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970M Pro3 VRM components

Printed From: ASRock.com
Category: Technical Support
Forum Name: AMD Motherboards
Forum Description: Question about ASRock AMD motherboards
URL: https://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=1754
Printed Date: 22 Dec 2024 at 10:10am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com


Topic: 970M Pro3 VRM components
Posted By: PetrolHead
Subject: 970M Pro3 VRM components
Date Posted: 17 Jan 2016 at 7:58am
I came across a review of this motherbord (http://cxzoid.blogspot.fi/2015/06/asrock-970m-pro3-review.html) and the reviewer had found out that the MOSFETs are unlabeled. Since the manufacturer likely has an impact on quality, I'm interested in knowing where those MOSFETs have come from. Furthermore, it would be nice to know what current they are rated for.

I know this is a long shot, but does anyone have any information on this?


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Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit



Replies:
Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 17 Jan 2016 at 8:22am
Looks to me like LF Pak, NXP Semi, LowRDS


Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 19 Jan 2016 at 7:31pm
Thank you for the info, wardog. I tried to figure out whether that was good or bad, but only managed to determine (using Sin's outdated VRM list: http://sinhardware.com/images/vrmlist.png" rel="nofollow - http://sinhardware.com/images/vrmlist.png ) that the parts were probably just acceptable and not suitable for overclocking.

Over at overclock.net, The Stilt had given this verdict on the VRM ( http://www.overclock.net/t/946407/amd-motherboards-vrm-info-database/1470#post_24802727" rel="nofollow - http://www.overclock.net/t/946407/amd-motherboards-vrm-info-database/1470#post_24802727 ):

ASRock 970M Pro3 = 4+1 true phase analog, <95W continuous (estimated)- NOTE: (don't use with any FX-8K series)

When I asked what this estimation was based on, I received the following answer:

It is pretty easy to tell the VRM capabilities just from the looks of it. At least after you have some experience on the platform and after you have designed couple of motherboard VRMs yourself biggrin.gif

970M Pro3 has 4+1 phase analog VRM with Renesas K03J2 (LS) and K03J3 (HS). While these are relatively high quality fets the fact that there are just 4 phases for VDDCR, combined with the usual issues typical to ASRock (low copper, low layer PCB, low quality high-loss inductors) makes the board certainly not recommended for anything higher than 95W. Nearly identical construction is used on several ASRock AMD boards (970 Performance, Extreme series, etc). with the only real difference being the advertized phase count. These boards usually have the very same VRM structure, but with doubled component count ("8+2" phase, in fake phase configuration). Despite ASRock advertized them as "220W TDP, FX-9K series" compatible they commonly have issues in running slightly overclocked FX-8K series CPU without the VRM cooking off / throttling.

So no, I would not recommend this board for anything higher than 95W 32nm CPU biggrin.gif

The interesting thing is that in a comment previous to this, The Stilt commented on my worries about having the Phenom II X6 overclocked and showing over 100W power draw in HWMonitor nearly constantly:

The VRM requirements for 45nm 10h parts and 32nm 15h parts are not really comparable. For example the Phenom II X4 965 (HDZ965FBK4DGI) is rated for 140W TDP and 91.8A IDDMax. Meanwhile the FX-8150 which has TDP of 125W, has significantly higher IDDMax of 145A. The component requirements for a VRM which is able to supply 100A @ 2.0V are significantly easier to meet than the requirements for a VRM which is able to supply 200A @ 1.0V.

So the 95 W recommendation is meant for 32 nm CPUs and 45 nm CPUs may be able to get away with a larger continuous power draw, depending on the max load current.

In any case, ASRock is basically making promises the hardware shouldn't be expected to keep. Again. A stock FX-6300 should be in the clear, but anything above that is in the danger zone.


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Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit


Posted By: parsec
Date Posted: 19 Jan 2016 at 11:39pm
I'm glad people are paying attention to the components and number of phases used in the processor's VRM design in mother boards.

Then we have a typically critical analysis of some AMD boards like the one included above.

Reality Check: The board in question costs $65 at a well known E-tailer in the USA.

What can be expected from a board that is sold for $65?! Confused

How can any board at this price be considered for over clocking? To compare it with boards that are at least three times its price for component and build quality does not make sense.

