6xx or 8xx motherboard for 9k 3XD chips?

[Odyn]

Hi Everyone-

I plan on getting the new 9kX3D chip but I'm wondering if I should use an older (I would buy new) 6 series motherboards or if I should splurge on the 8 series? Any must-have features between the two? Honestly, I don't mind spending the money I just want it to last ~4 years like my 5900x did. I'm leaning for the X870E Taichi tbh since all my previous taichi boards were solid. 

I'd also like a recommendation on either a 32 or 64gb kit. Theres so much info out there that is generic and non-specific... with the 5900x I got a 3600 CL16 kit because it was the sweet spot. Is there such a thing that exists on the 9k series? 

[bwalker36]

Can't help you but curious, I plan to do the same thing after the holidays.  I was looking at the tachi's as well hah. 

[Fluxmaven]

The only difference between X670E and X870E is guaranteed USB 4.0. The newer boards will likely support faster memory out of the box as well. 

 

As for a sweet spot, you can toss in a 6000cl30 kit, tighten up the secondary and tertiary timings and call it a a day. X3D somewhat negates the need for faster memory so there's less of an incentive to spend money on a nicer kit unless you actually want to do memory OC. 

 

You mentioned 32 or 64GB but there is a middle option these days. Now that 24GB modules are available you can get a 48GB kit. 

[ozlay]

Some of the 8-series boards have 5GbE. And some have 10GbE. Which is hard to find on 6-series boards.

[Odyn]

9 hours ago, ozlay said:

Some of the 8-series boards have 5GbE. And some have 10GbE. Which is hard to find on 6-series boards.

ahh good point. 

... now I want 5gbe. 

... and now I need a new router, and to buy a 5gbe ethernet card for my nas. 

... sighhhhhhh. 

[J7SC_Orion]

4 hours ago, Odyn said:

ahh good point. 

... now I want 5gbe. 

... and now I need a new router, and to buy a 5gbe ethernet card for my nas. 

... sighhhhhhh. 

 

To answer your original post, there are very few differences between 670E and 870E. Technically, the only 'mandatory' difference per AMD is that the 870E series must have USB4 (psst, Thunderbolt) as standard, while it was optional on the 670E. Then again, you can get a nice 670E and put in an AIC for additional options. Most of my mobos (total ~ 20) are Asus ROG desktop and/or HEDT boards, with the odd Gigabyte and MSI. That said, I picked up an Aorus 670E Master last fall along with a 7950X3D and 2x 24 GB DDR5. That board turned out to be a fantastic performer...DDR5 8000 and beyond is no problem (have run at least 8000 since I completed the build). The system  also has a no-sweat profile for 4x 24 / 96 GB CL30 6400 that works perfectly well when I ran it for a special LLM task.  BTW, I had my 670E Master as high as DDR5 8600 with 2x 24 GB (via bclk, though)...great board for RAM oc.

 

I am waiting to see what the Ryzen 9950X3D is like in real-world testing - I will either add another Aorus 670E Master or pick up an Aorus 870E Master if I go for a 9950X3D instead of another option such as Threadripper Pro. The Aorus 670E Master and 870E Master are almost identical other than the faster network chip. The Aorus top boards like the 670E/870E Master also are among the few boards that can run R-DDR5 (full EEC memory) without any issue, and they also have bifurcation options - both are important to me as I tend to recycle my fun boards into productivity tasks down the line. I should mention that there is also the Aorus 870E Extreme coming out - it is like the Master (both support DDR5 OC to 8600), but the Aorus 870E Xtreme also has dual 10 GBE onboard and some other extras such as programmable LCD screens on the mobo. The only problem: It likely will be around $800 - $1k

 

So for me, the Aorus 670E/870E Master are the best choice, but the vid below has detailed a 21 board feature comparison review for 870/870E - a great reference piece. 

 

 

[Fluxmaven]

I don't see any point in 5Gb since it's so niche. 10Gb is common as dirt in enterprise gear so it ends up being cheaper to build out a 10Gb network than 5Gb. 

 

Most of my network is 2.5Gb since I can run that over the copper that's already run through the house and the motherboards already come with 2.5Gb NICs. My one 10Gb switch is all SFP. I could get a good used Intel or mellanox NIC for less than a single 10GbaseT rj45 transceiver. Not to mention even though x670e and x870e are basically the same, they will likely still charge a premium for the new boards. 

[Odyn]

So i decided on the MSI X870E carbon based on the HW Unboxed video. I know its expensive and overkill but I typically have a 4 year cycle between computers so I think its okay. 

