Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unboxed finally AMD has officially released their be 450 chipset and as of today you can now at long last by a be 450 motherboard some retailers such as Newegg did jump the gun last week and start selling early so some of you may already have a be 450 board but for those of you who don't we have some pretty useful buying advice that will be presented in this video so make sure you stick around for all of that on hand for testing I have 5b 450 motherboards from brands such as MSI as rocker soos and Giga Byte I'll quickly go over each board before discussing what we're actually testing in today's video and then of course we'll get into those results from MSI we have the impressive-looking be 450 tog which we featured in this bill just a few days here on the channel so if you missed that check it out anyway the tomahawk from the B 350 series was their best seller so MSI have pretty high expectations for the B 450 tomahawk and they've done a few things that should help improve sales like make a more neutral theme so it's a black gray theme should go with just about any build but their improvements have extended just beyond the aesthetics although we get the same 4+2 verum and the ATX form factor the vm cooling has been upgraded the heat sinks are physically large and feature more fins for significantly more surface area MSI is also decided not to advertise the board's varium configuration which I suppose is preferable to lying and I really appreciate how they haven't added any additional chokes to try and give the appearance of packing more phases than it really does those of you wondering MSI is using the rich tech RT 88-90 for a controller with two on semiconductor for C 0 24 and MOSFETs for the higher side and 2 for C 0 29 n MOSFETs for the low side MSI's added an extra PCIe times a 1 gen 3 slot and removed the legacy PCI slots so in my opinion that's a pretty good move a pair of USB 3.1 gen2 ports have been added to the rear i/o and the board now packs six SATA ports rather than just four there's also an extra RGB head of supporting a wider range of colors and effects then finally one of the most conclusions is the new bias flashback feature which is said to be included on all MSI be 450 motherboards this button which is found on the i/o panel allows you to upgrade the board's bios and all it requires is ATX power a very handy feature for future of rise and cpu support for those buying this board without an older CPU to first boot it up and then flash the BIOS the be 350 tomahawk is currently selling for $100 u.s. while the be 450 version is coming in at 110 dollars u.s. but we expect it to replace the be 350 version at $100 us shortly overall a really nice beef 450 motherboard from MSI then from asrock we have the B 450 gaming k4 and B 450 gaming ITX AC starting with the gaming k4 which is this board here it's basically a refresh of the B 350 K 4 it was the a be 350 gaming k4 but yeah very little has changed there in fact other than the chipset the only other noteworthy change is the design like MSI asrock has gone with a more neutral theme as you can see it's another black gray board so they've just dropped the red highlights from the previous version unfortunately this means we have the same vrm design marketed as a digi power 9 phase design with premium power chokes which I have to say don't look that premium at all if I'm honest however it's not the choke quality that's the issue here rather it's how many of them there are as rocks included six chokes on the vehicle of erm and yet we really only have a 3-phase vrm designed to look like a six phase verum and what it really isn't is a nine phase vrm there's no double here either it's just a doubling of components so it's a three plus three phase very I'm using an Intersil is l9 five seven one two controller with Nicko is PK six one eight eight a MOSFETs on the high side and Nikko's P's at zero nine zero three BK MOSFETs on the low side the SOC configuration is similar though here we only get a single higher side MOSFET so it's quite disingenuous to advertise as motherboard is having a nine phase verum when it only has three phases for the vcore they've also done the same thing with the B 450 gaming ITX AC this is advertised is having an eight phase-- varium when in reality it's a three plus two so five phases in total the board also lacks cooling on the SOC vrm so not sure how well it'll go through Raven Ridge APU the focus of today's video that I will be on these second gen rising CPUs but the APU is something that I can come back and retest with the B 450 boards later so the B 450 gaming k4 is coming in at 100 dollars us which is also $10 a US over the current asking price for the be 350 version and then the B 450 gaming ITX AC is coming in at $130 us which was the original asking price of the be 350 equivalent overall no real upgrades from asrock which is a bit disappointing from a soos we have the ROG Strix B 450f gaming the company's most premium B 450 motherboard at 130 dollars us so certainly up there in terms of pricing when compared to the be 350 version you get USB type-c you also get an