What was your AM4 experience?

[QuietBob]

My experience with AM4 has been flawless, if limited to just two CPUs. I wasn't an early adopter and only jumped on the platform in late 2020 with Zen 2 and B550.

My first Ryzen was a 3300X that oc'd to 4.5 GHz on all cores with mere 1.275v (vs. 4.35 ST / 4.2 MT stock). I was also able to oc FCLK:UCLK:MCLK 1:1:1 at 1866 MHz with CL16 Crucial Ballistix. 1900 MHz was stable without WHEA errors, but caused intermittent audio popping. This CPU was a little monster that stood its ground in games against the more powerful Zen 2 SKUs thanks to its high clock, single CCD/single CCX design and a full complement of L3 cache. Even today I would consider the 3300X the sensible minimum for modern games, especially when GPU bound. I almost felt sorry when removing it to make room for the upgrade.

My current rig houses a 5800X3D which can't be oc'd, but at least it's happy with -30 CO on all cores. The system appeared stable with 2000 MHz IF using B-die, but in reality anything over 1900 resulted in random WHEAs. I haven't experienced BSODs or restarts, but eventually settled for 1900 MHz with RAM at flat 14. I haven't been able to fully utilize this CPU yet - outside of some benchmarks - as I'm mostly limited by the ST performance in older games, and with newer titles I see a GPU bottleneck even at 1080p. Also my daily work has little use for the 16 threads.

If I were to nitpick on the Zen architecture, I'd say I found the overclocking potential of both chips a bit lacking. That's just my sentiment though, since contemporary CPUs use advanced oc'ing algorithms out of the box to operate with (close to) optimum efficiency. The days of simple clock/multiplier/voltage adjustment are gone.

Oh, and the thermal management of those single CCD/CCX SKUs was baffling to me at first, with temps immediately shooting up on light ST workloads. The actual thermals have never been a source of grief to me, but since I'm quite obsessed with low temperatures, it was weird to see (and hear) those spikes.

While I'm looking forward to what Zen 4, especially the V-cache variant, will bring to the table, I don't think I'll be upgrading my main PC any time soon. I enjoy a maxed out platform and tend to stick with that for a long time. Hell, I still use my FX for web browsing, office work and retro gaming

 

[T3RM1N4L D0GM4]

Ryzen 5 2600x on Asrock B450M Steel Legend
Almost 3 year without issue.
Next upgrade: Ryzen 5/7 5000 Series

 

[AleXXX666]

Overall solid (especially compared to the prior 2 sockets) but in retrospect a little over-rated.

Zen 1 (1000 and 2000) had weak IPC and lots of memory issues

Zen 2 was alot better but still had some memory issues and it wasn't any faster in gaming then the 2 year old intels at the time

Zen 3 was amazing but over-shadowed by there not being a sub $300 option until 18 months into it's cycle

now that's A PROPER point of view. totally agree.
if you don't spend a ton for X mb, b-die or overhyped and overpriced crucial ballistix new design edition and top-notch X-marked CPU, you will probably experience what is stated above lol.
not advertising, but with intel you will mess up with memory ONLY if you are going too high clocked for old/not top cpu and/or mb, or mix ram maybe. with ryzens 1000-2000 series and cheap b450 mobos, i was totally scammed for "free cpu OC", and a lot of sh*t with ram normal work. and with 12 gen intel out and now prices stabilized, 5000 series are for fans only, i am very waiting for am5 to compare. but again, ddr5 only? get off, amd lol.

Ryzen 5 2600x on Asrock B450M Steel Legend
Almost 3 year without issue.
Next upgrade: Ryzen 5/7 5000 Series

steel legend are midrange mobos, still OVERpriced series a lot at launch. X-ryzens tend to be a little less trouble, so, no surprise you have OK experience lol.

 

[Veseleil]

Using 3600 for around 3 years. The only thing i regret is not buying 3600X instead... I've lost silicone lottery, as you can see on a CPU-Z Validator. 1.3V, and stable as it is. Static OC for life!

 

[bug]

Using 3600 for around 3 years. The only thing i regret is not buying 3600X instead... I've lost silicone lottery, as you can see on a CPU-Z Validator. 1.3V, and stable as it is. Static OC for life!

Why would you regret that? 3600X was $50 extra with nothing to show for. You could lose the silicon lottery with a 3600X just as well.

 

[freeagent]

The XT is the one you would have wanted, that was my first am4 cpu and she boosted to 4600 no problem. 4400-4500 static with Linpack was no problem. Heck I even ran it fan less for a bit. Should have kept it..

 

[Veseleil]

Why would you regret that? 3600X was $50 with nothing to show for. You could lose the silicon lottery with a 3600X just as well.

It was only ~20EUR difference.

 

[Taraquin]

Why would you regret that? 3600X was $50 with nothing to show for. You could lose the silicon lottery with a 3600X just as well.

Zen2 scales little with voltage, a good IMC so you can run ram at 3800 instead of 3666 is better than running core at 4.2 instead of 4.1 in my opinion

now that's A PROPER point of view. totally agree.
if you don't spend a ton for X mb, b-die or overhyped and overpriced crucial ballistix new design edition and top-notch X-marked CPU, you will probably experience what is stated above lol.
not advertising, but with intel you will mess up with memory ONLY if you are going too high clocked for old/not top cpu and/or mb, or mix ram maybe. with ryzens 1000-2000 series and cheap b450 mobos, i was totally scammed for "free cpu OC", and a lot of sh*t with ram normal work. and with 12 gen intel out and now prices stabilized, 5000 series are for fans only, i am very waiting for am5 to compare. but again, ddr5 only? get off, amd lol.


steel legend are midrange mobos, still OVERpriced series a lot at launch. X-ryzens tend to be a little less trouble, so, no surprise you have OK experience lol.

Zen 1 and 1+ was terrible on ram support for a long time, works great now after 10+ agesas, but too low ipc. Zen 2 always had good ram support, but too slow ipc.

It depends on the segment you buy for. As things stand now for budget you get similar performance with a 5600 and a 12400F running stock, but Intels MB prices (B660 120usd+ vs B450 70usd+) and terrible decision of locking SA voltage (meaning 3000-3600 is max) on locked CPUs makes 5600 better value for many.

On the very budget 12100F is king (it can ofte OC ram to 3600-3800 G1) and in the high end 12700K/12900K are the best once tweaked (scales good with core frequency and ram tuning), if you run stock a 5800X3D (no OC and limited gains from ram tuning due to megacache) does the same for lower cost since a basic B450 runs it fine.

 

[Desktopstu]

My AM4 experience was the best thing to happen to computing for a very long time. It was just... so refreshing to have multiple generations on a single platform. I was in at the begining with X370 and Ryzen 1500X i currently run a few 2700Xs and a 3800X, i do not think I will change any time soon.

Motherboards in my current rigs: ASrock A320 (low end i know but reliably runs the 2700X and 16gb RAM) ASrock Steel legend and MSI B450 (i dont recall which one now).
Graphics in my current rigs: RX5600 in the A320, FE 3070 with the steel legend and GTX 980 in the MSI.

 

[K4sum1]

So, I began using AM4 with a Ryzen 7 1700 and a X370 Taichi. Other than not being able to get XMP on my RAM, it ran pretty well, until I tried BIOS version 1.94A. The BIOS ended up frying the board and two of the RAM sticks. I was able to return it because of the holiday extended returns, and because of limited stock, I ended up with a refund and I got a X370 Killer SLI/ac.

With the X370 Killer SLI/ac, something was cursed, maybe the board, maybe the two "good" sticks, or maybe even the CPU itself. Basically I dealt with crashing, blue screening, and other shit for a while until I gave up and downgraded to a 3770K based system.