That leads me to my next question ... will that motherboard be able to run the 9xxx X3D chip out of the box? I haven't had to flash a bios with the USB in a looooonnnnggggg time, so even if it doesn't work (failed CPU state or whatever its called when you boot with an unsupported CPU) -- will I be able to flash it sans CPU? If not -- are there any KNOWN motherboards that work out of the box??? I don't want to buy 2 CPUs just so I can use 1 of them, then return it. lol. 

[Sir Beregond]

6 hours ago, Odyn said:

That leads me to my next question ... will that motherboard be able to run the 9xxx X3D chip out of the box? 

No idea considering the 9000-series X3D chips have not released yet. That said, shouldn't matter. That motherboard support BIOS flashing without CPU and memory according to their website, so I think you'll be fine either way.

 

[Mr. Fox]

My Apex beast has a new younger brother to fight with. I just built an AMD system and in the process of figuring out how to tune Ryzen 9 for maximum overclocked benching performance. Very different than what I am used to. I know seeing this is going to cause brain damage to a few people, LOL.

Once I get my bearings I will be ordering the Thermal Grizzly Mycro and Delid Die Mate from Brother @der8auer for added thermal headroom on my water chiller. RAM cooling parts are on the way, along with an EXPO 8000 kit. At the moment I am using an XMP 8000 kit, manually tuned. I am liking it so far. Hoping to learn a few things specific to AMD from our resident AMD HWBOT pros.
 

https://hwbot.org/submission/5686810_

https://hwbot.org/submission/5686765_

Edited November 13 by Mr. Fox

[Sir Beregond]

2 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

My Apex beast has a new younger brother to fight with. I just built an AMD system and in the process of figuring out how to tune Ryzen 9 for maximum overclocked benching performance. Very different than what I am used to. I know seeing this is going to cause brain damage to a few people, LOL.

Once I get my bearings I will be ordering the Thermal Grizzly Mycro and Delid Die Mate from Brother @der8auer for added thermal headroom on my water chiller. RAM cooling parts are on the way, along with an EXPO 8000 kit. At the moment I am using an XMP 8000 kit, manually tuned. I am liking it so far. Hoping to learn a few things specific to AMD from our resident AMD HWBOT pros.
 

https://hwbot.org/submission/5686810_

https://hwbot.org/submission/5686765_

You....built an AMD system?

 

Last thing I was expecting to read. 

[Mr. Fox]

1 hour ago, Sir Beregond said:

You....built an AMD system?

 

Last thing I was expecting to read. 

I still have two Intel systems, both of which are beasts. I had four and too much of the same thing (one Z690 and three Z790 with 13th and 14th Gen i9 processors). So, I sold the two least-used of the four and used the money for the AMD build. This will give me something new and challenging to play with and allow me to rack up some HWBOT points. I was basically tapped out and no longer able to gain any points on HWBOT because my results were maxed out. I would have needed to do LN2 to make any further progress. The new Core Ultra CPUs are a downgrade due to the reduced thread count and stunted overclocking headroom, so it did not make any sense to waste money on a Z890 build. We'll see if Intel brings something better in their next product offering. They are in guinea pig mode right now and homey don't play dat.

[Sir Beregond]

1 hour ago, Mr. Fox said:

I still have two Intel systems, both of which are beasts. I had four and too much of the same thing (one Z690 and three Z790 with 13th and 14th Gen i9 processors). So, I sold the two least-used of the four and used the money for the AMD build. This will give me something new and challenging to play with and allow me to rack up some HWBOT points. I was basically tapped out and no longer able to gain any points on HWBOT because my results were maxed out. I would have needed to do LN2 to make any further progress. The new Core Ultra CPUs are a downgrade due to the reduced thread count and stunted overclocking headroom, so it did not make any sense to waste money on a Z890 build. We'll see if Intel brings something better in their next product offering. They are in guinea pig mode right now and homey don't play dat.

Looking forward to seeing what you can do with it. Also lol to the last line!

 

Edited November 13 by Sir Beregond

[Mr. Fox]

Finally got around to installing Linux on the Ryzen build.

 

[Mr. Fox]

Well, I ordered the parts from Thermal Grizzly and got the 9950X decapitated and on bare die. Success!

https://imgur.com/a/HAftuqu

 

Before Decapitation ^^^

IHS Removed ^^^ - I had to move the IHS back and forth with the Delid Die Mate about 75 times before it came loose.

