Question Should I upgrade my motherboard?

[James O]

I recently upgraded to a Ryzen 9 5900x from a Ryzen 7 1700. I’m still using a Prime A320m-k motherboard. What would be to benefit of upgrading it, am I limiting the new processor?

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[CountMike]

I recently upgraded to a Ryzen 9 5900x from a Ryzen 7 1700. I’m still using a Prime A320m-k motherboard. What would be to benefit of upgrading it, am I limiting the new processor?

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Yes you should upgrade MB. Low power delivery (VRM) limits will severely limit power hungry CPU. Bad memory architecture with 300 series MBs will also limit Ram frequency to about 3000MHZ or less although Ryzen 5000 series can handle 4000MHz-
Even cheapest B550 would be great improvement and let 5900x work at it's best.

 

[James O]

Yes you should upgrade MB. Low power delivery (VRM) limits will severely limit power hungry CPU. Bad memory architecture with 300 series MBs will also limit Ram frequency to about 3000MHZ or less although Ryzen 5000 series can handle 4000MHz-
Even cheapest B550 would be great improvement and let 5900x work at it's best.

Thank you.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I recently upgraded to a Ryzen 9 5900x from a Ryzen 7 1700. I’m still using a Prime A320m-k motherboard. What would be to benefit of upgrading it, am I limiting the new processor?

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Normally, I'd suggest never pairing a 5900X and a board like yours. But you have the combination right now so considerations are a bit different.

The Prime's VRM isn't very capable but then you can't overclock that 5900X on A320 either. If it's not getting excessively hot with the way you use it you won't really gain much there. Long processing with all cores on things like video rendering will be where temp will go crazy on the VRM's FET's and capacitors. The problem is you may not be able to easily measure temperature since Asus screws owners by not providing VRM temp sensors on their mid and low-end boards.

An IR thermal gun will help with temp measurements, as does locating a fan with tie straps or brackets to blow on the FET's and cool them off. Temperature there up to 105C in extreme cases (long video rendering for instance) should be OK. AM4 VRM's usually throttle the processor when it's temperature reaches around 115C. Modern FET Tjmax is 125C.

You should be able to get 3600 memory to work on the Prime with a 4th gen Ryzen. That's all that's really necessary since going with higher memory clocks often means de-coupling infinity fabric which results in overall lower performance. That makes 3600 the sweet spot.

I'm not sure you can with A320 but a B550 will definitely allow you to enable PBO2, undervolt with Curve Optimizer and even add up to 200Mhz additional boost clock offset. That can help performance for gaming especially, although it requires equally more capable cooling on the CPU. If you can do that with your A320 you'll just overheat the VRM way sooner, making it throttle the CPU to save itself.

So bottom line is: if your useage is undemanding (gaming typically is not demanding in this sense) with no desire to overclock, even with PBO, or experiment with extreme high memory overclocking you'll not likely gain much if anything for the effort and cost of upgrading to B550. If you do decide to, avoid Asus and go with a board that's higher in value. You can easily get a board with a VRM that's no more capable than what you have by cheaping out too much.

 

[Order 66]

I would upgrade the motherboard, otherwise you have a very powerful CPU with a not very good motherboard. Having beefier VRMs will not only allow you to overclock if you want, The VRMs will probably run cooler and last longer as well.

 

[CountMike]

Even 65W CPU is a stretch for 4 phase VRM. 5900x is 105W+ processor and even if VRM survived it wouldn't be able to supply enough power and choke 12 core processor right down to half performance. In addition to memory restrictions. A320 MBs were first and poorest ones developed for 1st gen Ryzen and with small BIOS which couldn''t accomodate all settings for later gen Ryzen, For a while it was questinable if BIOS would be able to support even 3rd gen.

 

[James O]

Normally, I'd suggest never pairing a 5900X and a board like yours. But you have the combination right now so considerations are a bit different.

The Prime's VRM isn't very capable but then you can't overclock that 5900X on A320 either. If it's not getting excessively hot with the way you use it you won't really gain much there. Long processing with all cores on things like video rendering will be where temp will go crazy on the VRM's FET's and capacitors. The problem is you may not be able to easily measure temperature since Asus screws owners by not providing VRM temp sensors on their mid and low-end boards.

An IR thermal gun will help with temp measurements, as does locating a fan with tie straps or brackets to blow on the FET's and cool them off. Temperature there up to 105C in extreme cases (long video rendering for instance) should be OK. AM4 VRM's usually throttle the processor when it's temperature reaches around 115C. Modern FET Tjmax is 125C.

You should be able to get 3600 memory to work on the Prime with a 4th gen Ryzen. That's all that's really necessary since going with higher memory clocks often means de-coupling infinity fabric which results in overall lower performance. That makes 3600 the sweet spot.

I'm not sure you can with A320 but a B550 will definitely allow you to enable PBO2, undervolt with Curve Optimizer and even add up to 200Mhz additional boost clock offset. That can help performance for gaming especially, although it requires equally more capable cooling on the CPU. If you can do that with your A320 you'll just overheat the VRM way sooner, making it throttle the CPU to save itself.

So bottom line is: if your useage is undemanding (gaming typically is not demanding in this sense) with no desire to overclock, even with PBO, or experiment with extreme high memory overclocking you'll not likely gain much if anything for the effort and cost of upgrading to B550. If you do decide to, avoid Asus and go with a board that's higher in value. You can easily get a board with a VRM that's no more capable than what you have by cheaping out too much.

Thx, I ordered a ASRock X570 Steel Legend board.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Thx, I ordered a ASRock X570 Steel Legend board.

Should be a good board if the chipset fan doesn't go noisy on you.

 

[sonofjesse]

If you need a new board I would suggest returning the CPU and just going AM5, since you will have an upgrade path.