[SOLVED] B450 Motherboard good enough for Ryzen 9 5950X?

[wasted1803]

Hey guys.

I built my rig last year in the exact same day (exactly 365 day ago, coincidentally), here's the specs:

Motherboard: GIGABYTE B450 AORUS ELITE
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 + Dual Fan AiO watercooling kit
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4 32GB @3200MHz
Graphics: XFX GTS XXX Edition RX580 8GB GDDR5
HDD: Seagate EXOS 10TB 256MB Buffer @7200RPM
SSD: Samsung 850 Evo 128GB SATA 6Gb/s

So here's the deal. I'm gonna replace my old SSD with a Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB

and planning to replace my current CPU with the upcoming Ryzen 9 5950X.

I know this board will support Ryzen 5000 series with a BIOS update, but I need to know if this board is capable of handling 5950X's full potentials in terms of VRM and other technical factors?

I do 1080p/1440p gaming, x265 video encoding, video editing and heavy multi-tasking on my PC. I wanna get the most out of my B450 Elite motherboard as possible by adding a 5950X on my rig and enjoy my setup for the next five years, but some people say you shouldn't put a CPU like that, well, on a motherboard like that.

Please help me, is this a good idea, OR should I wait for my Plan B, which is:

Wait 2-3 years untill DDR5 is the new RAM standard, and new CPUs with even smaller transistors are out, and then get myself a brand new high-end motherboard, which also benefits PCIe 4.0, and 64GBs of DDR5 RAM, some kickass graphics card, and the best CPU that Intel or AMD will have to offer.

 

[RodroX]

Hi, lets go one by one

First, you motherboard should get support for the Ryzen 9 5950X, but for the time been theres no update on the website: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B450-AORUS-ELITE-rev-10/support#support-cpu

Acoording to Gigabyte your motherboard support the 3950X, so in the next months you should check again to see if Gigabytes updates the list and include the Ryzen 5000 series.

Also, How is your workflow today?, Do you feel alright with your Ryzen 5 3600 or do you feel you really must have those extra 10 cores (16 cores/ 32 threads in total) ?, Is your workflow that bad to need or those extra resources?

Im asking cause you could basically opt for the Ryzen 9 5900X, or even the 5800X.


Andyeah of crouse you should wait and read and wtach the reviews to see how the old and new Ryzen CPUs stack up with each other (TomsHardware, GamerNexus, Hardward Unboxed. etc all great places to get the reviews when they go live).

 

[drea.drechsler]

...

Please help me, is this a good idea, OR should I wait for my Plan B, which is:

Wait 2-3 years untill DDR5 is the new RAM standard, and new CPUs with even smaller transistors are out, and then get myself a brand new high-end motherboard, which also benefits PCIe 4.0, and 64GBs of DDR5 RAM, some kickass graphics card, and the best CPU that Intel or AMD will have to offer.

If you're looking at a 16 core / 32 thread CPU I assume you have a real need and will put it to use on appropriate workloads. With that in mind I'm gonna tell you to avoid putting a 5950 on this motherboard. It's VRM is a fairly weak 4 phases with, if I'm not mistaken, all the FET's not even sitting under a heatsink. It will overheat severely in a heavy all-core workload. In truth the only B450 motherboards to consider running either 3950X or 5950X would be a Tomahawk, Mortar or Asus TUF Gaming PRO.

PCIe gen 4 has yet to show any potential so don't wait for that. DDR5 needs be brought out before anyone can make any serious claims about it. The cynic says it could just be another PCIe gen 4; useful but only in narrow use cases that most of us don't have. The rest of plan B you can implement right now if the Nvidia vapors ever congealed into hardware on the shelves. Or in a couple months for the AMD response to.

 

[wasted1803]

If you're looking at a 16 core / 32 thread CPU I assume you have a real need and will put it to use on appropriate workloads. With that in mind I'm gonna tell you to avoid putting a 5950 on this motherboard. It's VRM is a fairly weak 4 phases with, if I'm not mistaken, all the FET's not even sitting under a heatsink. It will overheat severely in a heavy all-core workload. In truth the only B450 motherboards to consider running either 3950X or 5950X would be a Tomahawk, Mortar or Asus TUF Gaming PRO.

PCIe gen 4 has yet to show any potential so don't wait for that. DDR5 needs be brought out before anyone can make any serious claims about it. The cynic says it could just be another PCIe gen 4; useful but only in narrow use cases that most of us don't have. The rest of plan B you can implement right now if the Nvidia vapors ever congealed into hardware on the shelves. Or in a couple months for the AMD response to.

Actually, 3600 is just fine, but:

1- I could use some more processing power for x265 video encoding
2- I want my PC to be more future proof by getting a 16 core 5th gen Ryzen CPU

Here's a picture of my motherboard:

I see 3 heatsinks, one covering M.2 SSD connector, one with RGB Aorus logo, and the one above CPU Socket. Could you please locate where the FETs are placed and if they are covered by a heatsink or not.