extra m2 slot and a pre-installed IO shield however for some reason they've also added a big plastic shroud over the i/o area which unfortunately extends over the vcore verum heatsink blocking much-needed airflow I know why they've done this it's a cheap addition to the board that makes it appear more high-end than it really is and they've also been had to add a neat little RGB logo as well while it does look quite nice it really is a gimmick and I feel that it will hurt the board's their more performance something we will look into soon before we get to that though the last board we have on hand for testing is the gigabyte be 450 horas pro or Wi-Fi and on the surface it looks like ye but has really up to their game for the new B 450 range and I suppose in some ways they have but in some ways they haven't the 8+3 phase very marketing scam has been abandoned now and it's just called a hybrid digital PWM which I suppose is fine however like asrock gigabyte has gone with a choke heavy approach in an effort to fool buyers into thinking that it's a more premium board than it really is on board you'll count no less than eleven chokes so pretty impressive stuff or is it this isn't the beefy verum that appears to be on the surface despite packing what looks like a Levin phase it's really just a four plus three phase very amusing the intersil is l9 five seven one two controller however unlike the MSI board for example each phase only has a single high side MOSFET with two low side FETs then the three phase SOC verum only employs a single high side FET and a single low side FET both the V Corps and SOC of erm do feature passive cooling so that's something though the heat sinks aren't particularly impressive and like a sous gigabyte found it necessary to limit airflow over the V corvara heatsink with an unnecessarily large plastic shroud despite that though the rest of the board does look very good even at the 120 dollar u.s. price point you get Intel dual band 802 11 AC Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 joule m dot 2 slots ALC 1220 VB enhanced audio with wim a audio Capps Intel Gigabit LAN six SATA ports plenty of PCI Express expansion and a nice-looking integrated IO shield so overall a nice looking board I'm just a little concerned about how that verum is going to perform and we will look at that now for this video I'm going to focus solely on vrm temperatures and power draw in total I've tested three hardware configurations using the rise in seven 2700 X and it's stock out of the box form either your isin v 2600 overclock to 4.2 gigahertz using one point four volts and then the horizon 7 2700 again at 4.2 gigahertz using one point four volts i've then tested all three configurations under two different conditions firstly on an open testbed with no direct airflow using a closed-loop cooler and that would be I suppose somewhat of a worst case scenario that will rival a case with pretty poor airflow then for the best case scenario I've tested inside the msi pylon using my case modification demonstrated in the build video from a few days ago I call this a best case scenario as we are using a well ventilated case with direct airflow over the v RM in a room with an ambient air temperature of just 21 degrees now depending on which configuration worked best i've used either a rear or top mounted intake fan blowing air over the motherboards v RM in fact it was only the asrock be 450 dam in k4 that worked better with a rear mounted fan the rest preferred the fan mounted in the top of the case for stress testing I'm not using a power bug type like prime95 ain't nothing against using that kind of software that certainly has its place but for this test I wanted to use a real-world workload so I went with a blender workload that takes the rise in seven twenty seven hundred well over an hour to complete the load results are reported after an hour of running the blender workload and then the idle is taken after a ten minute cooldown period to record the temperatures I'm using a digital thermometer with k-type thermocouple x' i've placed one directly on top of a high side MOSFET and then the other on the low side so i'm measuring the temperature directly from on top of the component between it and a thermal pad and not an internal temperature which is bound to be a little higher oh and I will be reporting the highest temperature of the two probes and I should just point out that all boards have been tested under the exact same conditions so this will give us a clearer picture of how the verum temperatures compare from one board to another I think that's about everything let's get to the results first up we have the passive results here each board was tested on open testbed with no direct airflow basically we're relying on whatever air circulation there is in the room install is the Rison 720 700 X with the deep cool Castle 240 so even the CPU cooler isn't directing any airflow over the VM heat sinks as a result things get pretty hot with the eight core 16 thread CPU installed there's our B 450 gaming K for an MSI be 450 tomahawk are these standouts here keeping very room temperatures below 90 degrees after an hour long blender stress test anything over 100 degrees we deem is unacceptable and we see the asrock be 450 gaming ITX AC and a seuss ROG Strix be 450 F gaming pushing past this the gigabyte be 450 or s pro Wi-Fi pushed well past that threshold hitting an incredible 121 degrees and the blender workload did crash multiple times but I'll talk more about that towards the end of the video for now let's add a 120 millimeter fan to either the rear or top of the case to direct a bit of air flow towards the vehicle veeram heatsink now for these results please note all motherboards except for the asrock p450 gaming k4 had the 120 millimeter fan installed in the top of the MSI pylon case directing air flow over the vrm the gaming k4 ran considerably cooler with a rear-mounted take fan as you can see despite being now installed inside an ATX case the temperatures are greatly improved thanks to the drastically increased airflow over the verum heat sinks the MSI B 450 tomahawk was the biggest winner here dropping down to just 52 degrees the asrock p450 gaming k4 also did well providing sub 60 degree temperatures the rest of the boards were now acceptable and even the Gigabyte B 450 or s pro Wi-Fi manage to stay under 70 degrees after an hour-long stress test the gigabyte board was also no longer crashing here's a quick look at total system power draw from the wall and interestingly the gigabyte masseuse boards drew the least amount of power despite being the hottest operating boards a soos also heavily dropped CPU voltage when the system is completely at idle which is why we see a noticeably lower idle consumption for the B 450 F gaming then finally with the rise in 720 700 X we have the peak consumption results for the CPU as reported by hardware info again we see the gigabyte be 450 or s pro Wi-Fi asrock p 450 gaming ITX AC and a soos ROG Strix B 450 F gaming all appearing to be the most efficient boards however what this really means is that they have the most severe voltage drop under load the gigabyte board dropped 13% lower than that of the MSI B 450 tomahawk and this could possibly explain why I was seeing instability issues without verum cooling next up I've gone with what might be a more realistic high-end configuration for most B 450 motherboards horizon 5 2600 overclocked for this test we have an all core overclock of 4.2 gigahertz using one point four volts and again I'm starting with the passive results on the open air test bench temperatures are slightly lower than what we saw with the stock 2700 X and this was to be expected as we found in our day 1 reviewed that the overclocked 2600 X consumed roughly the same amount of power as the stock 2700 X in the blender workload that being the case the performance trends are all very similar to what we found previously with the 8 core CPU again I should point out the gigabyte board did crash a few times during this test and when forced to rerun for a third time it ended up running into the dreaded blue screen of death I'm not sure if this is related to the VM or not it could be some other issue with our particular board but now it's quite clear this board does have the worst-performing verum of all the be 450 boards we have on hand with the be 450 boards installed in the ATX case with direct airflow over the verum we see temperatures again drop significantly and there are a few degrees cooler than what we saw in testing with the stock 2700 X power consumption is also slightly lower but we do see an even bigger drop-off for the gigabyte a seuss and asrock p450 gaming ITX AC when overclocked I should point out that the gigabyte board doesn't offer fixed voltages so I couldn't set it to 1 point 4 volt like the other boards and there's also no LLC options the only option is to offset the voltage which can be maxed out at plus 0.2 volts looking at the CPU power drawer and hardware info we again see that the gigabyte be 450 or s pro Wi-Fi is feeding the processor considerably less power than the other boards tested potentially causing our stability issues finally we have the ultimate test the horizon 7 2700 overclocked to 4.2 gigahertz using one point 4 volts for this configuration I'm skipping the passive testing as I wasn't really that keen on risking my CPU or power supply as you can see even with direct airflow the Gigabyte be 450 or s pro Wi-Fi hit 98 degrees under load without airflow it's not going to end well especially if we kept pushing it DUSU rog Strix b 450f gaming also exceeded 81 degrees which is certainly getting up there and then we have a Xerox Mini ITX board and the B 450 gaming ITX probably won't be afforded the kind of airflow it is in this ATX case as it would be in your typical Mini ITX case so although it only picked at seventy-five degrees this is likely going to be a best case scenario and it will get much hotter in pretty much all mini ITX enclosures the asrock p450 gaming k4 on the other hand did very well as did the MSI B 450 tomahawk both performed exceptionally well showing no signs of stability issues at all interestingly this time the power drive is very similar across all tested boards despite using the exact same voltages seen