The Asus ROG Strix B350-F Gaming was one of the more expensive B350 boards, we believe it set you back around $120. There's a single M.2 slot, but again, for gamers this is likely fine, so we'll be very keen to see how this one handles the 5800X3D. Sure it's PCIe 3.0 only, but that's still fine for gaming and most gamers will be happy with the USB 3.1 Gen 1 support, there's even a type-C and in total the I/O panel features 6 USB ports. When compared to modern budget AMD B550 and Intel B660 boards, you're really not missing out on much. It handles 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 parts with ease and can even avoid throttling with the 16-core 3950X, especially if you provide the VRM heatsinks with a little airflow. Although it only cost ~$100 back in 2017, it's still a very usable product and it would be a shame to retire it due to BIOS support. One of the B350 boards I've hung onto for future testing was the MSI B350 Tomahawk as it was one of the better quality B350 boards. This was easy on the MSI and Gigabyte boards, where I simply started with the latest BIOS supporting the 1.2.0.7 microcode, but for Asus several previous BIOS revisions needed to be installed first before the board would accept the latest microcode, so it was more of an incremental update process. For updating each board, we installed a Ryas the original BIOS on the older B350 and X370 boards would recognize that CPU, then flashed to the latest BIOS, removed the R5 1600 and installed the 5800X3D. Ultimately it's up to motherboard manufacturers to roll out these updates for their various AM4 products, but it looks like all are on board and we have models from MSI, Asus, and Gigabyte to try out that have public access to AGESA 1.2.0.7. After probing AMD for information about a month ago, they told us to sit tight and wait for AGESA version 1.2.0.7 which was expected to be rolled out across all AM4 motherboards, and crucially it would add proper Ryzen 5000 series support to B350 and X370 boards, including the 5800X3D. Since then support was sketchy, with some B350 and X370 boards supporting Ryzen 5000 CPUs, but then performance wasn't always where it should be. Initial support for Ryzen 5000 processors on 300-series boards started popping up early on this year, but oddly only for the budget A320 boards, which most of you wouldn't have purchased as, let's be honest, they were all pretty garbage. This was a smart move by AMD because if first-gen Ryzen owners were faced with having to buy a new motherboard in order to acquire a current generation CPU performance, they would certainly consider going with Intel's Alder Lake series which typically offers greater performance for roughly the same price, and you get a few new features as well such as PCIe 5.0. Today we're taking the Ryzen 7 5800X3D and installing it on a few different B350 and X370 motherboards to see if it works, and if it does, how well does it work? It's a simple test, but it's also kind of a big deal as these boards are now five years old, so the ability to successfully pair them with one of the most powerful gaming CPUs out there is something quite special.Įarlier this year we got word that AMD were exploring the possibility of expanding support for Ryzen 5000 series processors to 300-series motherboards, which was exciting news for those of you still rocking a B350 or X370 motherboard, especially if it was a high-end board as having to spend more money on a 400 or 500-series board just to snag an affordable part like the Ryisn't all that appealing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |