Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unboxed today where once again focusing on AMD's new desktop Raven Ridge ap use at this point I'm sure you know just about everything there is to know about these new Vega infused CPUs that said though if you're planning on buying the cheapest month the seriously good value Verizon 320 200 G and you want to save every last dollar possible you're probably asking yourself the question a 320 or B 350 since raisins release budget builders have had the choice between one of two chipsets the lockdown a 320 with no overclocking support or the B 350 that gives users the freedom to overclock their rise and processes to 4 gigahertz and we're not beyond just 2 4 gigahertz I've always recommended that viewers shy away from the a320 models they allow for a 10 to 20 dollar seven but it's my opinion that the trade-offs just really aren't worth it that said if you never intend to overclock resale value isn't something you care about and the complete lack of flexibility when it comes to memory upgrades won't bother you then getting a $50 a 320 board might make sense for ten dollars more though you gain the ability to overclock and with the Raven Ridge APU that means CPU and GPU overclocking neither of which is possible on the a320 boards so just to reiterate because I have seen a bit of confusion around this you cannot and I repeat cannot overclock the Vega GPU in the Raven Ridge ap use on an a320 motherboard then if you're willing to spend an additional twenty dollars over a basic a320 board so $70 in total on the motherboard that'll give you the pick of some great overclockers then a well stocked with plenty of nice features and you also get four dimm slots for flexible memory upgrades in the future my personal budget-friendly favorites include the asrock a be 350 pro 4 and msi be 350 PC mate now if you're just upgrading an old system you'll be in need of the Rison 320 200 G obviously an AM for motherboard and at least a gigabytes of ddr4 memory the 2200 G will set you back $100 a dual-channel 8 gigabyte ddr4 3000 kit also costs about $100 and then you need a motherboard what I'm getting out here is the total package with an a320 board starts at about 250 dollars u.s. or alternatively you're faced with a 270 dollar US bill with a decent be 350 board and that's sailing an 8% increase for the upgrade so what do you get for that extra investment overclocking aside for just a moment you do get quite a few extras for that small investment for example the audio implementation is much better on the asrock a be 350 pro 4 opposed to the asrock a 320 m you get two extra SATA ports an extra em 2 port many more PCIe slots a decent fee RM with passive cooling more USB 3.0 ports plus you also get a USB gen one type C port and well it's a similar story with other be 350 motherboards such as the MSI be 350 PC mate for example what's interesting is while asrock lists the a320 m is having support for ddr4 3200 memory via overclocking i wasn't actually able to get either of my Raven Ridge apos working at this speed on the a320 board in fact 3066 failed and I even ran into a few stability issues of the 29:33 forcing me down 2666 and here thankfully the system was actually stable so I went and got my hands on the most expensive asrock a320 board the a320 M pro 4 and at $65 it makes little sense but I wanted to see if the memory support was any better again I was unable to post with these 3200 extreme memory profile enabled and this time I was forced to run at 29 33 which did appear to be stable I should note that increase in the DRAM voltage on either board didn't seem to help now I'm not saying all a320 motherboards won't work above the spec for the memory but I tried two different boards and neither worked I suspect the same might be true for the ultra cheap $60 be 350 boards that share the same physical design as the budget a320 models however as I said earlier if you spend a little more on models such as the asrock a be 350 pro for these memory compatibility issues seem to go away and on this particular board I wasn't able to run at ddr4 36 66 without any issues although rosin CPUs are sensitive to memory frequency normally I'd say for budget buyers this really isn't a big deal however with the Raven Ridge ap use it really is a big deal dropping down from ddr4 3200 to the 2933 will reduce frame rates by 6 percent and going from 3200 to 2666 is about a 12% reduction so while the a320 board might offer a 7 percent saving overall here it was at least 6 percent slower and that alone really cancels out any savings then of course there is the issue of overclocking and I'd encourage all Raven Ridge owners to give it a go the riser master software makes overclocking within Windows quite easy though I would still suggest applying these settings in the BIOS if you can in any case taking the Vega at GPU embedded in the rise and 322 energy from its default operating frequency of one point one gigahertz to 1.5 gigahertz is really easy and this 36 percent bump in frequency will net you some really nice gains if you missed my 2200 year overclocking guide where I showed you how to extract around 20% more frames in games with a basic air cooler then be sure to check that out again I would just like to remind viewers that it's not possible to overclock either the CPU or the GPU on the a320 boards so the Vega 8 GPU will stay fixed at one point one gigahertz under load by my own estimates your standard quite easily extract 50% more performance out of the 2200 G for gaming when paired with a be 350 board using ddr4 3200 memory so to me that alone seems well worth investing 8% more in the upgrade package so in a nutshell I'd certainly invest that little extra because you get a much better product and just a much better overall result with greater flexibility and more options in the future it also might not seem like a big deal right now but in a few years time I believe the be 350 boards will be much more sought-after on the second-hand market and therefore they will command a higher asking price so budget shoppers would be wise to keep that in mind finally I'd also go as far to say that gamers pairing a Raven Ridge AP with an a320 board have really found the perfect way to spoil the potential of a great value product on that note I'm gonna end this one if you enjoyed the video please hit the like button subscribe for more content and if you appreciate the work we do here at how our unboxing consider supporting us on patreon you'll gain access to our discord chat and the monthly live stream between Tim and myself anyway as always thank you for watching I'm your host Steve and I'll see you next time