How does this MOBO look? Can it handle 5900X or at least 5800X?

 

[JaSoN_cRuZe]

My suggestion for you is to sell the b450 motherboard and get a 5900x instead of 5950x. Put the saved money into buying a B550/x570 motherboard and you are ready to go.

Or

Just get a decent B550 and pair it with 5950x, your current motherboard can barely handle 8 core under full load.

To confirm please refer to the VRM tests done by Hardware Unboxed on various b450 motherboards.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...

I see 3 heatsinks, one covering M.2 SSD connector, one with RGB Aorus logo, and the one above CPU Socket.
...

My mistake ...it was the B450M Aourus Elite I was thinking of. On the smaller mATX variant SoC VRM FET's aren't under a heatsink...and FETS of one phase are right next to it so they too aren't under a heatsink. The ATX VRM is arranged the same, but does have a heatsink. I'd still look on the back side of the board to see if any FET's are located there, just to be sure.

The thing about either board is all those inductors...8 total for the VCore VRM...are misleading. It's a 4 phase VRM, with two lo-side and one hi-side FET. A bog standard topology typical of low end B450 boards that makes it a dodgy fit for big core CPU's. I'd not go over a 8 core, even then absolutely no overclocking attempts and PBO should be employed with care. And keep an eye on VRM temperatures during a render (or whatever you will use it for).

When B450 boards were being released Gigabyte adverted it as an 8 phase VRM and I was convinced the mATX board was the one for me. I was sorely dissappointed to find it was only 4 phase with one phase of FET's not even under heatsink. I almost made a seriously bad mistake because of their dishonest marketing.

 

[wasted1803]

Thank you all for your responses. I think I'd go for X570 + 5900X combo, or keep using my current rig since it's pretty good for the next 3 years. I can take my chance with X670 + Zen 3+ series.

But there's something I need to share. Back in 2012, I built my 2nd PC. I didn't know about VRM and importance of board heatsinks, so I picked Intel Core i7 3770K, the best CPU for LGA 1155 socket, and put it on a H77 motherboard (ASUS P8H77-V). B75 was the low-end chipset, H77 in the middle, and Z77 being the top chipset for LGA 1155.

So, I thought a decent ATX H77 motherboard has all I need (HDMI, USB 3.0, PCIe 3.0, up to 32GB RAM, and it does support the top Ivy Bridge CPU (i7 3770K), so why should I waste money on expensive Z77 boards. Instead, I got myself 16GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM instead of 8GB, and bought a decent dual-fan aircooler for CPU.

That build worked perfect for 7 years (until 2019) under 24/7 extremely heavy workloads (video editing and x264 video encoding), and last year when I got my Ryzen build, I gave the old one to my mom, and we both still use it.

I still don't know much about motherboards, but I wonder, was the situation different back in 2012? Did I make the right choice, or I got lucky nothing happened to my cheap motherboard.

 

[idkwhattonamethisacc]

Thank you all for your responses. I think I'd go for X570 + 5900X combo, or keep using my current rig since it's pretty good for the next 3 years. I can take my chance with X670 + Zen 3+ series.

But there's something I need to share. Back in 2012, I built my 2nd PC. I didn't know about VRM and importance of board heatsinks, so I picked Intel Core i7 3770K, the best CPU for LGA 1155 socket, and put it on a H77 motherboard (ASUS P8H77-V). B75 was the low-end chipset, H77 in the middle, and Z77 being the top chipset for LGA 1155.

So, I thought a decent ATX H77 motherboard has all I need (HDMI, USB 3.0, PCIe 3.0, up to 32GB RAM, and it does support the top Ivy Bridge CPU (i7 3770K), so why should I waste money on expensive Z77 boards. Instead, I got myself 16GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM instead of 8GB, and bought a decent dual-fan aircooler for CPU.

That build worked perfect for 7 years (until 2019) under 24/7 extremely heavy workloads (video editing and x264 video encoding), and last year when I got my Ryzen build, I gave the old one to my mom, and we both still use it.

I still don't know much about motherboards, but I wonder, was the situation different back in 2012? Did I make the right choice, or I got lucky nothing happened to my cheap motherboard.

Asus is not crap so no wonder why that mobo still works

 

[idkwhattonamethisacc]

If you are a gamer then i would reccomend a 5600x, if you just want productivity then i would suggest getting a 24 core dual e5 2678 v3 since those are cheap for 24 cores, they can use ddr3 and you can turbo unlock them (make all cores run at full turbo speed) and if that isnt enough then make another one or more of those and make them work together like a cluster computer to maximize productivity but i only reccomend the 24 core option if you are really serious about productivity and if you are more serious then that, just build another one of the 24 core workstations and you have 48 cores. Or you can build a 5600x pc for gaming and a 24 core workstation (that can be clustered) for max productivity