Budget am4 motherboards vrm issues

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Peperuna

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Jun 18, 2017
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So i'm about to upgrade my pc with ryzen. The parts I'm thinking about buying are: ryzen 5 2600, 8gb of 2666mhz gskill ram and a b350 or b450 mobo.

So the main problem I'm facing is that how is the overclocking with b350 and b450 boards, because i have read that many b450 boards mostly asus and gigabyte have vrm overheating issues. And I'm wondering if some b350 boards tend to have that problem too.

I'm for sure going to overclock the cpu at some point, hopefully to 3.9ghz or even 4, but now after reading about the problems with the bad cooling of many budget board's vrm's, I don't know what to buy. The two boards i have currently laid my eyes on are Msi b350 gaming plus and Asus Tuf b450 plus, they cost the same here where i live, which is 95 euros. I'm on a pretty tight budget so i can't afford a x370 or x470 board.

So i was hopping that someone could give me more info on the overehating vrm's and tell which boards don't have that problem and overclock the best for their price. :)

 
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The chipset doesn't care about what frequency the CPU runs at or how much power it is drawing while doing so, only the VRM does. At a glance, the page you linked seems to basically confirm that none of the board manufactured has bothered to go much beyond the bare minimum necessary on their mainstream b350/b450 motherboards - they are all using 3-4 phases designs with discrete FETs.

At only 3.9GHz on a Ryzen 2600, you should still be well within the power envelope of a Ryzen 2700X and its 4.2GHz XFR boost. VRMs shouldn't be a problem until you push overclocks beyond the highest power stock chips...
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ChumP

ChumP

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Sep 16, 2014
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Here's Hardware Unboxed video comparing VRM temperatures on the B450 motherboards:

https://youtu.be/EqQcgwz1hYA

Clearly Asus and Gigabyte perform the worst so your assumption on their budget versions were correct.

From the video the MSI and ASRock offerings perform better than the other brands by far... the VRM temps look respectable on them.

Obviously my recommendations are:

MSI B450 Tomahawk

ASRock B450 Gaming K4

The X370 and X470 boards are quite a bit more expensive and the above 2 B450 will perform similarly in OCing.
 
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InvalidError

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Titan
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May 18, 2007
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If you are seriously considering overclocking and want long-term stability, you want to look for a board with 6-8 phases Vcore VRM and that rules out the majority of mainstream b350/b450 motherboards since those tend to only have four phases Vcore VRMs, often using worse power stages than higher-end boards (or even using discrete FETs) to make matters worse.

The main problem with VRMs isn't cooling, it is efficiency. An efficient eight phases VRM will only waste ~2W per phase under load and would be able to sink that heat into the motherboard's power and ground planes as long as there is some airflow across the PCB in the VRM area. If you want this sort of more efficient VRM though, you'll usually have to pay extra for a higher-end board and all the unneeded stuff that may come with it.
 
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Peperuna

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Jun 18, 2017
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Could a b450 motherboard handle a r5 2600 OCed to 3.9Ghz in the long term, or is that really a too intense overclock for the chipset. I have also found this link https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f12/pga-am4-mainboard-vrm-liste-1155146.html in many other forums where there are pretty much all the am4 boards vrm stuff, but i dont know what all those numbers mean, with them i have tried to find a good board with good vrm's, but haven't been able to for the lack of knowledge. So I would really appreciate if you could name a b450 board with the least bad vrm's.
 
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InvalidError

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator
May 18, 2007
23,815
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The chipset doesn't care about what frequency the CPU runs at or how much power it is drawing while doing so, only the VRM does. At a glance, the page you linked seems to basically confirm that none of the board manufactured has bothered to go much beyond the bare minimum necessary on their mainstream b350/b450 motherboards - they are all using 3-4 phases designs with discrete FETs.

At only 3.9GHz on a Ryzen 2600, you should still be well within the power envelope of a Ryzen 2700X and its 4.2GHz XFR boost. VRMs shouldn't be a problem until you push overclocks beyond the highest power stock chips they were designed for.
 
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drea.drechsler

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Oct 16, 2017
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Go looking for MSI B450 Tomahawk and Asrock B450 Pro4. There are others but these are two popular ATX boards, for mATX MSI's B450M Mortar or Asrock's B450M Pro4. They share the features of a very solid VRM (4 phase for MSI, 3 for Asrock) that runs very cool and maintains stable output under extended duration heavy load.

I have a B450m Mortar that holds a 1700 at 3.9G (and would at 4.0G if only the CPU didn't overheat ) so yes, I'm sure it would hold a 2600 perfectly well at 3.9Ghz. I'd expect mine to hold a 2600 at 4.1G and would like to get 4.2G. But that's just speculation, and probably never to be tested at this point as my next CPU will likely be a 3600 (or whatever comparable) when they release next year.

 
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