Let's Test This: Ryzen 9 3900X on a B350 Motherboard

[Julio Franco]

Surely you've read our 3rd-gen Ryzen review by now. While testing the new CPUs we posed the question, how well will these processors work on a really affordable B350 motherboard? The test subject for this experiment is the Asrock AB350M Pro4, the best 'ultra cheap' B350 motherboard we recommended back in 2017 coming in at just $75.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1872-ryzen-9-on-older-motherboards/

 

[ZackL04]

Looks like she works just fine and within margin of error.

Question is, do you go $80 1600 or $200 3600....

 

[grvalderrama]

What should I take into account if I want to upgrade my Ryzen 1600 for a 3600? I have 2400 Mhz DDR4 memories, will it work fine or will the cpu's performance demise because of the RAM speed? Appreciate all advice

 

[Shadowboxer]

Looks like she works just fine and within margin of error.

Question is, do you go $80 1600 or $200 3600....

Oh definitely the $200 3600. The single core performance improvements are massively worth it. I wasn’t sold on Ryzen 1xxx & 2xxx but the 3xxx stuff is a big improvement.

 

[Neartheninja]

What should I take into account if I want to upgrade my Ryzen 1600 for a 3600? I have 2400 Mhz DDR4 memories, will it work fine or will the cpu's performance demise because of the RAM speed? Appreciate all advice

You will be fine with 2400 MHz as long as it’s DDR4 as you say. The performance difference on the R5 isn’t all that much different and will still perform pretty well if my test on the R7 3800x are any indication. At least if you are trying to save money.

 

[SkOrPn]

What should I take into account if I want to upgrade my Ryzen 1600 for a 3600? I have 2400 Mhz DDR4 memories, will it work fine or will the cpu's performance demise because of the RAM speed? Appreciate all advice

Yes it will work with your 2400 Mhz ram. However, Ryzen has always worked better with faster RAM, including your Ryzen 5 1600 which ran best with 2933 ram. The Ryzen 3600 will probably work great with 3200 Mhz ram, and run best at 3600 (AMD's recommendation), and the absolute max sweet spot according to AMD is 3733. But yes your 2400 ram will work just fine so long you can handle the knowledge of knowing the chip is not running at its best possible speeds. Remember the Infinity Fabric, a.k.a the communication layer on the CPU package is tied to the RAM speed, so 2400 will be running the Infinity Fabric at its slowest possible speed. This is obviously not ideal, but again it will work just fine.

 

[Evernessince]

Looks like she works just fine and within margin of error.

Question is, do you go $80 1600 or $200 3600....

or $130 2600. The price has dropped quite a bit on that as well.

 

[pcnthuziast]

Not doing benches like this with slower ram is a waste as people using such a board would probably also be running slower ram ie 2400/2666.

 

[ZackL04]

B

Oh definitely the $200 3600. The single core performance improvements are massively worth it. I wasn’t sold on Ryzen 1xxx & 2xxx but the 3xxx stuff is a big improvement.

But for over 2x the price?

 

[Colonel Blimp]

I have a 1600, 3200 corsair ram with an Msi B350 gaming pro carbon and am seriously tempted to pop a 3600 in to last me the next 3 years or so.
I could stretch to a 3700 but really, I game a bit, mainly fps, and mess around with Reason 10 so think it would be a waste.
You think?

 

[ZackL04]

I gues

I have a 1600, 3200 corsair ram with an Msi B350 gaming pro carbon and am seriously tempted to pop a 3600 in to last me the next 3 years or so.
I could stretch to a 3700 but really, I game a bit, mainly fps, and mess around with Reason 10 so think it would be a waste.
You think?

I would if your runing a GTX 1080 or higher, otherwise no

 

[CodeCreator]

Not doing benches like this with slower ram is a waste as people using such a board would probably also be running slower ram ie 2400/2666.

Yeah, no. I'm pretty sure most have higher speed than 2666 MHz with B350s, also you can easily overclock a 2666 kit to 3000, 3200 if you got a good one.

 

[pcnthuziast]

Yeah, no. I'm pretty sure most have higher speed than 2666 MHz with B350s, also you can easily overclock a 2666 kit to 3000, 3200 if you got a good one.

>assumptions

 

[Lew Zealand]

I gues

I have a 1600, 3200 corsair ram with an Msi B350 gaming pro carbon and am seriously tempted to pop a 3600 in to last me the next 3 years or so.
I could stretch to a 3700 but really, I game a bit, mainly fps, and mess around with Reason 10 so think it would be a waste.
You think?

