Brief report on my Win10x64 changeover from FX-8320e to R5 1600...

Thought I'd provide a report on my experience in swapping out the mobo, the ram, and the cpu. Ryzen 5 1600 (65W TDP) 6 cores & 6 SMT cores replaced the FX-8320e (95W) 8-core processor (no SMT.) I swapped out 16GB of DDR3 (4x4) 2133Mhz for 16GB (2x8) of 3200 DDR4 (currently clocked @ ~3066MHz (total stability.) This was achieved by simply setting the first XMP option in the bios without difficulty. Haven't experimented with actually cracking that 3200MHz nut yet--but it's no go, atm.. Last, the MSI 970 Gaming mobo was replaced by an MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC, and I updated the UEFI bios to the latest version, 2.5.

BIG, pleasant surprise! I'll get this out of the way, first. I had expected to have to clean-install Windows 10x64 because of this change--it is practically a new computer, even though many things were the same (~4.25 TB of drives, including the Sata III boot SSD, etc.) I had expected the initial boot of the new hardware system to choke, gurgle and cease on the first boot attempt to boot to the old installation. I had a prepared a bootable USB thumb drive with Win10x64, version 1709, build 17025, ready to go--my plan was that I would do an in-place reinstall on top of my former, old install and in so doing would have the necessary changes made to the system to accommodate the new hardware--without having to do a clean install and begin the laborious process of also reinstall my collection of > ~350 games installed, plus dozens of productivity programs and utilities! Imagine my surprise, then, when on the very first boot attempt build 17025 found all the new hardware drivers it needed and booted right up! First time! I was, of course, delighted that my fears did not materialize. And that in itself made this by far the easiest, simplest major hardware transition under Windows that I have ever done. After that, I double checked all hardware drivers and installed the latest where needed, and just for the heck of it I did the in-place install of 17025--which went without a hitch. Short of it was it was a major hardware upgrade which did *not* require a clean Win10x64 installation! Saved me days of tedious application and game reinstall time. The only hardware element which required a bit more time to install was the driver set for Intel Gigabit Ethernet adapter, an L211--would know something from Intel would ham up the works a bit... But it wasn't necessary for the initial boot of the system so it didn't really cause any delays.

A bit about the hardware change itself--not much to tell, really. It went by the numbers--was simple--very easy. This mobo is very nice, a big upgrade from the 970 Gaming--just as I had hoped and expected. Popped out the old mobo, ram, and cpu, popped the new ones in. Maybe an hour's work with me lollygagging and taking my sweet time.

For the old 95W FX-8320e I had bought an Evo 212 cpu fan for a big improvement over the stock fan, which I had kept far too long in any event. Was very pleased to see that the fan that came stock with the R5 1600 was equally as quiet (meaning inaudible) even under cpu load! Excellent! AMD knew exactly what it was doing with these included fans! What an improvement! It screwed right into the standard MSI motherboard backplate--perfect fit. It even runs at the same rough RPMs as the Evo (750-800) even though the Evo had an appreciably larger heatsink area and a bigger fan. I guess that's the 30-Watt difference in the cpus, eh?

That's it for the time being--except for Microsoft's Win10 activation servers being slammed or down or whatever they are.. I kept getting an error about the servers being unavailable...Sometimes I really want to smack Microsoft, if you know what I mean...! I can see the new box under my Microsoft account without any trouble--yet even though I previously had my activation account tied to my Microsoft email account--for the express purpose of being able to upgrade my original hardware under my existing retail (not OEM) Win10 license without any problem--trust Microsoft to create snafus where there don't have to be any!

--A quick note about the MSI UEFI board--it's very, very nice. Big improvement over the 970 Gaming. The UEFI configuration screens run much tighter and faster than the latest bios update for the 970 Gaming--the instructions are greatly truncated and overlap and repetition have been eliminated as far as I can see. It's actually "fun" to jump into the advanced configuration options of the UEFI, now! The much older 970 Gaming UEFI was simply *clunky* and slow by comparison--it was OK--I'd rate the UEFI controls of this board excellent, though.