We don't get what we don't pay for, sorry to say. Geek


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Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 20 Jan 2016 at 2:31am
1. Several things can affect the price at a retailer. I personally paid ~100 e for the board, and while that's still relatively cheap, it wasn't the cheapest board available. It was, however, the only available mATX board with a 970 chipset. In any case, the price is besides the point.

2. OC capability is not the issue and I think you're seriously missing the point here. The point is that ASRock claims this board can handle CPUs that the VRM can't really be expected to handle. Support for up to 140 W CPUs? Compatibility with FX-8xxx CPUs? I wouldn't take the risk knowing what I now know. It doesn't matter if the board costs 200 $ or 50 $, it should be able to deliver what the manufacturer says it will.

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Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit


Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 20 Jan 2016 at 6:06am
By the way, I thought it might be a good thing to share some things about The Stilt. After all, if you haven't heard of him, why would you trust him over manufacturer's specifications? This is a very good question. Maybe you shouldn't. But consider these facts:

-The Stilt is a very experienced overclocker. For example, he has pushed an A10-6800K to 8.2 Ghz, an FX-8370 to 8.7 GHz and an FX-9370 to 8.5 GHz.  http://hwbot.org/user/the_stilt/#Hardware_Library" rel="nofollow - http://hwbot.org/user/the_stilt/#Hardware_Library

-The Stilt is the one that found and fixed a BIOS bug that was holding AMD CPUs back in SuperPi 32M.

Finnish overclocker, The Stilt, figured out how to considerably improve performance by going through the BIOS developers guides. The exact same guides available to the BIOS R&D teams of motherboard vendors, a surprising fact considering a single man managed to outdo an entire industry.
http://www.techpowerup.com/186056/amd-super-pi-history-to-be-rewritten-courtesy-the-stilt.html" rel="nofollow -
http://www.techpowerup.com/186056/amd-super-pi-history-to-be-rewritten-courtesy-the-stilt.html

As far as AMD hardware goes - possibly Intel as well - I think it's pretty safe to assume The Stilt is one of the most knowledgeable people you can run into on internet forums.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Overclocking-Richland-SuperPI-Stilt,23213.html" rel="nofollow -

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Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit


Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 20 Jan 2016 at 6:21am
Originally posted by PetrolHead PetrolHead wrote:

By the way, I thought it might be a good thing to share some things about The Stilt. After all, if you haven't heard of him, why would you trust him over manufacturer's specifications?
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Overclocking-Richland-SuperPI-Stilt,23213.html" rel="nofollow -


While not addressing previous posts above, nothing beats experience.

We live and we learn along the way.

Sin's and Stilt's engineering backgrounds I'm jealous of, yet even w/o their degrees, experience is how I came by it. I maybe can't decipher a boards schematic but I can now determine when a boards manufacturer is pushing hard against the limits of believably.


Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 22 Jan 2016 at 9:34am
While contemplating where to take my OC next and what my VRM can or can't take, I've noticed that there's no mention of over current protection (OCP) regarding the 970M Pro3 anywhere. There's some sort of surge protection, which is meant to deal with power spikes from the PSU, but as far as I can tell, the VRM is not protected in any way. The BIOS does limit the maximum Vcore value to 1.55 V, which may protect the board from the user to some extent. However, as The Stilt pointed out, voltage is not the only variable that affects the durability of the VRM. The load current value of the CPU is another important part of the equation, and this value depends on the CPU. Sadly, it seems very hard to find out what this value is, so it's hard to say for which CPUs that 1.55 V could be considered acceptable, if any. At least there's good reason to believe that it's way too much for FX CPUs on this board...

In any case, back to the lack of OCP. What I'm wondering is will the lack of OCP mean that the VRM will not throttle no matter what and instead just go up in flames when it's had enough? For example, at the moment I'm knowingly taking a risk in light of wardog's advice in another thread, which means that I've crossed the 1.4 V border with the CPU and set it to 1.4375 V in an attempt to see if it's enough for 3.9 GHz on all six cores. HWmonitor does show Vcore values lower than the one that I've set, and most of the time the value is below 1.38 V, so maybe this is still "safe". Maybe not. The point is I've been running Prime95 now for about 45 minutes and there has been no throttling. The cores are under 100% load and the clock speed has been 3900 MHz with only the sort of ~30 MHz occasional fluctuation that is present even at stock speeds. Max temperatures have been 69 C socket and 49 C for the cores, so while the socket is at the limit of what is considered safe, neither value should be an issue. So, everything seems okay and Prime95 has reported no issues. But maybe this stability is just an illusion. Maybe the VRM is just waiting to pop. There's no temperature sensor on the VRM and there's no OCP, so there's no way of knowing how big a risk I'm taking and there is no safety net. At least that's what it seems like at the moment.

