B850M-X [WiFi] quick review.

No idea.

I'm a "fewer oddball software you run on your system, the better" type.

I disable all RGB in BIOS, not that I even have any RGB anything. I hate glass cases, although I'll admit it can be nice as a display case. Still all my cases are black and fully electrically covered.

I don't use any kind of external fan-speed control software. I've never even installed the Ryzen Master.

For CPU/Case fans, I customize them in BIOS and test them using HWiNFO64, but that's about it.

For GPU fan, I use Adrenaline's built-in function. I would never use an external software for such things.

So it is possible that putting 170W TDP CPUs on these things will get you lower performance than can be obtained on a more premium motherboard.

That is good to know.

It's not useful to me, because even if I had a 9950X3D or something, I'd run it with all BOOST disabled and TDP set to 105W or at most 120W.

I'm just weird that way. I mean, how many people do you know who runs their 9800X3D at 65W TDP (88W PPT) mode? In fact, after experimenting with DRAM settings, I settled on 5200MT/s, even though I have 5600MT/s DIMMs.

The IOD's voltage (and therefore its power consumption) is closely tied to UCLK (memory controller clock). Running it as 2800MHz (1:1 for 5600MT/s) requires close to 1.2V for SOC, at least for the chip I have. Running it at 1:2 (1400MHz) dropped that to under 0.9V. SOC power consumption dropped by like half! For someone running it at 65W TDP, that's a lot of power that can be given to the Cores instead.

But I didn't want to run 1:2 mode, so settled on 2600MHz UCLK (1:1 for 5200MT/s), which set the VSOC at just over 1.1V.

Where did this "unofficial 160W limit" thing come from?

ASRock lists 170W TDP / 230W PPT processors in their official "CPU Support List:"
https://www.asrock.com/MB/AMD/B850M-X%20WiFi/index.asp#CPU

Now, the board does have fairly minimal VRM setup, but it should be adequate. You just wouldn't want to run this in all liquid cooling setup with inadequate airflow over the VRM heatsinks.

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ASRock does provide "Software/BIOS Setup Guide" here:
https://www.asrock.com/MB/AMD/B850M-X%20WiFi/index.asp#Manual

But it's probably not all that meaningful. You'd get way more info from watch a video like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C7P-V05SgQ

Except for 20-series chipset boards (A520, etc.) that disable overclocking, I imagine most boards have similar features, even if organized a bit differently.

Yeah, it's a tricky thing to navigate. I chose to remove the link rather than ban
and delete, just in case, but I am pretty sure it's just a spam bot.

Generally I check the IP and account details, if it's posted with any of the
VPNs I have blacklisted or has a bunch of website links in the info I just delete
the account.

I'm about 97.1% sure that Alime1954 / mafer3 (above poster) is an AI.

#1 The post is underhandedly promoting some AI site. The original post includes a link to it, but looks like Xaltar removed the link.
#2 the writing is very much what an AI would create as a response to my original post.
#3 It has a misunderstanding of the topic, where it says, "I agree that stability and speed are more important than the number of slots, especially if you don't plan on extreme overclocking." This is wrong because extreme overclockers actually do care about the number of DIMM slots. They prefer just one DIMM per slot.

I predict various online accounts (Fakebook, X, and even Instagram and the likes) will become infested with AI sooner than later. Heck, most "users" on them might already be AI.

We have an interesting future ahead of us.