boot times.

H3llR4iser

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

Well blow me - disconnecting the reset switch does seem to give me faster boot times.

All this reports are bringing me back to the Socket 7 era with its super-dodgy chipsets (remember VIA or SiS?) and weird motherboards. There is no technical reason I can think of for the "disconnect reset sw" thing to be doing any difference

Samuel T. Cogley

Do I need the chipset driver? It seems to try and install a graphics driver for some odd reason.

.G.

Install it manually?

https://www.amd.com/en/support/chipsets/amd-socket-am4/b450

witnessmenow

H3llR4iser wrote: »

All this reports are bringing me back to the Socket 7 era with its super-dodgy chipsets (remember VIA or SiS?) and weird motherboards. There is no technical reason I can think of for the "disconnect reset sw" thing to be doing any difference

The whole thing confuses me so much. I don't understand how people with the same hardware are having different results. Like I understand not all CPUs are the exact same but I just kind boggles my mind that one will post and the other won't.

I agree with you with the reset button, how does removing two wires that don't touch unless the button is pressed improve post times, I just have no idea.

Samuel T. Cogley

So MSI have reached out and said end of the month for BIOSes. In the interim they've made the 19.1 beta available for the Tomahawk and reiterated the reset switch 'hack'. Try v18 first. Update before you install components and clear CMOS before updating seems to be the 'belt and braces' advice.

H3llR4iser

witnessmenow wrote: »

The whole thing confuses me so much. I don't understand how people with the same hardware are having different results. Like I understand not all CPUs are the exact same but I just kind boggles my mind that one will post and the other won't.

I agree with you with the reset button, how does removing two wires that don't touch unless the button is pressed improve post times, I just have no idea.

Baffling indeed. In all fairness, I always have laid the blame for these kind of early adoption difficulties straight at the motherboard manufacturer's feet; It's amazing how much b@lls they can make of their early products.



When I put together my Ryzen 1700 build two years ago, the Asus Prime B350-Plus bricked itself during a "critical" BIOS update. The board has a "safe bios" that you're supposed to be able to recover via USB, but it didn't work either. Turned out it was a widespread issue - the BIOS updater software had a bug that affected the new AMD chipsets where the update would freeze the whole system, sometimes (like in my case) even breaking the "safe bios" feature. The Asus support forums were chock-a-block with people with the same issue.

On top of that, the board wouldn't POST at all with RAM set at anything over 2133 Mhz, even with modules that were in the QVL list. It took them six months to fix it...

dazberry

H3llR4iser wrote: »

When I put together my Ryzen 1700 build two years ago, the Asus Prime B350-Plus bricked itself during a "critical" BIOS update. [snip]..

Wow! That is crazy. I put together a Ryzen 1700 on an Asus Prime B350-Plus 2 years ago too, a few months after the initial launch because I was waiting for the memory issues to be ironed out. Installed the kit, RAM ran at 2133mhz, installed the latest BIOS update, RAM went to 3200mhz, and it's been solid ever since. I guess I was very lucky!?

D.

Samuel T. Cogley

Another tip from me is make sure your AIO isn't plugged into a header that's lowering the voltage with SmartFan control. It won't help your temps :pac:

I'm still seeing silly spikes at idle but I've set the Fan curve so the fans don't spin up everytime. Under full load I'm seeing 4.1GHz on all cores, peaking to 4.2GHz so happy there and all at under or around 70C.

Canis Lupus

Got my package. Now the stand off begins. Put the new stuff together and hope it works or try hold out till the end of the month and MSI releases a more solid BIOS for the Tomohawk.

wotzgoingon

Put it together. The bios' will be fixed eventually. I wouldn't be able to just keep looking at the boxes and not put it together. You might get lucky afaik not everyone is having issues.

I've everything too. Won't be building until Saturday anyway. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly.

.G.

I have all my stuff too. Msi website says it's a must to update to a beta bios if using ryzen 3000 yet they haven't bothered to release a beta bios for the b450 gaming plus! I'll give their last stable version a go and see what happens.

H3llR4iser

dazberry wrote: »

Wow! That is crazy. I put together a Ryzen 1700 on an Asus Prime B350-Plus 2 years ago too, a few months after the initial launch because I was waiting for the memory issues to be ironed out. Installed the kit, RAM ran at 2133mhz, installed the latest BIOS update, RAM went to 3200mhz, and it's been solid ever since. I guess I was very lucky!?

D.

It did work well with some modules - I have a 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX kit, and it didn't POST at all at anything but 2133 until about September 2017. The kit itself is in the QVL, but apparently they can be made of different memory chips, and I got one with "not so compatible" chips.


In all fairness I had all sorts of not-so-good experiences with this board, besides the fact the first one bricked itself. For example, how does your USB 3.1 perform? On mine it's slower than USB 3.0 with an external SSD; It can barely reach 300 MB/s in a sequential read test, when the same enclusure and SSD goes above 500 when connected to the laptop (same performance as the SSD itself when connected via SATA).