In an alternative universe I would be on a used X79/X99 Xeon, but I decided to jump on a good deal on a X470 Gaming Pro Carbon due to those Xeons being overpriced af, and then later on I got a 2700X when they were super cheap. I assembled this system, and it's actually been pretty stable. I only upgraded my board for Gen 4 stuffs later on and because MSI used the weakest fucking 19 pin USB 3 connectors and both were broken. However recently my CPU appears to be unstable at even stock clocks. I intend to try RMAing it soon, but I have a few more months before the three years passes. I'll probably RMA it if I can get the 5950X I recently bought to work, so I'm not without the huge amount of RAM my Ryzen system has.

 

[ymdhis]

It's good to see that I'm not the crazy one here for thinking that the chiplet design is bad for heat output. I've had similar experiences as you with a 3600 that I gave to a friend after a week of struggle trying to keep it cool in a SFF system. It's so weird that I can push nearly double the wattage through the i7 11700 that I could through the 3600 with the same cooling solution. Idle power consumption is a lot better, too.

It's not as simple as "chiplet = bad". My 3600 had unusually high SoC power consumption (quick google showed others having far lower SoC values), and from what I understand most motherboards use very high default voltages which result in bad thermals out of the box. I put a lot of time into getting the "just right" settings for the 3600, and all of that carried over to the 5600g, so it got better values out of the box. With default motherboard settings, it may get similarly bad results.

Only reason the chiplet design is bad for heat output is because the primary hot part is not on the center, so coolers may not have all heatpipes connected optimally.

The 5600G is still better in all regards, but the difference is more like 7-8W for idle power consumption (all of that comes from the SoC alone; I'm sure if it didn't use the old GloFo process then it could use less, Zen4 reviews may prove this soon) and 4-5C for idle temperatures. I did not measure it under heavy load because when it's under that, I'm usually working and don't mind if the fans ramp up. My goal was to get silence when the system is under minimal load.
The computer is silent enough that the extremely minor transformer coil whine on my amplifiers primary power supply is easier to make out than the PC, during midnight with practically zero ambient noise. My setup is very heavily tweaked towards silence, I even used to have a GPU with a custom heatsink and the chassis fans linked to the GPU temp sensor too.

If you don't mind fan noise I'm sure keeping the 3600 at good thermals is not that difficult.

edit: Quick test says I get ~52C on CPU-Z stress test with PBO disabled and 61 with PBO enabled. On the latter, I'm hitting the EDC limits. So it is probably possible to get way more power out of this CPU, but I can't think of any reason why I'd do that. Idle temp is 36-40 depending on how hot it is during the day. I consider these good results. Note that I use a Hyper 212 Evo with two Noctua A12s on it (got them cheap used), not your typical setup by any means.

 

[Veseleil]

and from what I understand most motherboards use very high default voltages which result in bad thermals out of the box. I put a lot of time into getting the "just right" settings for the 3600

One of the two main reasons I've gone static OC. The other being PBO and all of its related settings didn't do any noticeable changes. I've tried, and then decided to send all of them to a place where the sun doesn't shine.

 

[HD64G]

A few hiccups mostly from me putting tighther RAM timings than the chips would work with. Other than that, USB disconnections was solved after an AGESA-UEFI update. Very satisfied with the the efficiency and the performance.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

It's not as simple as "chiplet = bad". My 3600 had unusually high SoC power consumption (quick google showed others having far lower SoC values), and from what I understand most motherboards use very high default voltages which result in bad thermals out of the box. I put a lot of time into getting the "just right" settings for the 3600, and all of that carried over to the 5600g, so it got better values out of the box. With default motherboard settings, it may get similarly bad results.

Only reason the chiplet design is bad for heat output is because the primary hot part is not on the center, so coolers may not have all heatpipes connected optimally.

