AMD - Zen chitchat

[watercooled]

I know almost everyone does it, but be very careful personifying companies. Companies of the sizes we are talking here are never "friends" or "enemies" They are entities with huge numbers of employees each with individual motivations. It's not unusual for businesses to be fighting each other in court over one area whilst signing deals to do business in other areas.

That's pretty much the point I'm making about the daft assumption. As usual, "it's a bit more complicated than that", but there's a lot of bad blood between the two over the years.

[DanceswithUnix]

That's pretty much the point I'm making about the daft assumption. As usual, "it's a bit more complicated than that", but there's a lot of bad blood between the two over the years.

Is there any good blood? They are forced to work with each other, but it never seems like a stable truce.

[DanceswithUnix]

I've cracked on a B550 board to upgrade my old FM2 socket home server.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asro...-gbe-micro-atx

Actually has three M.2 connectors, but one is just for a WiFi card so that won't get used. A useless connector is better than paying for a whole WiFi adapter.

There were cheaper B450 boards, but they all seemed to fall short in some fashion or other so if I had gone B450 it wouldn't have been much cheaper. I notice Scan have a B550 board on pre-order that is £82, so board prices seem to be coming down. Not a board I would want (only 2 DIMM sockets, no VRM heatsinks) but there are recent builds I could have used it on.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asro...-gbe-micro-atx

I also noticed that there are reports of old CPUs working in B550 boards, so I might actually give my 2200G a quick try

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I've cracked on a B550 board to upgrade my old FM2 socket home server.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asro...-gbe-micro-atx

Actually has three M.2 connectors, but one is just for a WiFi card so that won't get used. A useless connector is better than paying for a whole WiFi adapter.

There were cheaper B450 boards, but they all seemed to fall short in some fashion or other so if I had gone B450 it wouldn't have been much cheaper. I notice Scan have a B550 board on pre-order that is £82, so board prices seem to be coming down. Not a board I would want (only 2 DIMM sockets, no VRM heatsinks) but there are recent builds I could have used it on.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asro...-gbe-micro-atx

I also noticed that there are reports of old CPUs working in B550 boards, so I might actually give my 2200G a quick try

Actually you might want to see how much the equivalent B450 version was....under £75(there are two versions).

So that is nearly £40 to £50 over the B450 version. This is basically what you are seeing,the equivalent mode is being bumped up by large amounts.

This is the problem,as you saw with that £80ish B450....it is more like a £50 B450/A320 motherboard,the B450 version is £55.

[kompukare]

Wonder what all the bling on these new boards does to idle power consumption.
Been a while since I saw group mobo test where they measured power consumption, but while it's nice to have a board with VRMs which can cope with high loads, most of the time my PC is nearer to idle.

[DanceswithUnix]

Actually you might want to see how much the equivalent B450 version was....under £75(there are two versions).

There is one with an equivalent name and I nearly bought it. Certainly not the Pro-F, those are just nasty. I took a long look at the detailed specifications, and figured the extra £40 seemed worth it. Part of that is the extra 2 SATA connectors, nice to have spares on a board going into a server, and part of it is the way the BIOS on the old board (16MB) has already started to split with updates listed as not recommended to people with APUs and that not updated for half a year, whereas the new board has a 32MB BIOS and I can expect updates to go on for longer with it being a newer product, again nice in a machine that I expect to have a long service life.

Most of the features on the B550M are admittedly of no interest to me in this usage: ditching the near useless single link DVI-D connector for a Display Port, updating of the HDMI/HDCP versions to proper 4K support (the box lives under a TV and currently uses the VGA 15 pin just for maintenance, but who knows I might want a proper video feed in the future), updated audio codec.

An Intel LAN chip would have been perfect and have made the board well worth the extra money, but sadly they don't put those on Micro ATX boards. Guess I will get a £25 add in card. That's from wanting hardware packet timestamping for work use BTW, and sadly Realtek don't seem to support that, and I was hoping that would fall out of the motherboard upgrade (I currently run two Realtek interfaces so can't run proper PTP network timing). Ho hum, it's a niche requirement so I get to spend more.

Wonder what all the bling on these new boards does to idle power consumption.

You can always go into the BIOS and turn it all off

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There is one with an equivalent name and I nearly bought it. Certainly not the Pro-F, those are just nasty. I took a long look at the detailed specifications, and figured the extra £40 seemed worth it. Part of that is the extra 2 SATA connectors, nice to have spares on a board going into a server, and part of it is the way the BIOS on the old board (16MB) has already started to split with updates listed as not recommended to people with APUs and that not updated for half a year, whereas the new board has a 32MB BIOS and I can expect updates to go on for longer with it being a newer product, again nice in a machine that I expect to have a long service life.

Most of the features on the B550M are admittedly of no interest to me in this usage: ditching the near useless single link DVI-D connector for a Display Port, updating of the HDMI/HDCP versions to proper 4K support (the box lives under a TV and currently uses the VGA 15 pin just for maintenance, but who knows I might want a proper video feed in the future), updated audio codec.

An Intel LAN chip would have been perfect and have made the board well worth the extra money, but sadly they don't put those on Micro ATX boards. Guess I will get a £25 add in card. That's from wanting hardware packet timestamping for work use BTW, and sadly Realtek don't seem to support that, and I was hoping that would fall out of the motherboard upgrade (I currently run two Realtek interfaces so can't run proper PTP network timing). Ho hum, it's a niche requirement so I get to spend more.