I might say it kinda put me off getting an Asus board in the future, even if I must have had like 20 of them previously.

.G.

.G. wrote: »

I have all my stuff too. Msi website says it's a must to update to a beta bios if using ryzen 3000 yet they haven't bothered to release a beta bios for the b450 gaming plus! I'll give their last stable version a go and see what happens.

The last update for the Pro Carbon AC was from the 10th. There's another link there too and i'm not sure if it's a different version or what. Will flash the one from the 10th first i think unless there's a new one out later this week.

dazberry

H3llR4iser wrote: »

It did work well with some modules - I have a 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX kit, and it didn't POST at all at anything but 2133 until about September 2017. The kit itself is in the QVL, but apparently they can be made of different memory chips, and I got one with "not so compatible" chips.

Yeah I installed 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX at that time - but they must have been different - they're discontinued on Scan so I can't tell which ones they were. "2x8G CorsVengLPX DDR4 3200 1.3"

I've never tested the USB 3.1 performance, the only issue I have is that intermittently when powered on my boot SSD is not detected so it just goes into the BIOS, have to hit the reset button and it appears the second time.

I might say it kinda put me off getting an Asus board in the future, even if I must have had like 20 of them previously.

Yeah don't blame you after all that. Last board I had issues with was an MSI, so have sort of avoided them since.

witnessmenow

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Got my package. Now the stand off begins. Put the new stuff together and hope it works or try hold out till the end of the month and MSI releases a more solid BIOS for the Tomohawk.

Deleted User wrote: »

I've everything too. Won't be building until Saturday anyway. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly.

.G. wrote: »

I have all my stuff too. Msi website says it's a must to update to a beta bios if using ryzen 3000 yet they haven't bothered to release a beta bios for the b450 gaming plus! I'll give their last stable version a go and see what happens.

MY 3700x arrived today too, so that's everything other than my case (and windows and a monitor). I'll probably throw together the stuff at the weekend just to make sure everything is working together and nothing is DOA, but my case wont be here til next Tuesday.

Also have a Tomahawk, so fingers crossed we just get lucky...

Samuel T. Cogley

New BIOS just released, wish me luck.

.G.

Deleted User wrote:

The last update for the Pro Carbon AC was from the 10th. There's another link there too and i'm not sure if it's a different version or what. Will flash the one from the 10th first i think unless there's a new one out later this week.

You're doing well, last one for mine was in June.

Samuel T. Cogley wrote:

New BIOS just released, wish me luck.

Fingers and legs crossed here

Samuel T. Cogley

Same janky boot process - I'm not sure it's done much and some people are saying all they've done is throw RAID back in and called it a day.

witnessmenow

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

New BIOS just released, wish me luck.

I'm rooting for you!

Just reading on reddit, I dont see any "eureka this has fixed it!" messages, but maybe just not a lot of people have a chance to flash

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

Same janky boot process - I'm not sure it's done much and some people are saying all they've done is throw RAID back in and called it a day.

bummer. This really makes me think there is some form of hardware problem, it just doesnt make sense to me that it can work fine for some and not other. MSI can't seem to repo your issue either, so I'm not sure how they are releasing fixes for it.

we were able to boot fine with this version (though the same could be said for the previous one) using an AMD RYZEN 5 3600 but YMMV. This is definitely not the final version so any feedback is greatly appreciated. Hopefully more of you are able to at least boot your systems with this.

Samuel T. Cogley

witnessmenow wrote: »

bummer. This really makes me think there is some form of hardware problem, it just doesnt make sense to me that it can work fine for some and not other. MSI can't seem to repo your issue either, so I'm not sure how they are releasing fixes for it.

I don't think it's working as intended for quite a few of the people who are saying "I've no problems". Someone posted that they thought the long POST process was normal and I think other people think so too.

witnessmenow

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

I don't think it's working as intended for quite a few of the people who are saying "I've no problems". Someone posted that they thought the long POST process was normal and I think other people think so too.

Like my current PC boots up to windows in about 20/30 seconds, long post times would not be cool with me! We'll find out soon I guess

.G.

Mine is on my desktop in about 10 seconds so even your 20-30 would seem a lifetime to me

TerrorFirmer

I have the B450M Mortar and it's pretty much grand with my 3600. PBO doesn't seem to work correctly and causes all sorts of problems (insane voltages and temps), but other than that, it seems solid enough, and PBO is more trouble than it's worth on a lot of boards to be fair, even those working correctly....minor improvements for major thermal disimprovements.

It's basically a Tomahawk JR anyway, and running with PBO off so far I've had no problems, so I'd recommend people get that. The stuff about having to disconnect reset switches baffles me completely, cannot understand how that's creating such problems!