The 5600G is still better in all regards, but the difference is more like 7-8W for idle power consumption (all of that comes from the SoC alone; I'm sure if it didn't use the old GloFo process then it could use less, Zen4 reviews may prove this soon) and 4-5C for idle temperatures. I did not measure it under heavy load because when it's under that, I'm usually working and don't mind if the fans ramp up. My goal was to get silence when the system is under minimal load.
The computer is silent enough that the extremely minor transformer coil whine on my amplifiers primary power supply is easier to make out than the PC, during midnight with practically zero ambient noise. My setup is very heavily tweaked towards silence, I even used to have a GPU with a custom heatsink and the chassis fans linked to the GPU temp sensor too.

If you don't mind fan noise I'm sure keeping the 3600 at good thermals is not that difficult.

edit: Quick test says I get ~52C on CPU-Z stress test with PBO disabled and 61 with PBO enabled. On the latter, I'm hitting the EDC limits. So it is probably possible to get way more power out of this CPU, but I can't think of any reason why I'd do that. Idle temp is 36-40 depending on how hot it is during the day. I consider these good results. Note that I use a Hyper 212 Evo with two Noctua A12s on it (got them cheap used), not your typical setup by any means.

The 5600G is a monolithic APU on the 7nm process from TSMC. Your power consumption should have been somewhat different from the 3600 due to no chiplet interconnect.

 

[ymdhis]

The 5600G is a monolithic APU on the 7nm process from TSMC. Your power consumption should have been somewhat different from the 3600 due to no chiplet interconnect.

I know, it was one of the reasons I made the "sidegrade", and power consumption is indeed lower. I expressed all of that in the very post you quoted.

 

[INSTG8R]

3700X was a bit of an issue tho turned out the CPU just had a bad IMC. 5600X has been a joy and a beast with my RAM pushed to 3800 CL18 vs stock 3600 CL16. It benches faster despite the higher CAS and I get 4850 all core OC. The 3700X was always just a “bookmark” until Zen3 and it totally paid off.

 

[bug]

3700X was a bit of an issue tho turned out the CPU just had a bad IMC. 5600X has been a joy and a beast with my RAM pushed to 3800 CL18 vs stock 3600 CL16. It benches faster despite the higher CAS and I get 4850 all core OC. The 3700X was always just a “bookmark” until Zen3 and it totally paid off.

AMD admitted they "cut some corners" with the IMC getting Zen out the door. Yet it was somewhat funny seeing people trying to tweak the crap out of their RAM sticks.

And by "cut some corners" I mean, like, "stop tweaking that thing, we need to release something". The IMC was done, but engineers felt like there was more to squeeze out of it. Which they did, with Zen2 and Zen3. The only shortcoming, and I called out AMD on this one, was not having an XMP equivalent and leaving people basically shooting craps with RAM in overclocked mode. Of course, Zen4 will fix that.

 

[K4sum1]

was not having an XMP equivalent and leaving people basically shooting craps with RAM in overclocked mode

But XMP works on AMD boards?

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

I know, it was one of the reasons I made the "sidegrade", and power consumption is indeed lower. I expressed all of that in the very post you quoted.

Ok, the way you worded it sounded to me like the you were saying the 5600G was the GloFo one. It makes more sense now that I look at that t a different way.

 

[AleXXX666]

Zen2 scales little with voltage, a good IMC so you can run ram at 3800 instead of 3666 is better than running core at 4.2 instead of 4.1 in my opinion


Zen 1 and 1+ was terrible on ram support for a long time, works great now after 10+ agesas, but too low ipc. Zen 2 always had good ram support, but too slow ipc.

It depends on the segment you buy for. As things stand now for budget you get similar performance with a 5600 and a 12400F running stock, but Intels MB prices (B660 120usd+ vs B450 70usd+) and terrible decision of locking SA voltage (meaning 3000-3600 is max) on locked CPUs makes 5600 better value for many.