previously with the 2600 that said hardware info does report slightly lower CPU power draw for the Gigabyte B 450 or s pro Wi-Fi but again not nearly as Extreme as what we saw previously okay so that was a lot of VR temperature related information took quite a few days to acquire but now that we have it all what do we make of it and there are quite a few things to keep in mind when considering all this data firstly it is based on a real-world workload opposed to a power bug type program like prime95 which I did run on each of these boards just to check for stability and I saw on average power consumption increase by about 10 percent in fact using the overclocked Verizon 727 configuration I left each of these motherboards running prime95 overnight with active cooling so the 120-millimeter fan directing air over the VRMs and all of the boards did survive that test except for the gigabyte board which suffered a dreaded blue screen of death again at this point it's not clear what the cause of the instability is I possibly have a bad board or perhaps it is just a verum thermal issue the information we've gathered so far certainly seems to suggest that that is the issue but I'm keen to see what others report so I will be on the lookout for that anyway I'm aware that most of you probably aren't looking at a be 450 board for running blender workloads or prime95 overnight though some of you might be I suspect most of you watching this video gamers and really all you care about is gaming performance if you are just a gamer and all you do is game than these vrm temps almost meaningless at this point in time anyway because neither the horizon 520 600 northern 720 700 I worked anywhere near hard enough in today's games to see the sort of temperatures that we did with our blender workload of course it doesn't have to be blender it could be any core heavy application that runs for an extended period of time and that will push VM temperatures up there and these results also speak to the quality of the board and if you're overclocking it's also important information to be well aware of so if you do intend on running core heavy applications then make sure you pay attention to the veeram thermals and given our findings I can strongly recommend either the MSI B 450 torque or the as rock B 450 gaming k4 on paper the MSI board does appear to have the best verum design and that was certainly the case when testing oh and they're big heat sinks probably don't hurt either despite only packing a 3-phase v core veeram the asrock be 450 gaming k4 made Seuss ROG Strix B 450f gaming and gigabyte be 450 or s pro Wi-Fi look a bit silly it has to be said the asrock board has these nice finned heat sinks so great for increasing the surface area there and basically cooling down as air flows through them whereas both the a gigabyte and a soos boards just have big old chunks of aluminium which are great for extracting heat from the MOSFETs not really great at then getting rid of the heat so they're kind of like big heat reservoirs and then I say making matters even worse is the fact that we have this big plastic shroud on both of the boards the soos one in particular yet does limit air flow quite substantially even little asrock p450 gaming ITX AC with its lightweight verum showed no signs of failing during any of our extended load testing there was no stability issues or anything like that to speak of are still having said all that I do need to go back and test it with an overclocked horizon 5 2500 G to see how the apu goes with that to face passively cooled SOC vrm based on what I've seen so far MSI hands-down has the best value B 450 board on offer with their tomahawk model and before you claim that I'm an MSI shell or fanboy or whatever else I urge you to take a look at my recent top 5 best X 470 video where I didn't name a single MSI X 470 motherboard and my opinion MSI really has stepped up their game for this B 450 release and their B 450 gaming Pro carbon a/c looks to be a particularly impressive b4 few motherboard so I would like to check that out soon hopefully I can get my hands on it let you guys know how good that board is later in the week I will be comparing the performance of the be 350 and B 450 chipsets expect that to be a rather uninteresting video but I know heaps of you will be interested in seeing of those results I will provide them and then after that I will do as sort of a be full 50 roundup where I name what I believe to be the best of value B for 50 motherboards and there'll be a few different categories their best mini ITX I think it might only be two of those anyway we'll cover that later on in the week and then hopefully by the time you're watching this someone we'll have tested the Auris pro board so we'll know if I have a defective board or if they're all as underwhelming as this one which would be unfortunate if they are but maybe that's the situation and that yeah really is going to do it for this one as always thanks you for watching subscribe for more content if you appreciate what we do here at harbor unbox then consider supporting us on patreon thank you again for watching I'm your host Steve see you next time