Overclocking on B450 Tomahawk?

G

Gillette

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
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I've been hearing the same thing from many people - "The B450 Tomahawk is a great board, just don't plan to overclock". I find this super confusing. While it doesn't have an amazing VRM setup, the overclocking headroom on Zen 2 is so small that I don't really understand why this is an issue.

Case in point, I've got my R5 3600 running very happily at 4.2GHz all core (1.325V, got lucky there I guess) and my RAM OC'd from 3200 -> 3600 (1.37V vs 1.35V stock). Prime stable for the hour or so I ran it, stable through IntelBurnTest/Linpack 1M test run repeatedly, and zero crashes. This is by no means an extreme overclock, but it's basically what any average owner of this board looking to overclock would be doing.

What am I missing? For sure I would not pick this board if I were trying for a super high end OC (let's say 1.4V+), but I'm miffed as to why people say this for the average user.
 
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It's because of the VRM ratings table making the rounds on Reddit. I don't think allot of people referencing it understand what it says.

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For example, it shows at the bottom what your VRM's can do in terms of output. It shows that at 200A, your board may not be suited to handle 16c/32t CPU's. I'm not sure if people are looking at the phase count, or the orange cell and thinking its a bad overclocker for that reason. The average person isn't likely to buy a Ryzen 9 3900X, much less a 3950X when those come out. Even fewer people would even try to operate those CPU's on a B450 board.

In other words, don't worry about it. I haven't evaluated that motherboard, but I've found this chart to be pretty accurate. The way I read it, your fine with the CPU and OC you have on it. Keep doing what you are doing.
 
Dan_D said:
It's because of the VRM ratings table making the rounds on Reddit. I don't think allot of people referencing it understand what it says.

View attachment 180592

For example, it shows at the bottom what your VRM's can do in terms of output. It shows that at 200A, your board may not be suited to handle 16c/32t CPU's. I'm not sure if people are looking at the phase count, or the orange cell and thinking its a bad overclocker for that reason. The average person isn't likely to buy a Ryzen 9 3900X, much less a 3950X when those come out. Even fewer people would even try to operate those CPU's on a B450 board.

In other words, don't worry about it. I haven't evaluated that motherboard, but I've found this chart to be pretty accurate. The way I read it, your fine with the CPU and OC you have on it. Keep doing what you are doing.
Click to expand...

Haha. I have a 3900x and a B450 Tomahawk. Best I could get it to boot was a solid 4.3Ghz all cores. But it sits at 4.25Ghz all day without even trying to OC it, just default with the Ram running at 3800Mhz. It did the same speed at 3200 as well. I will eventually upgrade the board but that works for now compared to my 2600 I had. All cores on any bench stays at 4.15. Single boosts to 4.4ish.
 
When at 100% load I get my TDC and EDC running over 95% so I am not sure what more power would do for speed, if that is stopping the processor from going faster. I have seen single cores hit almost 4.4Ghz but nothing more and all cores will only sit around 4.1Ghz at 100%.
 
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