As things develop I may come back and add notes if I think they are worth mentioning. As it is, I hope this may be of some benefit to other people contemplating a similar move.

 

Well, I'd bumped up the ram voltage to 1.4v and set the XMP to profile 2 for 1600Mhz--booted into it first go--but then wouldn't boot into again.... Ah, well--will have to loosen the timings a bit and see what happens. @ the current 1533Mhz speed (1T) the ram is only 66MHz slower than the theoretical top speed of 1600MHz--but still, it might be nice to actually *hit* that, eh? Sort of makes it a fun target to aim for, maybe.

I don't feel compelled to overvolt the ram any higher than 1.4--which is as high as MSI recommends running it safely. If anyone happens to have any ram overclocking suggestions--I'm all ears...!

 

Congrats on the upgrade ! Enjoy your new Ryzen !

 

Do not know what settings MSI has. What helped me were the bus settings. The main three start with RTT. RZQ equals 240Ohms. So RZQ/5 = 48Ohms. All the CadBus settings remained on Auto. ProcODT was also a big help. The values of ProcODT that seemed to help others the most were 53.3 and 60Ohms.

The Ram Calculator seems to have helped some. The thread can be found here: http://www.overclock.net/t/1640919/ryzen-dram-calculator-overclocking-dram

The journey has been frustrating at times, but it has mostly been fun.

 

Thanks!

 

Yes, it is fun to tinker endlessly... I keep telling myself--"No more" and ten minutes later I am back at it again...Am using Ram Calc...Thanks again! Will report.

 

Almost forgot to add--initiated a chat with Microsoft Tech Support yesterday, and got reactivated in 15 minutes with the new hardware. Even better, the Tech gave me a fully functioning retail Key, finally, so that now I no longer have to mess with the "digital license tied to the Microsoft account"--which actually did not accomplish what it should have. Really, it stands to reason that everyone on Win10 should simply have a key--just like Vista/XP/7/8/.1, eh? Makes things so much simpler. Retail Win10 license is supposed to follow the human; OEM license follows the motherboard. I had to be issued a key to make it so because the retail license I had (SLMGR /DLV from an elevated command prompt) didn't do the job.

 

It's a no go for 3200, on the ram--I'll have to stay with 3066/1533--as if the failure to achieve that last 66Mhz is really going to be noticeable. This is Hynix XMP so I think this is the best I'm going to get. Now running stable @ 3.8GHz, 1.425 V. Keeping Cool'nQuiet and C6 states on--everything else off (because I surely don't need to web browse @ 3.8GHz--helps to keep overall temps low as well.)

 

Enjoy your new build!

For RAM overclocking, have you increased SOC voltage? Set it to 1.1 V and retry 3200 MHz.

SOC controls the voltage of all on-die components (except CPU cores ofc), including memory controller.

 

Thanks--will certainly give it a shake..! I'm pretty happy with where I am now...Cool'nQuiet switched off (bios does that automatically whenever the multiplier is changed) and I'm running a stable 3.7GHz @ a max of 1.256V...voltage set to Auto...I can get to 3.8 but only by increasing core voltage to ~1.4 manually (which results in ~1.4256+ V) which I'd rather not do because the R5 now idles at 33C (3.7GHz) and I'd like to keep it that way..the cooler the better--using the stock Ryzen 5 cooler, which interestingly enough is the 95W cooler--not the skimpy 65W cooler that comes with the 4-core Ryzens--nice for AMD to do that, I think--well thought out. Also, according to HWinfo64 my SoC voltage (also set to Auto) is running @ 1.137V atm. (On my old 970a chipset board that value (NB) used to run at a default of 1.2V--which really means nothing for this board, I know...) It's weird in a way because Ryzen Master and some other utilities pick up the ram not @ 1533MHz as it is but at 1600Mhz on their reads.

