Taichi X370/1700X/Flare X 3200-14!!

Hi Ken, I was thinking of buying taichi with same gskill flareX ram, but after seeing a buildzoid review on youtube, essentially saying taichi is not worth it -- too many uefi issues -- im second guessing myself.  Problem is every single AM4 board is having problems, each with their own advantages/disadvantages. I'm just an average user, looking to get 3200 CAS 14 speeds on DRAM and 3.8/3.9 on CPU. So not asking for a lot.

Though Asus, MSI, Geforce are all better than Asrock currently in terms of CPU and RAM stability, they suffer from more "permanent" or hardware issues. Asus boards have issues with fan controllers/speeds, whereas Gigabyte boards have crackling audio.

Gotta pick some poison as they say.  At least the Taichi is a UEFI issue that can presumably be fixed.  But have to ask ourselves -- is it worth it? Maybe trade in for an Asus or Gigabyte board? They've had plenty of time to fix these issues, but since profit drives their interest over consumer satisfaction (as is the case for all board manufacturers), they don't.  Instead, they have to keep putting out new boards for the latest chipsets and try to ensure that they will at least work, so intel/amd can actually sell their new skews.

Whole thing is sh*t show -- competition between AMD and Intel has changed the market, which is nice, but as a result, consumer stability suffers as mobo manufacturers find themselves understaffed to essentially handle the industry wide changes that come with AMD's reintry into an otherwise monopolized field of production.

It'll prob be by the middle of next year before the AM4 boards are actually stable and functioning, and can handle the hardware, as it is advertised, without endless tinkering in the UEFI.

But I wish you the best of luck, and myself too -- I'll prob end up going Taichi and FlareX, and put in the work and frustration to get the products working as advertised, just cause the only alternatives are crackling audio on everything I do, or overbearing case sound from uncontrolled fan curves.

But know this -- the consumer always suffer, even when it seems like he gains.

a point to note
recently i let my system grab the fcu 1709

and then proceeded to go thru the steps to turn OFF all the bloatware (really nice way of saying spyware) that comes to ermmmmm 'help' windows see everything about us to 'make our lives easier'

there are a few you tubes vids that walk you through options to turn off and what they do, and if you really need them

as parsec mentioned above there is another option availble
it does involve some more mucking around circa 20-30 mins if your not used to it

and that is '1usmus' designed ryzen calculator

this guy wrote a program based on taking the timings set by the ram xmp and working out the quaility of your chips and then providing tables more tuned to amd ryzen than to intels cpu/bios

its been hugely successful (although its not a sure fire way to remove the need for amd advanced boot training)
i actually use it myself with my ram to lower the timings, my best result was this weekend helping a mate reset his corsair ram at same speed but with ryzen tuned timings to get a 40+ fps increase in his game (i suspect a very bad choice was made by his bios for original xmp settings caused the problem)

heres the link for you if you want to have a look, (remember though if your stable now to save a bios profile to able you to quickly revert back if needed)

http://www.overclock.net/t/1640919/ryzen-dram-calculator-overclocking-dram

I CANT STRESS ENOUGH
please make sure you follow ALL the settings and options provided, these ram settings are designed to all work with each other, cherry picking just the cl14/14/14/14/28/42 and then ignoring other timings/settings and volt option etc may not work very smoothly

ask my lazy ass how i know this
and also note the cad_bus settings there are two sections so make sure your adjusting the exact wierdly named options suggested in the calculator
best way is to run the program then print off the results to refer to when in bios
i suggest using 3200 fast options for timings for your ram

or plan B  save your time and stress levels and stick with what you have working now ,theres a lot of logic to that

Ken429 wrote: I hate to admit it but I must have Disabled Advance Training one to many times. I went back and cleared CMOS, loaded UEFI Defaults, switched to Profile 1 and made the Pstate changes to get to the 3900 OC. All is well! The only minor issue is the "Cold Boot to the first BIOS Post screen" went from ~10 to ~20 seconds as soon as I set the Memory to Profile 1. That same thing happened with the EVGA memory but for some reason went back to ~10 seconds when I used Pstates to OC. Not so lucky this time. But then who know this thing might have a change of heart in a few days. Anyway thanks all for making me go back and start over with the Advance Training "locked" on Auto. This thing sure is touchy when playing with memory.

Not that I am telling you to do the following, but I never use AM4 Advance Boot Training on my different ASRock X370 board. I set it to disabled, which shortens the startup time by quite a bit.

I use FlareX memory as you seem to know, but I don't use the XMP profile, it won't allow the memory to run at 3200. I use timings derived from a program written by a Ryzen user called Ryzen DRAM Timing Calculator. Which means I set ALL of the advanced memory timings manually. If your memory is working fine with the XMP profile, just use that with Boot Training enabled (Auto.)

Why does the seemingly faster memory take longer in a file conversion? Many possible reasons for that, one of them posted above.

So you ran synthetic tests on the 3000 and 3200 memory, which showed the 3200 to be somewhat faster? We accept benchmark test results as being perfect and correct and real, but when we see real world differences like this, who knows what is correct? Who verifies the benchmark results?

Better timing settings on the 3000 memory than the 3200 memory could result in better performance for the 3000 memory. For example, if the 3000 memory could work at that speed with a Command Rate of 1T, but the 3200 needs 2T to be stable, that can be a big difference in performance.

The test would only be valid if your CPU OC and CPU and Windows performance and power saving options are identical. Also the drive(s) being used for the IO must be identical, and any difference in that or the load on the drives at the time of the test could easily account for a 3% difference. But since you ran the test several times, that would not seen to be the situation.

If you read any memory reviews, you'll find that high memory over clocks do not always provide real world performance improvements. I've seen tests where the stock/default memory speed provided better performance than the over clocked speed.

Also, how long have you used the 1709 build of Windows 10? Did you use that with the 3000 memory?

DRAM memory can be weird, what should be better in performance with speed and improved timings does not turn out that way.

Can some one explain how all the synthetic tests indicate the faster memory turns in slightly better scores and yet when I run Handbrake and convert my favorite Blu-ray test case to an MP4 file the conversion takes ~2 minutes longer with the faster memory? I have run it several times and each time the conversion takes ~2 minutes or ~3% longer with the faster memory!?

I hate to admit it but I must have Disabled Advance Training one to many times. I went back and cleared CMOS, loaded UEFI Defaults, switched to Profile 1 and made the Pstate changes to get to the 3900 OC. All is well! The only minor issue is the "Cold Boot to the first BIOS Post screen" went from ~10 to ~20 seconds as soon as I set the Memory to Profile 1. That same thing happened with the EVGA memory but for some reason went back to ~10 seconds when I used Pstates to OC. Not so lucky this time. But then who know this thing might have a change of heart in a few days.

Anyway thanks all for making me go back and start over with the Advance Training "locked" on Auto. This thing sure is touchy when playing with memory.

Edited by Ken429 - 20 Nov 2017 at 3:23am