I think I'm going to buy a handheld infrared thermometer at some point to monitor the VRM temperatures. Then again, what would the VRM be rated for? 85 C, 105 C or something else?


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Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit


Posted By: parsec
Date Posted: 22 Jan 2016 at 12:39pm
Originally posted by PetrolHead PetrolHead wrote:

1. Several things can affect the price at a retailer. I personally paid ~100 e for the board, and while that's still relatively cheap, it wasn't the cheapest board available. It was, however, the only available mATX board with a 970 chipset. In any case, the price is besides the point.

2. OC capability is not the issue and I think you're seriously missing the point here. The point is that ASRock claims this board can handle CPUs that the VRM can't really be expected to handle. Support for up to 140 W CPUs? Compatibility with FX-8xxx CPUs? I wouldn't take the risk knowing what I now know. It doesn't matter if the board costs 200 $ or 50 $, it should be able to deliver what the manufacturer says it will.


You are the one that posted Stilt's quote about over clocking with boards like this. Why wouldn't someone assume that is what you are referring to?

I only see one 140W TDP processor in the CPU support list, a Phenom II x4 processor. Should you use 140W FX-8000 series processors in this board? No, they are not in the support list.

Yes it states support for 140W processors in the specs. But when you read the fine print (CPU Support list), you find only one, and no 140W FX-8000 processors.

So no OC with this board? Fine, the only mention of over clocking in its description is the X-Boost feature, which is for unlocking cores.

Personally, after being burned many times by Marketing "specs" like "ASMedia or Marvell SATA III chips", which qualify as SATA III only because they can surpass SATA II speeds somewhat, we must look closer at the true specifications of a board to see what is really the case. Does "AM3+ 8-Core Processor Support" mean that all AM3+ 8-Core processors are supported? Many people will read that as such, but does it really say that? IMO, no it doesn't.

Do I agree a board should be able to perform to the level claimed for it? Of course. But if the argument here is it does not support 140W FX-8000 when it claims to do so, the specs are vague enough and the CPU Support list detailed enough to show that argument does not apply.

Frankly, I understand your frustration, and I don't want you to have a board you don't like. IMO, the AMD FX-8000 and FX-9000 series processor and mother board compatibility situation is terrible. It bothers me more than you know or may believe. IMO, AMD shares a good part of the fault by releasing these processors without some control over how they are used. While Intel is hated for the amount of control they force upon mother board manufactures, only allowing processors to work or be over clocked on specific platforms, AMD could learn something from them in this case.


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Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 22 Jan 2016 at 7:38pm
Originally posted by parsec parsec wrote:

You are the one that posted Stilt's quote about over clocking with boards like this. Why wouldn't someone assume that is what you are referring to?


The quotes from The Stilt are not about overclocking with boards like this. He only mentions overclocking once as an example of how overly optimistic ASRock's promises are: If a board is supposed to be able to handle an FX-9xxx, it should be able to handle a slightly overclocked FX-8xxx without issues (even knowing that the FX-9xxx probably requires less voltage to achieve its rated speed than an FX-8xxx would). What The Stilt's post is about is this: The 970M Pro3 should be used with FX-8xxx processors, and isn't recommended for 32 nm processors with a TDP of over 95 W, which in practice means the FX-6350.

Quote I only see one 140W TDP processor in the CPU support list, a Phenom II x4 processor. Should you use 140W FX-8000 series processors in this board? No, they are not in the support list.


I meant those to be two separate, unrelated questions. However, since it's stated in the specs as if there were no differences between similar TDP values of different CPUs, it would be easy to assume that even with FX-8xxx CPUs the user has ~15 W of headroom for overclocking. In any case it's now easy to be sceptical of that value, no matter what CPU it might refer to.

Btw, I'm a bit surprised to see that TDP value. I wonder why it's so high compared to other Deneb CPUs?

Quote So no OC with this board? Fine, the only mention of over clocking in its description is the X-Boost feature, which is for unlocking cores.


