New Ryzen 7 1800X build impressions.

[MeanMachine]

This is not a review as there are many out there. Mostly good and some complaining of poor optimization when gaming. Other reviewers basing their results on a 3.5GHz saying locked frequency and skewed graphs showing better results for Intel I7-6900K or 6950X. :mad: I take those reviews as Biased with a pinch of salt.
Just check out the price performance ratio. OMG has Intel been ripping us off.?

This is my latest build log based on the following specs:
CPU: RYZEN 7 1800X
MB: ROG Crosshair VI Hero
PSU: Antec HCP 850w Platinum Pro
DIMMs: Corsair 16GB (2X8)DDR4 CMD16GX4M2B3000C15 .
AIO: Corsair Hydro H115i
Case: Corsair Graphite 780T with all ML fans.

BIOS.
I updated to Bios 1002 to try. Not tried any of the other revisions as yet.
Qcode listings have many changes and some new unfamiliar listings. Qcode Od is undocumented which I got a lot off originally.
Once Bios was configured correctly it dosen't happen unless I switch the PSU off atm.
When I power on, the system Posts but sends me to Bios each time. I have to select boot priority to one of the two entries listed in Boot menu.

Boot Menu list has two entries:
1. M.2 Samsung SSD EVO 500GB
2. Windows Boot Manager (M.2 Samsung SSD EVO 500GB) When I choose this entry Bios then goes to the OS.
I can't as yet boot straight to Windows. Bios tells me to adjust\disable Fan Speed low limit option. Tried all kinds of settings with no luck yet.

I had issues with my XMP profile which does not work. I manually keyed in the SPD Timings and Voltage and now clocked at 2933mhz.

It was easy to get 4GHz on the CPU, I just used the multiplier with BCLK at 100MHz.
One thing I have noticed is my temperatures dont read correct at 50C idle and research tells me that is an incorrect reading. My temperature probe tells me around 20C lower is correct.

Initial results based on Cinebench R15, CPUid HWMonitor, Aida64 and CPUz

I tested for 20mins in AIDA64 and temps got to 76C however the Ryzen Balance set for performance kicked in and increased my fans then temps settled at 67C.
I wanted to try Realbench stress test but I cant get it to run atm. 😞 The app opens but when I click on test nothing happens. Any advice there would be appreciated.

Here are some Stress test results:






Initial result are stable at 4.0GHz and i'm not done yet. Any comments or advice much appreciated. 😛 🙂

MM

[Darth_Ender]

My best on the 1800x is a rock solid stable 4Ghz cpu with 64GB 3200Mhz DDR4 ram speeds using the 1403 bios.

Temperatures at idle are around 37C and under full load, the cpu hits around 62C. PCH hovers around 50C.

That's with cpu frequency scaling disabled, and 78F ambient. No memory or cpu errors after hours of memtest and kernel compilations. 3 min flat for my 4.12 kernel! Easily 2 min faster than my 8350 was building 4.x kernels. It's a compiling beast.

I just wish amd had managed to get quad channel ddr support in. But at least the Bios finally lets me hit 3200mhz on the ram without erroring out eventually. Albeit, in 2T mode ...but meh.

[MeanMachine]

Darth Ender wrote:
My best on the 1800x is a rock solid stable 4Ghz cpu with 64GB 3200Mhz DDR4 ram speeds using the 1403 bios.

Temperatures at idle are around 37C and under full load, the cpu hits around 62C. PCH hovers around 50C.

That's with cpu frequency scaling disabled, and 78F ambient. No memory or cpu errors after hours of memtest and kernel compilations. 3 min flat for my 4.12 kernel! Easily 2 min faster than my 8350 was building 4.x kernels. It's a compiling beast.

I just wish amd had managed to get quad channel ddr support in. But at least the Bios finally lets me hit 3200mhz on the ram without erroring out eventually. Albeit, in 2T mode ...but meh.

For the tenacious, good results such as yours are starting to yield excellent performance results. For the uninitiated who have plunged into the AM4 platform, It's been a nightmare and frustration for some. It is not an easy task to get this platform stable from Cold Boot to Windows desktop without knowing your Bios extensively.

1403 should now address DRAM SPD settings without having to manually key in Timing Control and play around with Voltages. Does it.?
Is the 1403 Bios such an improvement and does it eliminate that cold boot bug and allow for fast RAM at 4000MHz.?