Edit: It occurs to me to ask what the auto voltage for the 1800x is...? I would *think* it would be ~1.256V, but I don't know--can't really find much in the way of solid info about that on the 'net. Does it auto-bump to ~1.4V? etc. It would kind of give me some ground rules--although I've read that the max voltage for Ryzen is 1.55V, which coincidentally is the same max V my old FX-8320e (95W) could handle. I'd never want to push that kind of V, however, but it's an interesting question.

Wanted to mention that I discovered through my numerous attempts at clocking over the last couple of a days a very handy feature in the latest bios (2.5) for the Gaming Pro Carbon AC, under the "Boot" menu--it's called "Auto CLR_CMOS" and what it does is reset the CMOS automatically and return you to the bios in the event you input some settings that would normally put you into a boot loop and require you to manually shut down and manually set the CMOS jumper (BAT1) clear the CMOS--if that value is enabled and you get stuck like that--no more having to stop and manually place the jumper to clear the CMOS any longer... What a nice option--saved me 3-4 times yesterday! Just thought I'd mention this in passing as it's the first time I've ever seen such a helpful option!

 

For any brave soul still reading this thread...(and I thank you for that!)...are you by chance familiar with the "Above 4G Crypto-currency mining" option in the latest MSI bios versions, like in my Pro Carbon AC? PCI latency (a sort of wasted option I always thought since usually the lowest latency would seem the best choice!) is gone now, and replaced by this. I gather that it is of course a bios device setting designed to allow a given mboard to safely/properly/correctly support 5-6 PCIe GPUs for Fool's Gold mining (I have to call it "fool's gold" to feel better about not doing it myself and thus missing out on all the fame and fortune mere hand-spans away, etc.! ) I'm wondering what enabling it actually does in terms of the PCIe bus footrpint in memory and if it's maybe something that might also pay other dividends, too, for the support of 64-bit system ram in excess of 4GBs...or maybe if it might introduce a negative (which I sort of doubt--but then I really don't know...) Anyone have any thoughts on this? I've looked all over the place and can't find much in the way of anything besides 1) the option exists 2) it's for Crypto-mining support, 3) specifically for mining support of 5-6 GPUs in a single mobo--and scant little else, I am afraid... Maybe you've had better luck looking than I have had...?

 

If Auto SOC is 1.1+ volts then no need to set it manually. My board defaulted to below 1 V values with Auto but that could have changed too with BIOS updates, have had SOC manually set to 1.1+ V for a while.
Btw you could also try setting SOC load-line calibration stricter to help stabilize memory OC. Though SOC voltage doesn't usually drop under load that much.

Acc. to AMD maximum safe continuous voltage for CPU is 1.425 V. Higher may cause component degradation.

Same goes here, you could try setting a lower voltage for 3.8+ GHz and setting load-line calibration manually instead of Auto. I had notable voltage drops with Auto LLC when overclocking so set it manually to prevent voltage drop completely.
That helped stabilize 4 GHz overclock and also allowed to use slightly lower voltage for 3.8 - 3.9 GHz.

Auto core voltage is vague as it constantly alters voltage based on load and frequency so you really can't tell the "default voltage" from that.

Overclockingwise I'd say 1.425 - 1.400 V is acceptable, below 1.4 V is good, below 1.35 V is great and 1.3 V or lower is excellent.

That said I need 1.4+ V for stable 4 GHz but never had any temperature issues even then (air cooling, Thermalright Macho 120). Max. core temps while benchmarking (Cinebench) was IIRC 77 ... 80 C.
3.9 GHz is stable at around 1.3 V though (maximum LLC) which, needless to say, runs a lot cooler still.

 

Glad you're happy with the upgrade. I haven't seen any need at all to overclock my R5 1600 yet. It does everything I need it to as fast or faster than the i5 6600K it replaced. I had planned to replace the R5 1600 when Zen2 comes but at this point, I'm not sure there will be a need to.

