Do modern CPUs demand such high phase power as older higher wattage CPUs did?

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The question is pretty well laid out in the title. I was wondering why so many modern high-end boards seem to have what appears to be less phases than similar older boards did. It would seem to me that it would take less power and maybe fewer phases to overclock today's lower power CPUs than yesterday's furnaces, and that was maybe why.
Is there a "rule of thumb" to use to decide how many phases one needs for safe overclocking? Maybe based on CPU stock wattage. And yes, I realize thermal watts and electrical watts are measured differently.
 
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Viking2121
Well, it depends, if you want to push a CPU to its limits you typically want a board that has a higher number of phases.

These newer CPU's don't require the same amount of power that the older CPU's did, and the Quality of the phases are better than older boards and able to handle more voltage/heat without crapping out.

Intel is vary strict when it comes to power delivery to the CPU to insure the best reliability possible, they tend to overkill things, rather then just met what the CPU needs, again Intel wants people to realize how durable their CPU's are so they set requirement for motherboard manufacturers. I read a lot about this back int he Sandy Bridge days, which Im sure still applies today.

AMD on the other hand is a whole...
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Zerk2012

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In general say a Z170 board they all will overclock, the better and more stable the power delivery the higher overclock you can usually get. This also depends on the luck of the chip you get it could just be a dog or could be the golden chip.
They have also made advancements on the boards.
 
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Viking2121

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Well, it depends, if you want to push a CPU to its limits you typically want a board that has a higher number of phases.

These newer CPU's don't require the same amount of power that the older CPU's did, and the Quality of the phases are better than older boards and able to handle more voltage/heat without crapping out.

Intel is vary strict when it comes to power delivery to the CPU to insure the best reliability possible, they tend to overkill things, rather then just met what the CPU needs, again Intel wants people to realize how durable their CPU's are so they set requirement for motherboard manufacturers. I read a lot about this back int he Sandy Bridge days, which Im sure still applies today.

AMD on the other hand is a whole different beast, This is not going by the Ryzen CPU's but rather what applies to the the FX and Phenom's, I have no experience with Ryzen as of yet.

Thing is with AMD they pretty much leave the motherboard manufacture to determine how many phases their board can have. In my experience I use to have a ASRock 970 Extreme 3, 4+2 phase, the board could only keep up with a FX8320 at stock speeds, any more the board would end up shutting down or freezing up even with custom cooling to that area, the Phenom II x6 1100T was fine up to around 3.7ghz before I ran into the same issues.

I moved to a ASRock 990FX Fatality Pro 12+2 phase board, I was able to get my FX8320 to 5.2ghz stable, though 5.2ghz was to hot unless I opened a window by it in winter, so I settled for 5ghz, the Phenom II x6 1100T was also able to get to 4.4ghz before temps were a bit concerning.

I often run into people with the Asus m5a97 and a FX8 core and they often run into freezing issues of random restarts at stock speeds, 4+2 uncooled phases I will not recommend for people for older AMD CPU's.

Like I said, Intel its not so much a big deal, I mean even back then an i7 980x at 130watt TDP consumed around 170 peak watts, a quality 4+2 phase could keep up with that chip, although not practical for what the chip cost back then and for being an enthusiast level chip I'd rather get the extra phases for overclocking and reliability in the long run.

AMD's FX9590 a 220watt TDP with a peak upwards of 400watts, you would be silly to put that in a 4+2 board, it would probably catch fire, and I wouldn't even trust it on a 8+2 board, and its much much slower than Intels 95 watt main stream 2600k.
 
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@ Viking2121
Excellent and thorough description of the situation. Thanks. If you DO come across any new info regarding the above with board manufacturers and the Ryzen lineup, please pass it on. I'm considering the Ryzen 5 1600 or 1600X mATX build and want to overclock as much as I can get with a simple multi and voltage bump. I don't have the knowledge to do much more than that.
This is one of the boards I was considering: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813145003

As you can see, it is a bit limited on power phases, and it only has a small heat sink on half of the VRMs. I presume they are the CPU power, and the un-cooled ones are the memory.
 
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Viking2121

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I'm pretty sure AMD is still allowing the motherboard manufactures to come up with their own number of phases, I could be wrong.

This website gives around the power consumption of the Ryzen CPU's, in fact im impressed compared to what it was like when the FX6 and FX8 came out. https://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2017/04/11/amd-ryzen-5-1600x-review/6

That board should do alright , although it is a bit lacking in the VRM area, I'd be concerned with it overheating if you are overclocking, Most boards with a low phase count tend to run hotter in that area. It could limit your maximum overclock if the VRM's are to hot as it should throttle the CPU.

Right now Ryzen seems to top out at 4ghz, I've seen a few reviewers get 4.1ghz, so if you get a Ryzen build, make sure you keep the bios updated for tweaks, fixes and possibly a better overclock.

Also get the fastest RAM that you can afford as they seem to scale well with faster ram.

 
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Speaking of RAM, from what I've read it seems it is best to stay with the QVL in the case of RAM. Seems there are a lot of RAM issues yet. Something about the new Ryzen AGESA code...
???
 
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Viking2121

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Idk really, seems all the reviewers I've watched and sites I've read up on I've only seen a few people have issues with RAM overclocking on Ryzen, I've never seen a case where they can't get at least the rated ram speeds even if the ram is not on the qualified vendor list.

But typically you would want to to get ram that you know is compatible, they normally will have a better chance of overclocking if the manufacturer supports it from what I've seen on either platforms Intel or AMD. Other times you get lucky and buy a kit that is not on the vendors list and it will work just as well.

When I got my quad channel kit of Crucial Ballistics Elite 2666mhz ram I could not run at its rated speeds forever when I first built my system, I could get to 2500mhz and even then it was sometimes unstable mostly at boot, Been like that until recently with a new bios now I can run up to 2933mhz without touching the timings of 16-17-17-36.

Its amazing what a new bios update can do, I also could not get my cache ratio above 3500mhz, where everyone else with a 5820k is topping out at 4000mhz+, I already accepted that my chip was a crap at overclocking until I got this newer bios.

Ryzen I've only read up about it and seen a ton of videos as its blowing up youtube, I can only tell ya what I've seen and a lot of them people wont tell ya if they ran into a problem or not or they wont show it on camera, websites generally care about performance and what I've seen Razen scales well even past 3200mhz ram.

That brings up another thing, 2 sticks of ram will usually give you less headaches if you want to overclock them, that still applies to anything really, 4 sticks you will sometimes have to play with it to get them to run even at stock speeds as its harder on the CPU's memory controller, though that is rare for DDR4 platforms, 98% of time it will do what the ram is rated at with no issues.
 
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Thanks Viking2121. Picking your brains has proven very helpful ;-)
My problem is I wanted a mATX board for the cube case I intend on using. But all the current mATX appear to be 4+2 (ish) phase power. At least the ones Newegg carries. If I could fine a board as solid as my old Asrock Exreme6 ATX was with its 8+2 phases, I would grab it.
 
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Viking2121

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More Phases is always better for maximum overclock, but 4+2 phase count you should be alright as long as they have a heat sink on them, if they don't then you will probably run into issues with the VRM's overheating before you hit your CPU's limits.
 
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clutchc

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I agree with Viking. 4+2 phases is... adequate. I had an MSI 785GM-E65 AM3 board with 4+2 power phases and a huge heat sink. I was able to run my Phenom II X4 965BE at 4GHz for years with that board. And I'm no great OC'er. Just a multi and voltage bump. When I sold the board it was still working perfectly with no apparent swollen VRM caps.
 
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