AMD - Zen chitchat

[DanceswithUnix]

Ebuyer are advertising Ryzen Pro APU based machines, £480 for 4650G with a single 8G stick, 240G SSD, some sort of WiFi card and no operating system.

https://www.ebuyer.com/990071-xenta-...sktop-xr-d5160

It says the motherboard is a "ASUS PRIME B500M-K" which I can't find on Google, but the backplate looks like a B550M-K is used.

Seems a bit costly compared to the 3400G version, but then that only has an A320 motherboard on it.


Edit: 4350G based machine at £420 is I guess a fairer comparison to the 4 core 3400G: https://www.ebuyer.com/990070-xenta-...sktop-xr-d5159

[[GSV]Trig]

I'm waiting for the Ryzen 5 4600G, I was looking at the Ryzen 5 3400G, but given they're still fetching ~£130 and the newer chips are out, its just a case of waiting for them to become available, although as you say the Ryzen 3 would be a closer spec, either would no doubt be faster than my i5-3470 that I'm replacing given hyperthreading and other updates..

[DanceswithUnix]

I'm waiting for the Ryzen 5 4600G, I was looking at the Ryzen 5 3400G, but given they're still fetching ~£130 and the newer chips are out, its just a case of waiting for them to become available, although as you say the Ryzen 3 would be a closer spec, either would no doubt be faster than my i5-3470 that I'm replacing given hyperthreading and other updates..

You *really* want the IGP then? The 3600 seems pretty good value atm.

I was trying to work out how much Ebuyer are charging for that APU. If you start with an equivalent £300 older model:

https://www.ebuyer.com/965243-xenta-...op-pc-xr-d5121

Then you knock off the motherboard (£60.48) and the 3400G (£132.72) you get to £106.79 for the case, PSU, SSD, WiFi card and a stick of Value Ram.

https://www.ebuyer.com/937047-msi-a3...320m-a-pro-max
https://www.ebuyer.com/883795-amd-ry...-yd3400c5fhbox

Add back in the B550M-K motherboard (£131.99) they seem to be using, you are back up to £238.78 for the system without APU.

https://www.ebuyer.com/983115-asus-p...-prime-b550m-k

So the 4650G system at £479.99, they are charging £241.21 for that APU.
The 4350G system comes out at £181.21 for the APU.

I know these are new, not even in stock yet, but it looks to me like there is a fair way for that price to come down.

[[GSV]Trig]

I need an APU yes, its for a home server build so will need something, and as I'm going iTX then the PCI-E slot will be used for a NIC or possibly my storage card, not 100% sure yet, in any case it wont be used for GFX...

I've already got an iTX x570 board, 32Gb DDR4, Node 304 case plus the drives will be coming over from my old Node 804 i5 mATX build so I am just wiating for a suitable APU.

[DanceswithUnix]

I need an APU yes, its for a home server build so will need something, and as I'm going iTX then the PCI-E slot will be used for a NIC or possibly my storage card, not 100% sure yet, in any case it wont be used for GFX...

I've already got an iTX x570 board, 32Gb DDR4, Node 304 case plus the drives will be coming over from my old Node 804 i5 mATX build so I am just wiating for a suitable APU.

Fair enough. That was sort of why I was doing the price calculation, to see if buyers remorse for the recent 3600+uATX+32GB ECC rig should kick in. So far I'm good, phew!
If I as a bit more space constrained or didn't have a spare graphics card, it would have been a lot harder.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I need an APU yes, its for a home server build so will need something, and as I'm going iTX then the PCI-E slot will be used for a NIC or possibly my storage card, not 100% sure yet, in any case it wont be used for GFX...

I've already got an iTX x570 board, 32Gb DDR4, Node 304 case plus the drives will be coming over from my old Node 804 i5 mATX build so I am just wiating for a suitable APU.

I would have got a B550 motherboard as I suspect idle power consumption would have been better.

[[GSV]Trig]

I would have got a B550 motherboard as I suspect idle power consumption would have been better.

I'm coming from an i5-3470, 32gb ddr3, not sure what the power usage will be like, I was looking at the Aorus B450M Pro Wifi iTX board, but managed to get the x570 version for £150 which will give me a bit more longevity on the APU choice, I'm not overclocking and most of the usage on the machine is low so I'd probably not have any issues either way..

I've just swapped my mATX Steel Legend out of my main machine for testing and all looks good so far, other than I haven't been in the BIOS so the fan's are louder than usual at the mo..

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'm coming from an i5-3470, 32gb ddr3, not sure what the power usage will be like, I was looking at the Aorus B450M Pro Wifi iTX board, but managed to get the x570 version for £150 which will give me a bit more longevity on the APU choice, I'm not overclocking and most of the usage on the machine is low so I'd probably not have any issues either way..

I've just swapped my mATX Steel Legend out of my main machine for testing and all looks good so far, other than I haven't been in the BIOS so the fan's are louder than usual at the mo..

That is a good price - how did you manage that?

[[GSV]Trig]

Used board, guy bought it in Jan.
Same board but 570 vs 450 was a no brainer for the price.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Used board, guy bought it in Jan.
Same board but 570 vs 450 was a no brainer for the price.

They didn't use it for long!

[[GSV]Trig]

Nope they didn’t, works for me though..

[kompukare]

Ah, slightly surprising but CB are reporting that Asrock's current beta for their Deskmini A300 supports Renoir.
https://www.computerbase.de/2020-08/...deskmini-a300/
Now the Deskmini is a 2 litre (80x155x155mm) mini PC with max 65W so don't expect any overclocking.

https://www.asrock.com/nettop/AMD/De...20Series/#BIOS



Of course, this would have the classic catch-22 as I don't think it supports CPU-less USB BIOS flashing.

[DanceswithUnix]

Ah, slightly surprising but CB are reporting that Asrock's current beta for their Deskmini A300 supports Renoir.
https://www.computerbase.de/2020-08/...deskmini-a300/
Now the Deskmini is a 2 litre (80x155x155mm) mini PC with max 65W so don't expect any overclocking.

https://www.asrock.com/nettop/AMD/De...20Series/#BIOS


Of course, this would have the classic catch-22 as I don't think it supports CPU-less USB BIOS flashing.

There was an article on Tom's Hardware that the beta BIOS had been pulled, but it looks like it just keeps getting replaced with newer beta BIOS version.

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news...i-a300-mini-pc

Edit: But then it does seem to have rolled back from N to K. Maybe they are just hitting a low of bugs, it is a beta
I have noticed however that my Asrock B550 board is supporting the new Pro APUs without needing any BIOS update, so it looks like the previous AGESA includes support.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Some 6W Zen+ based low power parts for educational laptops have been released:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15953...-for-education

[DanceswithUnix]

Some 6W Zen+ based low power parts for educational laptops have been released:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15953...-for-education

Finally something that looks like a decent replacement for my ancient E350 based laptop, if I can bump the ram up a bit.

[DanceswithUnix]

Interesting Gamer's Nexus video benchmarking the old 1090T in modern games and applications, following on from one they recently did on the FX 8370.

I don't think it is a big spoiler to say it doesn't do that well, even the FX 8370 only manages to equal the modern Athlon 3000G with the Phenom failing to even run one benchmark as it doesn't have the instructions to work in the DX12 mode that they always benchmark the game in and clearly didn't want to throw those results away and re-do them in DX11.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igjrJ7qH3_8