I would if your runing a GTX 1080 or higher, otherwise no

Maybe not even with a GTX 1080 at typical gaming settings (1440p, high quality):

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14605/the-and-ryzen-3700x-3900x-review-raising-the-bar/17

This is only with the 8C parts and not the 6C 3600 but the flatness of the GTX 1080's performance in a 1440p graph in a game known to favor high single core performance suggests that the 3600 will be able to keep the framerates within 5% of max even on a GTX 1080. The other games evaluated there with similar 1440p high settings are equally flat with the GTX 1080. Though obviously I'd want to see the 3600 paired with a 1080 just to be sure. Mostly because I have a 1080.

Now if you want high refresh rate 1080p at low to med quality, the Intel chips will deliver a little more of that type of gameplay but a select few people play this way.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Not doing benches like this with slower ram is a waste as people using such a board would probably also be running slower ram ie 2400/2666.

I started with 8GB 2800 with my bottom-of-the-barrel MSI Pro VD+ and R3 1200 and upgraded to 16GB 3200 a few months ago when it became so cheap. And this will probably get an r5 3600 in the coming weeks.

Let's look at this another way: If you actually planned this by getting first gen Ryzen, and now are replacing it with a Zen 2, you know enough to grab some cheap DDR 3200 to complete the upgrade if you haven't done so already.

 

[CodeCreator]

Yeah, no. I'm pretty sure most have higher speed than 2666 MHz with B350s, also you can easily overclock a 2666 kit to 3000, 3200 if you got a good one.

>assumptions

And what you said aren't? Lol

 

[Lounds]

I want gaming benchmarks for 1600 Vs 3600, now we know there's not much performance difference running the 3600 on an older B350 motherboard.

 

[Indekkusu]

Looks like she works just fine and within margin of error.

Question is, do you go $80 1600 or $200 3600....

If you do not have a top end video card like a RTX2060 super or better there is no need for more than a R5 1600. OC to 4.0 Ghz and your games will be just fine.

 

[koblongata]

Intel: take my beer
crowd: why???
Intel: taking notes

 

[pcnthuziast]

And what you said aren't? Lol

Fair enough. Truth is, I'm the owner of a blue chip atm and when I bought it I only got 2666 thinking it didn't matter much and bc the price was good in comparison to other kits at my local mc store. It's a 32gb kit I got a little over 2 years ago and the 3200 kit was 40-50 more iirc. Anyway I'd love a cpu upgrade, but was hoping to keep my ram. If I got a Ryzen it would be my first red chip and it looks like the ram upgrade would be essential.

 

[PetrolHead]

There's a good chance memory speeds would be better with newer BIOS versions. The AGESA version is only 1.0.0.1 in the current BIOS version, so it's already a few revisions behind the newest possible AGESA version. I have this same exact motherboard (BIOS version 3.30) and I'm running my memory at 3333MHz CL16 (I have 2 x 8 GB of G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16) while my R5 1500X is overclocked to 3800MHz, so unless I've lucked out with the components I've chosen, I'd say the signal quality is not the issue when talking about RAM speeds of about 3200MHz. Hopefully ASRock will not let BIOS 5.9 be the last version this board receives.

Looks like she works just fine and within margin of error.

Question is, do you go $80 1600 or $200 3600....

If you do not have a top end video card like a RTX2060 super or better there is no need for more than a R5 1600. OC to 4.0 Ghz and your games will be just fine.

You're not wrong, but depending on the GPU and the use case (games, settings, desired FPS figures), there may be some benefit in choosing the R5 3600. The R5 3600 should give some increase in FPS over the R5 1600 with a GTX 1070 or better. The RTX 2060 is faster than a GTX 1070 Ti, so an R5 1600 would hold even a "mere" RTX 2060 back a bit. While in most cases the differences might not be meaningful, for some people they might be.

 

[Mdbad]

I have that same model of mobo mentioned in this article and I got my RAM to a stable overclock of 3333MHZ. And the kit I purchased was only meant for a 3000MHZ overclock.

 

[Lilricky]

The reason for the memory being flaky is that ASRock screwed up the memory voltages and timings that are applied when the motherboard's bios has the memory settings set to auto(the default). Go into the bios and start looking at the settings and you can correct them. That should give you the stability you need.

 

[ZackL04]

If you do not have a top end video card like a RTX2060 super or better there is no need for more than a R5 1600. OC to 4.0 Ghz and your games will be just fine.

I only hit 3.85 on my original 1600

 

[Stark]

What should I take into account if I want to upgrade my Ryzen 1600 for a 3600? I have 2400 Mhz DDR4 memories, will it work fine or will the cpu's performance demise because of the RAM speed? Appreciate all advice

All DDR4 memory is the same, and if you have heat sinks on your module, they can be easily overclocked with that option being one click in many motherboard BIOS. Also such overclock upto 2933 is safe and pretty easy. so dont sweat, update BIOS first on your 1600 then slot in 3600, boot all good? go to bios hit that XMP profile and gold!