The manual also dedicates several pages to overclocking, as the board comes with AXTU. Also the overclocking options in the BIOS are covered. While the board isn't advertised as a good board for overclocking, ASRock doesn't really advise against it either.

But again, the ability to OC wasn't really the point. The point is the CPU support list is optimistic when it shouldn't be. The ability to OC would follow from the CPU support list, however, assuming it could be trusted. For example: if the FX-8370 is supported (as it is), there should be some headroom to overclock an FX-6300. After all, even a stock FX-8370 can go well beyond 125 W TDP depending on load and CPU temperature.

Quote But if the argument here is it does not support 140W FX-8000 when it claims to do so, the specs are vague enough and the CPU Support list detailed enough to show that argument does not apply.


The argument is that the board doesn't really support FX-8xxx CPUs, and that even an FX-6350 is a risk. And by "support" I mean that those CPUs could be run reliably at any load (at stock settings). Of course if the CPU never sees use that takes advantage of what it can offer, maybe one can get away with running one for a longer period of time.

Quote Frankly, I understand your frustration, and I don't want you to have a board you don't like.


Even though it may seem that I complain a lot about this board, I actually like it at the moment. It has so far been able to handle what I've thrown at it, and frankly, there doesn't seem to be anything better on the market in the mATX size. What I am mostly frustrated about is ASRock and the promises they make that make it pretty much impossible for a consumer to make a reasonably informed decision on what to buy. If I had gone for an FX-6350, I would probably have an issue with the board as well, but I got lucky in the CPU department. The other thing I'm frustrated about is that ASRock apparently didn't think making this board any better was worth it, because I see that as a missed opportunity. They already had better VRM designs on other boards, the mATX size doesn't limit the VRM size and the price hike due to the components would not have made this board expensive, since it's so cheap to begin with. This board could have been... wait for it... legendary. ;)

Quote IMO, the AMD FX-8000 and FX-9000 series processor and mother board compatibility situation is terrible. It bothers me more than you know or may believe. IMO, AMD shares a good part of the fault by releasing these processors without some control over how they are used. While Intel is hated for the amount of control they force upon mother board manufactures, only allowing processors to work or be over clocked on specific platforms, AMD could learn something from them in this case.


I believe you and I agree.


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Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit


Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 22 Jan 2016 at 8:24pm
mATX board depth has always been an issue, seemingly/especially with Users in Europe that pay a much higher price for energy than we(I) do here in the US.

Yet I see the conundrum of the manufactures too. Hmmm, do we build a board that sips, or can we build a board that does double duty, sip, and be able to OC and guzzle.

Getting both onto an mATX board is not a sliding scale of profitability for any manufacturer.

For ASRock, IMHO, mATX falls falls somewhere between their full sized ATX offerings and that of their sipping board offerings found on asrockrack.com.

And never mind the HTPC market is dwindling, so there is even more stress in keeping the mATX board cost down, even if it does mean placing lower performance parts on to keep the price in check for mATX boards that surely has/had represented small production numbers and a narrow populace inclined to want them.




Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 22 Jan 2016 at 9:03pm
I don't think power consumption of computers is a big thing even over here in Europe. In any case I think it is a reasonable assumption that anyone concerned about the power consumption would choose Intel instead of AMD ten times out of ten.

I don't know how much financial sense the 970M Pro3 made to ASRock in the first place. In any case I believe they could have made a better board and make more money off it as well. After all, they already had designs for better VRMs and regarding the VRM it doesn't really matter if the board is ATX or mATX (mITX is a different matter). The parts themselves can't cost much, so on the surface it would seem that even a modest price hike would cover the higher production expenses. In fact, I'm almost willing to bet that ASRock's engineers would have liked to make this board even better, but the marketing department shut them down. ;) I still wonder why not, though. A really robust board would also hold PR value, which shouldn't be underestimated. Since the market is filled with average motherboards, doing something special might benefit the brand in the long run even if the board itself would not be a financial success.


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Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit


Posted By: Xaltar
Date Posted: 22 Jan 2016 at 10:54pm
The "Pro" series of boards are all budget oriented while offering a few typically higher end features to make them more attractive. I guess you could call them ASRock's mainstream products, aimed at your average user. I suspect they chose not to reinvent the wheel with AM3+ boards so close to end of life for the socket. For the most part, if you look at sales figures, most new built AM3+ systems are built around cheaper FX CPUs like the FX 4k and 6k series. 