 

Yeh I replaced an i5 4690K with R5 1600 and everything is snappier. Very happy with Ryzen.

 

My buddy hasnt overclocked his R5 1600 either. I say if you have a 1500X or lower, you definately need to OC it. He has a 1600, B350m Gaming motherboard, and 16GB Gksill 2400 and a fury X. He pushes 120fps in most games he playts @ 1080p with a 144hz panel.

 

I'm running 16GB of Corsair 2666 on a B350 Tomahawk with an RX 470. Before declaring any processor needs to be overclocked, I'd look at usage case. Most usage cases don't need or really benefit from overclocking. If you're gaming, sure, by all means. For simple web browsing, document creation or simple multi-media, it's a waste of energy.

 

I totally agree on what you mean. Im just going with the assumption most here are gonna be gaming on their setups. Most of the time you dont need a very high overclocked cpu unless you are on a 4 core/4 thread CPU IMHO. Can even be a few hundred mhz on stock voltage or small bump.
My 1500x does fantastic @ 3.7 in most games. BF1 is the one game that trully rapes it.

 

Good posts all, guys... Yes, I only popped it to 3.8GHz because I could do so with auto voltage...! Merely changing the multiplier to 38 does it. It runs reliably at 3.8GHz under the exact same voltage it runs with at 3.2GHz (dropping to 0.4-0.6v at idle under C6--just as it does @ 3.2GHz), so that's really the attraction for me with that. I agree that for most purposes the need for overclocking it is nil--but it's the tinker bug in me...can't resist pushing it a little. So that's a 600MHz overclock--which is better than 15%, almost 20%...so not too shabby for essentially no change in voltage and therefore under-load thermals, too, as far as I can observe. The 95W TDP fan that came with the 65W TDP R5 1600 was a nice touch by AMD, I thought.

@ Mikev190 , I pushed it to ~1.4v, couldn't get to 3.9GHz reliably, so I backed off. Still it was fun to try. Didn't like the way the thermals were looking at that voltage--using the stock fan. Still can't quite get to 3200 on the ram--3066 is completely reliably, though. It's not much real difference at all--it's just the number thing, ya' know...

@ AsiJu --thanks for the info! What I mean by "auto" being the same is that although the voltage does go up under load automatically, it seems to exactly parallel the load voltage under auto for the 1700-1800x running under auto--and maybe even a bit less considering I'm only running 6/12 cores as opposed to powering 8/16. Yes, your info parallels everything I have read--and soon I shall be trying for more--I have no doubt... You know how it goes--some days you just get that "bug"--I can amuse myself for hours trying different timings...

I tell you what's been a godsend though for me with this motherboard is the fact that you can stipulate in the bios the number of boot attempts you want the system to make with varying ram timings that *won't work* before it defaults and boots into 2133Mhz, from which you can go directly into the UEFI and set up working timings--*and* the mobo even has a bios setting called "Auto CLR_CMOS" which I've enabled, which saves my bacon even when I've plugged in something wild that would otherwise see my mboard in a constant boot-loop (ignoring the number of boot-attempts I've set), and requiring me to manually power down and reset CMOS with the jumper/screwdriver manually. Enabling the "Auto CLR_CMOS" does that automatically in that case--when the board won't post because of an incompatible setting--it clears the CMOS automatically (after the requisite number of boot attempts I've set) and boots right into the bios so that I can set everything back to bootable settings... Without those settings my experiments would be far more limited, no question, as setting the CMOS jumper manually has to be one of my least favorite things to do...like, forever...

Oh, and Merry Christmas (belatedly) and the best of new years to each and every one!

 

Merry (late) Christmas and New Year to you too!

 

I just upgraded to a 1600 as well. I cant get mine to run above 3.8 either. Ram at 2933 for now.