Liquid Metal Application ^^^

Micro Direct Die Block ^^^

CPU in socket (Kapton tape to prevent CPU from lifting out of socket with MDD block) ^^^

Installed... ^^^

Finished Product ^^^

Before Delid ^^^

After Delid ^^^

Before Delid ^^^

After Delid ^^^

AIDA64 5-Minute Stress Test (ambient 79°F / 26°C) - normalized at 72°C

 

I also noticed that with the latest BIOS that Benchmate is bugged and not reading the core voltage correctly. The core voltage is fixed at 1.250V and other monitoring software confirms the same.

Edited November 25 by Mr. Fox

[Mr. Fox]

Best personal all-time best score for Cinebench R23. And, I still have thermal headroom if the silicon quality is able to handle more.

https://hwbot.org/submission/5702114_

 

 

Edited November 26 by Mr. Fox

[Sir Beregond]

20 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

Best personal all-time best score for Cinebench R23. And, I still have thermal headroom if the silicon quality is able to handle more.

https://hwbot.org/submission/5702114_

 

 

Nice! Looks like you are having fun! 

 

With the fixed voltage (also what I do when OCing) and using a split CCD model of Ryzen, are you going about it with an all-core OC, or does your motherboard support per CCX all-core OCing? I found on my 5900X that the 1st CCD/CCX is descent enough binning (not great), but my 2nd CCD/CCX is pretty awful by comparison where the max all-core I can get out of the 2nd is at least 150MHz lower than the 1st. Being able to split my all-core settings between the two and pushing my better CCD to its brink is how I got my best score on R23 multi. Overall the bin I got as a package is kinda meh tier, but thought I might mention.

Edited November 27 by Sir Beregond

[Mr. Fox]

1 hour ago, Sir Beregond said:

Nice! Looks like you are having fun! 

 

With the fixed voltage (also what I do when OCing) and using a split CCD model of Ryzen, are you going about it with an all-core OC, or does your motherboard support per CCX all-core OCing? I found on my 5900X that the 1st CCD/CCX is descent enough binning (not great), but my 2nd CCD/CCX is pretty awful by comparison where the max all-core I can get out of the 2nd is at least 150MHz lower than the 1st. Being able to split my all-core settings between the two and pushing my better CCD to its brink is how I got my best score on R23 multi. Overall the bin I got as a package is kinda meh tier, but thought I might mention.

I am having fun. As you know, I have owned many AMD products and never liked any of them. This is the first and I like it a lot. I'm impressed, and happy to be able to say that since I never have been in the past (talking CPUs and GPUs). No regrets... great CPU.

 

I don't know if the MSI firmware is bugged or what, but I cannot set each CCD for a different core ratio. When I try that they stay locked at 43x for some reason. I haven't tried using Ryzen Master, but I don't really want that cancer corrupting my OS. So, at this time I am using all-core overclocking.

Another update:

I removed the worthless stock G.SKILL heatsinks heating blankets and have the memory on water now in the Carbon. Huge improvement (like 20-25°C) in memory temps under load. It's really too bad this is a 4-DIMM motherboard. I could have used the IceMan RAM blocks and the memory overclocking would also be better. This was hitting 55-60°C in TM5 before, usually erroring out due to overheating. No more. Now I can remove that crappy little Noctua fan. It has always been the case that I find my overclocked RAM works so much better when water-cooled. This time was no exception.

    

 

    

 

    (lots of new bubbles in the loop now, LOL... will clear up in a day or so)

 

    

 

Edited November 27 by Mr. Fox

[Sir Beregond]

4 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

I am having fun. As you know, I have owned many AMD products and never liked any of them. This is the first and I like it a lot. I'm impressed, and happy to be able to say that since I never have been in the past (talking CPUs and GPUs). No regrets... great CPU.

 

I don't know if the MSI firmware is bugged or what, but I cannot set each CCD for a different core ratio. When I try that they stay locked at 43x for some reason. I haven't tried using Ryzen Master, but I don't really want that cancer corrupting my OS. So, at this time I am using all-core overclocking.

Another update:

I removed the worthless stock G.SKILL heatsinks heating blankets and have the memory on water now in the Carbon. Huge improvement (like 20-25°C) in memory temps under load. It's really too bad this is a 4-DIMM motherboard. I could have used the IceMan RAM blocks and the memory overclocking would also be better. This was hitting 55-60°C in TM5 before, usually erroring out due to overheating. No more. Now I can remove that crappy little Noctua fan. It has always been the case that I find my overclocked RAM works so much better when water-cooled. This time was no exception.