The FX 6K series still offer great value thanks to the very low cost + high core count and while those cores are weak by comparison to intel, gaming in particular utilizes them very well. Part of this is Jaguar cores in current gen consoles are not too different in performance and multi threading, at least from a coding perspective. This means that games coded and optimized for consoles will tend to run pretty well on FX CPUs. When you consider that games on consoles run on ~6 cores with the remaining 2 cores of their Jaguar APUs being reserved by the console itself for OS and other functions an FX 6k makes very sound sense to a gamer, especially on a budget. The FX 6k is about the sweet spot for ASRock's 970 based boards and shouldn't need more than the power design they provide with them.

I do agree that the marketing should have been more transparent as to the limitations of these boards. Personally I would have marketed them as "gaming" products designed for the newer FX 6k CPUs with a TDP max of 65w. I skipped the entire FX line and went intel after my Phenom II x4 955 which is still going strong as a spare PC. I was never impressed with the performance of the FX line, it simply isn't worth the TDP overhead imo. I am really looking forward to Zen, AMD seldom make the same mistakes twice and I suspect Zen may just kick intel in the britches.


Posted By: parsec
Date Posted: 23 Jan 2016 at 12:52am
I just read that MSI just released a new AM3+ board. 970 and SB950 chipset, 4 + 1 VRM, no heat sink, rated for 125W processors.

Yet another legendary board?

Meanwhile, my ASRock Z170 board has a 12 phase CPU VRM with 20 capacitors, 12 inductors, and two heat sinks. My 91W TDP processor at stock speed draws 45W of power from the VRM running a stress test.

The MSRP of this board was ~$279 when released, down to $209.99 with rebate now. Expensive for an ASRock board, but it has many modern features, dual BIOS, three PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 ports, dual LAN chips, USB 3.1 built in and an USB 3.1 add on card with front panel mounting.

This is not about superiority, but getting what you pay for. AMD needs to get themselves out of budget board land, IMO.


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Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 23 Jan 2016 at 7:50am
I guess MSI wants to hold on to its reputation of having weak VRMs. :D Not a good market strategy, if you ask me.

It should be noted that the Intel architecture is a bit different and comparing the VRMs between Intel and AMD is not straightforward. In the Skylake architecture the CPU TDP has been lowered at the expense of putting more stress on the VRM. For the OC enthusiasts this is apparently good news in the sense that cooling the CPU becomes easier, but then the VRM section naturally needs to be able to handle the extra load ( http://www.overclock.net/t/1572028/z170-vrm-discussion-thread#post_24367959" rel="nofollow - http://www.overclock.net/t/1572028/z170-vrm-discussion-thread#post_24367959 ). Edit: I take it all back!

I wonder what the overheads are on those Intel boards. As is the case in many other products, the cheaper motherboards are likely the ones with the smallest profit margins and the pricier motherboards have more air in their price tags. So, a top-of-the-line motherboard will not cost more only because it's of higher quality, but also because it's "top-of-the-line". Another thing that can be expected to affect customer behaviour is the observed "norm" in pricing. Since Intel's CPUs are generally pricier than AMD's, an Intel customer can be expected to be prepared to pay some extra for the motherboard as well. It could be argued that while on AMD's side you pay for optimistic promises like "octa-core CPU" or "supports FX-9xxx CPUs", on Intel's side you pay extra for brand image. Neither really offers the optimal value for money.


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Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit


Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 23 Jan 2016 at 8:18am
Originally posted by PetrolHead PetrolHead wrote:

In the Skylake architecture the CPU TDP has been lowered at the expense of putting more stress on the VRM. For the OC enthusiasts this is apparently good news in the sense that cooling the CPU becomes easier, but then the VRM section naturally needs to be able to handle the extra load


UMmmm, you might want to re-read that.

me thinks you've been lurking in the forest for too long now  Stern Smile


Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 23 Jan 2016 at 8:26am
Originally posted by Xaltar Xaltar wrote:

I skipped the entire FX line and went intel after my Phenom II x4 955 which is still going strong as a spare PC. I was never impressed with the performance of the FX line, it simply isn't worth the TDP overhead imo. I am really looking forward to Zen, AMD seldom make the same mistakes twice and I suspect Zen may just kick intel in the britches.