It's more the positioning - the PRO4 series were generally under £80,but with the B550,the PRO4 series is over £110. So this is what you are seeing at each tier,the namesake replacements are costing anything from £30~£70 more,and if you look at the B550M HDV motherboard,its a poorer motherboard than the B450 PRO F but costs £15 more.

[DanceswithUnix]

It's more the positioning - the PRO4 series were generally under £80,but with the B550,the PRO4 series is over £110. So this is what you are seeing at each tier,the namesake replacements are costing anything from £30~£70 more,and if you look at the B550M HDV motherboard,its a poorer motherboard than the B450 PRO F but costs £15 more.

I remember building a 2600X machine using a B350 motherboard because the B450 equivalent was so much more expensive for no real gain. Give it time.

Plus in hindsight, I wish I had used a 450 motherboard in that build. It would have given me less hassle at the time of needing to get an old A6 Athlon to upgrade the bios so it would boot with the 2600X, and now that the machine is coming up to needing a bit of a performance kick might have had a Zen 3 option. Given that board is almost certainly a dead end at 3000 series I will probably just get a 3900X for it.

Edit: What I really want it one of these, but that's well outside my budget:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASRock-Rack...dp/B07PNFTPGB/

[kompukare]

Edit: What I really want it one of these, but that's well outside my budget:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASRock-Rack...dp/B07PNFTPGB/

I'm guessing because of the ECC support?

A lot of boards list ECC support (Skinflint list 35 mATX ones: https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=mbam4&x...nterst%FCtzung), but I guess this one has actually been tested with ECC?

[DanceswithUnix]

I'm guessing because of the ECC support?

A lot of boards list ECC support (Skinflint list 35 mATX ones: https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=mbam4&x...nterst%FCtzung), but I guess this one has actually been tested with ECC?

Proper ECC support, though for Linux use my Asrock board should be OK (as would an Asus board which probably would have been my B450 choice). We shall see when my CPU turns up, I already have 32GB of ECC.
Dual Intel network interfaces, and the integrated management ethernet port.
The airflow is directed front to back with the dimms rotated 90 degrees compared to normal desktop boards which is really nice for a proper server case, but not much use to me.

So nice, but not nice enough to pay double the cost of the B550 that is already on the pricey side for me (and clearly the wrong side of pricey for many including Cat )

Interesting list there, backs up my expectation of "anything by Asus or Asrock" but there is one Biostar board in there. Keep forgetting Biostar still exist!

[spacein_vader]

I'm in a similar boat with my home server, the challenge isn't a mobo with ECC but getting hold of a Ryzen Pro CPU that supports it.

[DanceswithUnix]

I'm in a similar boat with my home server, the challenge isn't a mobo with ECC but getting hold of a Ryzen Pro CPU that supports it.

For now I'm sticking a 3600 and an old GPU in there. Thankfully the case is big enough to take that. Shame to waste the integrated graphics connectors and mess up the airflow with a gpu.

[[GSV]Trig]

I'm looking at a new board and chip for my server, replacing an i5-3470/32gb/mATX and was looking at a 3400g/32Gb/Aorus Pro Wifi B450 ITX board, but with the new APU's coming out, which apparently give a marked improvement I'm now unsure as not all B450 boards will support new CPU's, but the APU's tend to be a generation behind do they not, so the 4000 series APU's are based on the 3000 CPU's which means B450 should support them, things are not as simple as they should be so now I'm stuck in limbo not knowing if a B450 and a 3400g will give me the support I need, or do I bite the bullet and get the Aorus board and a 3400g and then see what Gigabyte do with B450 support and BIOS updates for the 4000 series CPU/APU lineup...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'm looking at a new board and chip for my server, replacing an i5-3470/32gb/mATX and was looking at a 3400g/32Gb/Aorus Pro Wifi B450 ITX board, but with the new APU's coming out, which apparently give a marked improvement I'm now unsure as not all B450 boards will support new CPU's, but the APU's tend to be a generation behind do they not, so the 4000 series APU's are based on the 3000 CPU's which means B450 should support them, things are not as simple as they should be so now I'm stuck in limbo not knowing if a B450 and a 3400g will give me the support I need, or do I bite the bullet and get the Aorus board and a 3400g and then see what Gigabyte do with B450 support and BIOS updates for the 4000 series CPU/APU lineup...

Wait a bit longer?? Interestingly enough some of the B550 mini-ITX motherboards are OK priced,especially as X570 doesn't have any real advantage in the form factor. This one is around £130:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/B550M-ITXac/index.asp

[[GSV]Trig]

I am leaning into B550, the reason I want the Aorus board is the Intel NIC, however some of the B550 boards have 2.5Gb NIC which would be preferable, however not supporting the 3400g means waiting a few months at least, maybe more for the ”new shiny” pricing to be better, but the B450 does support the APU I want now, and might, with a BIOS update support newer ones, so I'm a bit torn...

[kompukare]

Interesting list there, backs up my expectation of "anything by Asus or Asrock" but there is one Biostar board in there.

Well skinflint is ultimately geizhalz.at, and as anyone who has ever looked at German-language magazines knows they all love group comparisons and Bestenlisten.
Handy database of stuff with lots and lots of filters. Want a case under 20 litres which takes mATX and is cube-like? With filtering you can find them, I think there is a 13l one which is about the shape of my HP Microserver and takes mATX boards, for instance.