AMD - Zen chitchat

[Jonj1611]

I believe a B450 board will support Zen 3

[Spreadie]

My mates has got about £350 for a new build, what is the best combo he can get on AMD?

Any chance he could get something that's going to support Zen 3 too?

I've earmarked the 3600 and 16GB of 3200MHz RAM on Scan, that comes to £254.

Seems expensive. I picked up a new 3600 for £145 recently, and you can buy 16GB 3200 LPX RAM for ~£70 on Amazon

Both via HUKD

Given the rumours of the 3000 series XT chips likely to launch before Zen3, it might be worth hanging on a wee while.

[Domestic_Ginger]

Could have sworn the 3100 was £75 on amazon before it sold out.

Crucial ballistix ram is £65 on amazon for the 3000mhz. I like mine and would be reasonably confident I could oc them to 3600mhz.

[MagicWok]

Is it generally acknowledged that memory controller performance/reliability goes up as you go up the Zen2 stack - or is it fairly consistent across the range (accounting for silicon lottery)?

I'm more curious than anything.

[Domestic_Ginger]

Could have sworn the 3100 was £75 on amazon before it sold out.

Crucial ballistix ram is £65 on amazon for the 3000mhz. I like mine and would be reasonably confident I could oc them to 3600mhz.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-Bal...0572951&sr=8-1

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

My mates has got about £350 for a new build, what is the best combo he can get on AMD?

Any chance he could get something that's going to support Zen 3 too?

I've earmarked the 3600 and 16GB of 3200MHz RAM on Scan, that comes to £254.

I would wait for the B550,as AMD allowed Zen3 support with B450,but it's upto OEMs to do this.

[Terbinator]

I would wait for the B550,as AMD allowed Zen3 support with B450,but it's upto OEMs to do this.

Has anyone come out and said they're doing this? My uncle seems to think MSI is?

[Spreadie]

Has anyone come out and said they're doing this? My uncle seems to think MSI is?

The issue was whether AMD would release the code to board makers but, to make room in the BIOS, it seems to be a one way flash - so you can't flash back to support an older CPU later on.

B550 is only a couple of weeks away.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comment...arting_at_119/

Interesting tidbit about white motherboard i.e. Titanium: MSI says they can't get signal quality with a white PCB to be as good as a black PCB yet, at least not for PCIe gen 4 and super high RAM speed, so all B550 and X570 use a black PCB.

Edit: B450 non-MAX not supporting Zen 3 is not true, but the BIOS will be toned down.

Edit 2: Price list (MSRP in USD w/o tax)

B550 Gaming Carbon Wifi: $219

B550i Gaming Edge WiFi: $199

B550 Gaming Edge WiFi: $189

B550 Tomahawk: $179

B550M Mortar WiFi: $169

B550M Mortar: $159

B550 Gaming Plus: $149

B550-A Pro: $139

B550M Bazooka: $139

B550M Pro-VDH WiFi: $129

B550M Pro-Dash: $119

[Domestic_Ginger]

Funnily enough is that due to the titanum oxide white colourant?

Those are pretty steep MOBO prices; its double the B450 prices. Is this a temporary post lockdown thing?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Funnily enough is that due to the titanum oxide white colourant?

Those are pretty steep MOBO prices; its double the B450 prices. Is this a temporary post lockdown thing?

I think they are permanent prices,which will only go down if they are a sales failure. Then AMD can say it was jebaiting its own customers,doing a Turing with older motherboards.

The Asus B550I Strix is nearly £230,and my B450I Strix was £140~£150. What a joke. Then add the prospect of greater inflation due to all this QE,and then additional tariffs next year(a lot of our computer parts retailers use European suppliers,as Holland is a major entry point of entry from China),then it's going to get bloody awful. AMD and Intel,and their stupid greedy board partners,have probably chosen the worst time to do this. Even if people pay those prices,I expect they will just keep the hardware for longer and longer.

Makes you think about the whole B450 lockout thing,ie,how AMD didn't want PCI-E 4.0 and Zen3 to work on B450.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The lowest end B550 motherboard from Gigabyte starts at $100:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comment..._msrp_pricing/

So £100,is the bare minimum for a B550 motherboard.

[Spreadie]

The lowest end B550 motherboard from Gigabyte starts at $100:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comment..._msrp_pricing/

So £100,is the bare minimum for a B550 motherboard.

Protecting the B450 sales then.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Renoir apparently has 20 PCI-E 3.0 lanes:
https://www.techpowerup.com/268747/a...turing-x16-peg

[watercooled]

I think some of those will be chipset lanes too? It will be interesting how it works electrically though given Matisse has 4 CPU lanes dedicated to NVMe.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Also it makes me wonder whether Zen3 is a power hog with all the phases on the B550 motherboards!