I share the sentiment that the FX CPUs do not really impress with their performance. This is why I'm going to wait for Zen before I upgrade my CPU. Of course it would be nice to see what an FX-6350 or an FX-8350 could do, but in practice they would offer no adavatage over my Phenom II X6 1090T in normal use and at the moment my GPU is the only thing holding my system back. If I had a better GPU, then some games could benefit from the newer CPUs, but not really enough to make the investment sensible.

That being said, I really like AMD's FX architecture and what (I think) they have tried to achieve. The same goes for the APUs. If I had unlimited funds, I'd get myself an A10-7870K (or the A10-7890K that's going to become available soon) just for the heck of it. Overclock it to bits, pair it with a discrete GPU and then find something that supports HSA... It would also be interesting to know how robust those 4+2 phase VRMs are, as they seem to be the best you can get with an FM2+ socket.

I am also looking forward to Zen and I'm really hoping it won't turn out to be a flop. What's more, I really hope that motherboard manufacturers would finally make some mATX motherboards that are as good as their ATX flagship boards.


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Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit


Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 23 Jan 2016 at 8:33am
Originally posted by wardog wardog wrote:

UMmmm, you might want to re-read that.

me thinks you've been lurking in the forest for too long now  Stern Smile


That's actually what was said in the post that I linked. And I quote:

"VRM design still does matter. The FIVR adds to the TDP of the CPU, rather than on the VRMs. For us enthusiasts that was always bad because that made a hot CPU even hotter, and one key purpose of a good motherboard is to have good VRMs for overclocking. Either way, I"m glad it's gone."

I guess the logic is that the old motherboards that had good VRMs could have handled even more, but the CPU temperatures were holding the overclockers back. Now that some of the load has been transferred from the CPU to the VRM, the CPUs themselves can be pushed further. I haven't overclocked Intel's CPUs so I don't know if that logic is sound, and of course this is only true if the new VRMs can handle their workload as well as the old ones did theirs. If not, then I'd assume there's a risk that the VRM becomes the bottleneck instead.


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Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit


Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 24 Jan 2016 at 8:56am
But they were discussing the removal of FIVR and in turn adjustment from BIOS options. FIVR adjustments that most wound right up there as the cause for additional heat.

VRMs can't and don't directly contribute to a CPU running cool, or hot. CPU temp is directly relational to the voltage being applied to the CPU, and the physical CPUs ability or not to dissipate.

Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator(F.I.V.R.) removal by Intel from Skylake, as you're well aware the "Regulator' now not in the internals of Skylake, will lower TDP if only because of even more dissipation required to dissipate the heat of the F.I.V.R. .

No F.I.V.R. in Skylake = Lower TDP


Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 24 Jan 2016 at 9:06am
Hmm. You are of course absolutely correct. I don't know where I got the idea that that some of FIVR's workload would now be transferred to the actual VRM as added stress.

I really need to stop reading this sort of mildly technical stuff at 3 am...


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Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit


Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 24 Jan 2016 at 2:56pm
Originally posted by PetrolHead PetrolHead wrote:

Hmm. You are of course absolutely correct. I don't know where I got the idea that that some of FIVR's workload would now be transferred to the actual VRM as added stress.

I really need to stop reading this sort of mildly technical stuff at 3 am...


Meh, I'm guilty of late night reading too. I've made a post or two here while doing so. And oh how I love suffering Foot in Mouth Syndrome. Prolly as much as you I imagine.


Na, for however infinitesimally miniaturized the actual FIVER regulator is tucked away under a CPUs lid, again, I don't for one second fathom THAT much extra load, and in turn much if any extra heat generation, being shifted to the much beefier/heartier motherboards VRM component section.

No pun intended but it boils down to dissipation and physical size.


Posted By: brock
Date Posted: 06 Nov 2016 at 3:50pm
I have the 970m and i had my concerns until i found a page where a guy has his 8320 on this bored at 1.45 volts at 4.5 and i thought he was insane, so i overclocked my 8320 to 4.3 cuz i only have a H60 cooler and the VRM heatsink was hot but not burning the sh*t out of myself so i added a 40mm fan i have blowing right on the head sink and the thing never even gets warm. so just like anything with proper cooling sh*t can get used with a FX 8 series just fine at an OK OC



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