    

 

    

 

    (lots of new bubbles in the loop now, LOL... will clear up in a day or so)

 

    

 

Huh that sounds like a bug for sure.

 

Yeah I really don't like Ryzen Master myself either. Maybe just old school that way, but much prefer to manage all those settings in BIOS properly.

 

Glad to hear you are enjoying it!

 

Nice loop, love the functional nature of it. Looks like going to external rad? I thought it might be a good idea to try watercooling the RAM when I upgrade platforms to DDR5. How is the RAM working out on the 9950X?

[Mr. Fox]

7 hours ago, Sir Beregond said:

Huh that sounds like a bug for sure.

 

Yeah I really don't like Ryzen Master myself either. Maybe just old school that way, but much prefer to manage all those settings in BIOS properly.

 

Glad to hear you are enjoying it!

 

Nice loop, love the functional nature of it. Looks like going to external rad? I thought it might be a good idea to try watercooling the RAM when I upgrade platforms to DDR5. How is the RAM working out on the 9950X?

Yes both of my large desktops use external 360x360 radiators. My SFF work PC uses the EK direct die AIO.

 

When it comes to RAM overclocking, 9950X is not as bad as I expected it to be. Not as capable as Z790, but solid progress for AMD. 

Edited November 27 by Mr. Fox

[Sir Beregond]

1 hour ago, Mr. Fox said:

Yes both of my large desktops use external 360x360 radiators. My SFF work PC uses the EK direct die AIO.

 

When it comes to RAM overclocking, 9950X is not as bad as I expected it to be. Not as capable as Z790, but solid progress for AMD. 

That's good to hear. One of my biggest complaints with my 5900X is my RAM frequency is directly limited by my FCLK (fabric) frequency, since for Zen 3 and prior it had to be in a 1:1 ratio. My 5900X won't do any higher than 1866 FCLK so leaves me stuck at 3733 for the DDR4.

 

Well, look forward to seeing how this progresses!

Edited November 27 by Sir Beregond

[Mr. Fox]

On 27/11/2024 at 09:34, Sir Beregond said:

That's good to hear. One of my biggest complaints with my 5900X is my RAM frequency is directly limited by my FCLK (fabric) frequency, since for Zen 3 and prior it had to be in a 1:1 ratio. My 5900X won't do any higher than 1866 FCLK so leaves me stuck at 3733 for the DDR4.

 

Well, look forward to seeing how this progresses!

Yeah, the Infinity Fabric crap has never been great and it was one of the things that I found objectionable about Ryzen architecture. I still do, but now with Intel going stupid and moving to chiplets with Core Ultra they have a similar interface. I hate it for both brands. Big die monolithic processors will always be superior to the glued-together gamerboy chiplet rubbish.

 

I think I am going to be done with my Ryzen memory tuning for a while. It's a bit more tedious than Intel memory tuning (which is tedious enough in its own rights, LOL). Anyone that wants to give these settings a go with their AM5 DDR5 setup, feel free... This was good enough that I wrote the settings to my memory module user profile space. The screenshots show BIOS pages where anything was changed from default. The water cooling is certainly working well. After lots of stress testing the RAM temps have maxed out like 38°C.

 

 

Edited November 29 by Mr. Fox

[Sir Beregond]

3 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

glued-together gamerboy chiplet rubbish.

Lol. Chiplets for AMD started with EPYC server products, so not sure that is really the correct description. But I get the sentiment , and definitely monolithic is superior for latency purposes. And then there is Threadripper as well which is definitely not a gaming product.

 

Intel besides first using chiplets for Meteor Lake also used them for Sapphire Rapids server chips.

Edited November 29 by Sir Beregond

[Mr. Fox]

12 minutes ago, Sir Beregond said:

Intel besides first using chiplets for Meteor Lake also used them for Sapphire Rapids.

But... I didn't care until it affected me and others like me that do not like it. 

Hopefully Intel doesn't turn out like Micro$lop; meaning every new product release is crappier (less performant, less reliable, less autonomy, more restrictive, more bloated, more illogical and uglier to look at) than the product that came before it.
 

Edited November 29 by Mr. Fox

[Sir Beregond]

3 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

But... I didn't care until it affected me and others like me that do not like it. 

Hopefully Intel doesn't turn out like Micro$lop; meaning every new product release is crappier (less performant, less reliable, less autonomy, more restrictive, more bloated, more illogical and uglier to look at) than the product that came before it.
 

Haha, trust me, I totally get it. Its a weird time and I hope the same as you.