My system is hardly ever shut down now and pops out of sleep mode without problem. I have a Cold Boot issue only occasionally where my RAM defaults back and RAM saved settings are lost. My current config for my System, PC, and Windows 10 testing tells me I'm 24/7 stable. Only on the odd occasion have I had to Cold Boot and when I have to re-establish the saved profile.
I have a profile saved that is now my Winter profile. Ambient temps here are now approx 15-26C and under load my temps top out to 65-72C. As we progress toward Summer I will see if the H115i keeps doing it's job.
This AM4 platform for me is pretty much conclusive in terms of Performance and what I and many others are enjoying. It's not there yet in terms of optimization for Plug and Play wanabies, but comprehensive enough for those who like to Tweak. I can't help it OMG it's so addictive. lol :):p

I have pulled myself away from further Bios Tweaks for now and being a bit more productive with my CAD systems. Rendering performance is a major gain with the 1800X compared to my other 8Core CPU. Gaming is superb with what I play so i'm happy atm and Multitasking is well beyond what I can do.
For now I have pushed my 1800X as far as I want to go with my OC. I know Ivé been lucky, no hardware failures and I got a good chip and MB.

Vivre Ryzen 7 :cool:

[Darth_Ender]

I still have to manually set tons of things in the bios. Albeit, not the timings. I did have to set ProcODT to 60ohm, leaving it on auto results in errors. Also, i can only do 1T up to about 2933 (or around there) Mhz. Above that and I have to set it to 2T or it errors out. I have to manually set the cpu load line and such settings (since i'm OC'ing the cpu). Leaving that alone will result in cpu errors when you throttle all 16 cpu threads.

I haven't tried the "auto Overclock" features of the bios though. I've gone through the process of pushing the cpu and memory to where it ought to be so many times that it's just faster to do things manually than play with the other features that didn't really work when the board was released.

You can see the downside to not having quad channel when looking at similar intel systems being benchmarked. Certain phoronix tests will show the power of the amd setup but then you'll instantly see the massive benefits quad channel offers.

Very odd quad channel support was left out. Guess there's a good reason.

[MeanMachine]

I personally can't justify any benefits of Quad channel. What downside is there to not having Quad, really.?

I would say that leaving out Quad channel on the AM4 MBs would be a commercial decision by AMD to be and remain competitive. Quad channel adds to the MB cost, does not significantly provide better performance and generally more expensive for the Quad kit.

The question is, Do you really need Quad.? Is this for consumer/commercial use ? and only certain apps can take advantage of Quad architecture.
I understand that Threadripper MBs will have Quad channel however at again extra cost. still, I think Ryzen 7 will be more an affordable BETTER BANK FOR BUCK solution for most enthusiasts and makes commercial sense for AMD to have planned it that way.

[Darth_Ender]

Here you can see the difference between dual channel and quad
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=broadwell-e-mem&num=2

Yea benchmarks are synthetic tests ...but these numbers aren't even remotely close. Seems roughly 30%-50% faster (more throughput).

This is something that is highly important for anything that is memory bound that deals with large amounts data. Compiling, simulations, video processing. Even games should notice a benefit if they're texture heavy since all that texture data needs to be pushed to ram before getting pushed to the gpu.

I need to re-run that benchmark since finalizing my settings but the last time i ran it, my system wasn't even close to the numbers of the quad channel configurations until you got down into the low 2Ghz speeds. And my ram was at 3200mhz. I'll run it again though to be sure.

EDIT: so i re-ran the test. on the ramspeed smp tests my system is besting the quad channel setups, just barely over their top performing system. Once the stream tests start though, that's where quad channel abilities are exposed. My results dive down to between quad channel 1866 and 2133. So roughly performing the same as ram that's over 1Ghz slower.

[MeanMachine]

Hi unexpectedat1440p and Welcome 🙂 Yes i'm happy with my build till now.

If you are asking my opinion of the 1700X and Strix x370 then I can't really comment as my impressions would ofc differ. Your system is different.
For my CPU and MB combo (CVIH and 1800X) I am very happy with initial results and my MB is solid and AURA works fine.

With respect to CPU Temperature readings then, yes I got temperature readings which were incorrect and varied in Windows Apps.
AMD advised of this and explained this temperature difference. A 20C offset on the die which was correct and read true. Comparing a number of Windows temperature Apps i found some variables and the monitors I use are now updated to read true. Temperatures were also verified with my temperature probe and later corresponded to HWInfo Monitor revision.

To be honest Temps were all over the joint at first with the original Bios. Each Bios update has been a necessary improvement and hopefully better updates to come when AMD make for full advantage of AGESA. But little headroom left above 4.2GHz for CPU OC. Bios from ASUS support is ongoing so far as RAM and platform stability is concerned.