On the very budget 12100F is king (it can ofte OC ram to 3600-3800 G1) and in the high end 12700K/12900K are the best once tweaked (scales good with core frequency and ram tuning), if you run stock a 5800X3D (no OC and limited gains from ram tuning due to megacache) does the same for lower cost since a basic B450 runs it fine.

well, not the basic, but, with proper vrm heatsinks and phases lol

But XMP works on AMD boards?

generally, yes. but, it's always have to have your ram in mb qvl list with yours cpu a perfect world

 

[fiftofar]

Every CPU I have had has been launch or preorder, never bothered trying to overclock CPU or mess with PBO/VOLT/POWER.
Never allowed SOC over 1.05V and kept all other memory and controller voltages low (lower than any auto or XMP).

1800X - AMD confirmed fault & replaced under warranty due to segfault bug. Sold replacement.

2700X(1) - no post with RAM over 3200mhz.. running fine to this day, no faults or problems.

2700X(2) - Stopped posting, returned for credit.

3900X - running fine to this day.

3950X(1) - retailer confirmed fault & replaced under warranty due to instability and bluescreens.

3950X(2) - running fine to this day.

5950X - replaced under warranty due to instability and bluescreens which turned into NO POST. Sold replacement.

ASUS: Crosshair X370, Crosshair X470, STRIX X470-F , Crosshair X570, Impact X570.
MSI: B350M Mortar, B450M Mortar, X570 ACE

RAID issues or RAID not working at all (both NVME & SATA).
With the MSI B350&B450M boards getting endless boot loops until a clear cmos.
Yes, with different drive combinations, different drives, different cables if SATA.

Bad driver experience (like bluescreens after windows update due mostly RAID drivers BUT there were some others but I can't remember the details).
This kinda thing happened a lot on insider windows builds for me when identical builds on intel systems worked fine AND it happened frequently enough to annoy me on public windows builds too.

USB issues, before and after the "fix" on multiple motherboards/CPUs/chipsets. Had devices not working at all for some period of time.

PCIE devices not working, preventing boot/post, disappearing.
Old or uncommon devices like capture card/TV tuner/USB card. I think some old GPU's would refuse to work or the system would fail to post which could be worked around by swapping to the chipset pcie slot.

Broken sleep.

I'll never forget or forgive the Destiny 2 breaking bug, the game i play the most unfortunately.

Tried StoreMi a couple times and was completely unsuccessful, at one point it was even discontinued.

X370 and Ryzen 1000&2000 was an absolute nightmare of a time ram compatibility wise for me until I got a couple kits of bdie.

Im not sure why I didn't just give up, probably from being an old AMD fanboy, nostalgia of Athlon XP and DFI+939 Opterons.

I am super concerned with AM5, especially if everyone is going to run out and get DDR5 6000, MORE so if they stick to the "4 sticks are better" mindset.

Unfortunately, you will get people like me who will have practically every issue under the sun, AND, you will have others that have zero problems whatsoever.

For example, I have owned wayyyy too many AIOs and never had a single one fail. Since AM4 launch A friend of mine has had 3 fail (NZXT, MSI, CoolerMaster) and since ryzen 5000 launch a different friend has had two fail (Corsair & lian li). All mounted with the rad above pump/block except the msi where the pump was in the rad.

I don't know if I want to upgrade my 12900KF to a 13900K or go AM5.
Do I need to upgrade? No. Is it smart to upgrade? No, I'm not smart, I owned basically every gen of AM4 CPU and motherboard.

I hate using an old chipset with a new CPU, over the years I found a worse experience, poor support, poor implementation, slow updates, weirdness, compatibility issues, sometimes settings or features not working correctly and things like that. Sure, it might be fixed if you're lucky but usually you will be waiting and sometimes the fixes are poor. (All these not specifically aimed at AM4 or AMD, just in general from my experience)

 

[kapone32]

