Compare ASUS B450 motherboards for performance and compatibility.
Compare ASUS B450 motherboards for performance and compatibility.
I'm checking some B450 motherboards and trying to understand what @ShrimpBrime said. The ASUS Prime B450m-a looks solid, especially for overclocking, but there are several models like the B450m-a II and B450m-a/CSM. It seems the main differences are in RAM speed (3200MHz for M-A and 4400MHz for M-A II) and the presence of a VRM cooler in the M-A II. The only other variation is price. Are there any other factors I'm missing that could affect performance?
Essentially what I can manage for a fair price is a 3000g board, while a 1200AF costs roughly double. I’d really like to see a 3300x or 3100 model, but they’re marked with OC maximum. Probably means the limit stays the same across different CPUs and RAM. From what I saw on motherboards, that’s usually the case—no matter the specs, it caps around that number. @ShrimpBrime seems to be at a similar price point on a more expensive board with better cooling for the M-A, so it looks like a solid choice for air cooling too.
All these chips brick wall without extreme chillings. So pretty much won't matter what board you use in reality. Interesting enough, in the tweakers section or advanced section, there are 2 settings called sensemi offset and sensemi skew. Basically alters the PBO behavior. Kind of fun to play with I think. Settings most people don't know or talk about really in the OC world. I guess it's not a common feature or something. Here's a pic of the board. It's a shop pc, I have to swap this with the A320 and put the 220ge in that. The 1400 is going into the B450M-A at some point for more OC. The heatsink is not from a Wraith Prism but from 140w Phenom II and Opteron. Looks the same. On the bench, the wraith is but a touch taller. Edit again. Also, this did not have a fan on it. 220ge passively cooled with minimal case flow. 3.8ghz no sweat. But it's just a dual core so it was easy to pull off. Super quiet setup. At stock, no case fans needed. Observe!
Hmm, I aimed for a 4.1-4.2 rating, remembering people managed that on air with the 3000g rig (about 1.375v core and 1.200v SOC). Doesn’t seem like the 3000g has boost mode, so maybe it’s not worth trying? I checked the review there. Where’s the fan? Is it a fanless unit since it’s in a shop?
4.1ghz is quite far from what Gen 1 supports. My 2700X should handle it stably at 1.410v... That's the main thing. PBO won't help much. It requires manual tuning, which is how I usually do things about 98% of the time. No fans needed. The heat sink is enormous for a 220ge... lol. It's just a small dual-core chip. I haven't seen it go beyond 50 or 60w at full load. 35w stock.
GN mentioned a 4GHz oscilloscope in their review, which they usually describe as a fast measurement. They suggested it might be possible to get better results with longer-term voltage measurements or if the frequency was around 1.41 GHz.
The core issue revolves around performance testing and comparisons. Early attempts involved overclocking the B450M-A with a focus on OC potential. The setup included a geothermal water loop with an average 8°C temperature difference, and all components were plated Direct TEC cooling at -30°C idle. Running both air and water cooling against TEC achieved similar results. The main factor affecting performance was chip temperature—lower temps meant less leakage and the ability to push higher frequencies. I also tested the Asus ROG B450-I, which performed even better across all metrics. The findings were consistent across the processors evaluated, with the 2700X reaching up to 4.5GHz under similar conditions.
Cool. Theres some disagrement online about it, some say like 1.425v, some 1.350v, its confusing. Soc is a pretty standardm 1.200v it seems. Interesting about that though. I wanted to get a b550f, i know it was a good oc board, great vrm perf for the price. Once I can get it and a faster cpu id lover to see what the diffrence i can get on air is (if at all)