Being one of the earlier adopters, I anticipated issues with AM4. Initial Bios was buggy and required some manual optimization to stabilize my OCs. Many Beta versions later and we have improvement but not there yet.

[gupsterg]

Only my take.

I reckon the C6H is worth the extra spend than Strix X370.

Firstly from user information of Strix X370 it has PState OC missing, which I like as like to see CPU lower clock/voltage at idle. Secondly from another user share recently the Strix does not allow PCI-E GEN lowering when raising BCLK. It maybe doing it automatically like the C6H can, but the C6H also has manual control.

From say other shares by ASUS Prime X370 Pro, this also lacks a lot of the UEFI options the C6H. So to me it seems like anything below a C6H does not have as many options.

A UEFI to me is key in OC / tweak experience. So I'd spend the extra and get a C6H. This platform vs a Intel offering is touted as lasting in the socket since. So I also bought the C6H on that basis as envisage I will be able to use it on another iteration of Ryzen released in the future.

IMO UEFI 9920 is best so far. I have been fortunate to use 3x R7 1700 and a 1800X with my board. Like Mean Machine early adopter. My board is pre-order at launch. I have enjoyed it thoroughly. Stability has been fantastic when OC'd. I have done hours and hours of testing with various apps. Most recent was 60hrs plus of f@h on CPU/GPU.

UEFI 9920 contains memory presets from The Stilt for Samsung B Die SR 1DPC, my F4-3200C14D-16GTZ responds very well to them. All in all the C6H is shaping up to be a super solid mobo :cool: .

Due to Sense MI Skew [Auto] defaulting to [Disabled] on UEFI 9920, for me in HWINFO regardless of CPU used I get spot on temps, within +/-2°C of being realistic IMO. Fan control is working spot on, I use CPU_FAN, CHA_FAN1 and CHA_FAN3. I have 4 TY-143 using the PWM of CPU_FAN via a GELID 4 in 1 cable powering them via molex. Then 1x AC F12 on CHA_FAN1 and 2x AC F9 via CHA_FAN3. I have luv'd not having a fan controller in 5.25" bays when using the M7R and C6H.

[Darth_Ender]

For me, using those presets resulted in crap - i have dual rank ram though. So not a surprise.

Also, using TPU results in crap as well.

Still gotta manually set a bunch of settings and the ram is unable to hit it's designated 3200mhz speed at the timings it's supposed to be set at. But at least it hits 3200mhz in a somewhat stable setup at all.

55 min of OCCT + Linpack + avx + all cores. This results in about 155watt tdp which causes the cpu to drop to 3.7Ghz despite the 3.924Ghz it's OC'd to. 74C is the max temp it reaches. Not bad but it's certainly not the fastest 1800X out there.

[gupsterg]

Dual rank officially is stated as 2400MHz by AMD. So 3200MHz is ~33% above stock in context of AMD spec.

AGESA 1.0.0.6 was highlighted as delivering "options" to allow higher speed RAM, but the "goal posts" for official support of Ryzen by AMD did not change.

Now as far as I'm concerned ASUS have delivered board which will do OC speeds. Firmware is somewhat in the hands of AMD. AGESA not only contains CPU microcode and System Management Unit firmware but also Integrated Memory Controller firmware.

Even on "best case" situation, single rank, 1 dimm per channel, using C6H. I was stuck on 2933MHz/3200MHz on UEFI prior to 9943 (AGESA 1.0.0.6) depending which CPU sample I used. On UEFI 9943 same CPUs/HW hit 3333MHz tight and ~3500MHz loose. So firmware is playing a big role.

On UEFI 9920, a newly acquired 1800X has hit 3466MHz using The Stilt's preset with SOC: 1.05V and VDIMM: 1.375V. I have done ~5.5hrs of HCI Memtest (16x 850MB) with 0 errors. RAM is F4-3200C14D-16GTZ, CPU is at 3.9GHz VID: 1.4V.

Yes tuning RAM is difficult on Ryzen for higher speed. Yes there are no presets for dual rank kits. IMO ASUS have got a lot of pro overclockers under them and using their boards. AMD also have decent overclockers involved. So I do believe as time progresses the situation should improve somewhat.

[MeanMachine]

Your insights are much appreciated gupsterg 🙂

I learned a lot from your thread at Overclock.net. It's really grown with interesting tips and valuable platform information. And to those who worked on stabilizing and developing a workable Bios, many thanks for a good team result. I can work a Bios but micro coding is a bit out of my league.
For those not aware of your thread, here's the link: http://www.overclock.net/t/1625015/ryzen-essential-info-with-link-to-owners-info-db.
Thank you for contributing.