I started with AM4 with a X370 Prime from Asus and a 1700. That series of MB was super problematic for me and I went through 4 boards and Asus ridiculous RMA process. I settled with the X370 Taichi when I got the 2600. I enjoyed the 2600 until I bought a 3300X which then led to a 3600 by that time I was on X470 with the Gaming 7 but I replaced that with the X570 Strix-E. I then got a 5900x for that MB. MSI launched the X570S Ace Max and it has flexibility to install a tremendous amount of NVME storage or SATA if that is your cup of tea. Late last year there was a fire sale on the 5950X for $700 CAD. I bought that and have been a super happy customer ever since. As far as CPUs go I forget sometimes when I am in HWinfo64 that 16 cores at 4.5 GHZ is no joke in terms of raw performance. In terms of gremlins;

1. On X370 Corsair Vengeance RAM rated for 3200MHZ XMP would not go past 2933MHZ. Once you got Gskill,or Team though you were good but that was the most promoted RAM kit.
2. Really good RAM for Ryzen remained expensive for the entire span. Even 16GB of Gskill FlareX 3200 14 is still like $200 CAD.
3. Asus Prime boards are garbage while the budget boards from As Rock and MSI were pretty good.
4. Gigabyte is cheaper than everyone else for a reason
5. The 3300X was almost impossible to buy like a week after they hit shelves for almost a year
6. The 5000 series launch was great but the jump from 3000 to 5000 was not as noticeable in terms of snappiness like 2000 to 3000.
7. The 3000 series was sweet because you could run 1.3 volts and have the max boost with 5000 the CPU will regularly pull 1.5 volts regardless of the chip.
8. OC is much more involved
9. USB issues that can be impossible to iron down
10. Audio drops
11. The way how the pricing of boards increased as we got less lanes.
12. Why the hell is the 5800X3D more expensive than the 5900X it certainly does not feel faster in regular use.
13. Some of the cheaper boards have no indication of what the board is doing.
14. What the F did they do to TR4?

One of the best and worst things about AM4 is boards that have BIOS flash black. For some reason some AM4 boards like to lock up. I have used that function to bring back to life 2 Strix E boards and a MSI Ace that showed 0D on the MB readout. With Gigabyte boards they don't tell you that you have to remove the battery after updating for the board to actually complete the BIOS update. In terms of ranking of boards the best boards for AM4 by brand in my experience are:

1. As Rock: Rock solid BIOS and boards that just work
2. MSI: Great boards all right BIOS with a slight OC
3. Asus: TUF and Strix are the way to go but overall the best BIOS
4.Gigabyte: Archaic BIOS, USB issues, not posting and pumping voltage through your CPU.

Overall I have been quite happy with AM4 and the journey has been crazy but the best is that it forced Intel to actually try. The 10400F is one of my favourite CPUs.

 

[bug]

I started with AM4 with a X370 Prime from Asus and a 1700. That series of MB was super problematic for me and I went through 4 boards and Asus ridiculous RMA process. I settled with the X370 Taichi when I got the 2600. I enjoyed the 2600 until I bought a 3300X which then led to a 3600 by that time I was on X470 with the Gaming 7 but I replaced that with the X570 Strix-E. I then got a 5900x for that MB. MSI launched the X570S Ace Max and it has flexibility to install a tremendous amount of NVME storage or SATA if that is your cup of tea. Late last year there was a fire sale on the 5950X for $700 CAD. I bought that and have been a super happy customer ever since. As far as CPUs go I forget sometimes when I am in HWinfo64 that 16 cores at 4.5 GHZ is no joke in terms of raw performance. In terms of gremlins;

That looks like a lot of unnecessary upgrades. I'm guessing you were selling your previous parts for a good price, so it didn't cost you that much.

 

[kapone32]

That looks like a lot of unnecessary upgrades. I'm guessing you were selling your previous parts for a good price, so it didn't cost you that much.

I built and sold over 20 per year so yeah it was good but boards especially were not always expensive. Even when X570 first launched it was not that expensive.

 

[K4sum1]

3. Asus Prime boards are garbage while the budget boards from As Rock and MSI were pretty good.

300 series ASRock budget boards were horrible.