AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Overclocking

[Thentilian]

Hey all, I think with the budget I have I'm going with a R5 1600, and an Asus ROG Strix B350 motherboard. I was curious as to how well the 1600 has overclocked for everyone? I wanted to get the 1600x just to have higher guaranteed clocks, but I've read a lot of people get pretty close to the 1600x and I really need a cooler for the AM4 platform and getting a non-x CPU is the cheapest way to go. I'd really like to get into a 1700 for the 8 cores, but the budget doesn't allow, so I think 1600 is gonna be my best bet.

Also, I'm not sure if the Asus ROG Strix is gonna be the best motherboard, but from the specs it looks to have the best potential out of the B350 boards I have been looking at. 6+2 power phase, is something you do not see on most of the B350 boards, so at some point if I upgraded to an R7 it should have enough power to OC those decently as well. Any thoughts or opinions would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[PetrolHead]

There's always the silicon lottery factor, but in general the 1600 should overclock to roughly the same figures as the 1600X. This is partially due to the fact that all Ryzen chips seem to hit a Vcore wall around 4 GHz, so even if you have a decent cooler and a good piece of silicon, you probably wont get much higher than that. If you're thinking about overclocking, then I doubt the 1600X has much to offer you. If you mostly use your computer for gaming, the R5 1600 is also better value than the R7 1700, especially if you're not using something like a GTX 1080.

I wonder what the phase construction is really like on that ROG Strix board... It might be just a 3+1 board with doublers or even a 3+2 with just double the components for the CPU VRM. The heatsinks are large, but seem to be designed to look good instead of providing a lot of surface area for cooling. I'm pretty sure they do the job well enough, though. I checked and this board was not mentioned on Buildzoid's B350 VRM Crash Course, but you might want to check that out from YouTube to get some reference. My gut feeling is that for overclocking the R7 CPUs a good X370 board would be better, but the better B350 boards shouldn't be useless either.

 

[Thentilian]

There's always the silicon lottery factor, but in general the 1600 should overclock to roughly the same figures as the 1600X. This is partially due to the fact that all Ryzen chips seem to hit a Vcore wall around 4 GHz, so even if you have a decent cooler and a good piece of silicon, you probably wont get much higher than that. If you're thinking about overclocking, then I doubt the 1600X has much to offer you. If you mostly use your computer for gaming, the R5 1600 is also better value than the R7 1700, especially if you're not using something like a GTX 1080.

I wonder what the phase construction is really like on that ROG Strix board... It might be just a 3+1 board with doublers or even a 3+2 with just double the components for the CPU VRM. The heatsinks are large, but seem to be designed to look good instead of providing a lot of surface area for cooling. I'm pretty sure they do the job well enough, though. I checked and this board was not mentioned on Buildzoid's B350 VRM Crash Course, but you might want to check that out from YouTube to get some reference. My gut feeling is that for overclocking the R7 CPUs a good X370 board would be better, but the better B350 boards shouldn't be useless either.

Interesting, I'll have to check out Buildzoid's article. I plan on doing gaming, streaming, and producing YouTube videos. So, I could get better mileage out of a 1700 for those other purposes. But the price difference is quite a bit more than my budget allows for. I've waited a LONG time to upgrade to stay AMD, and my patience is running thin. But perhaps saving for a bit longer might be wise in my case.

Of course the silicon lottery is always a crap shoot, so that was one reason why I wanted to take a look at the 1600x, just to have higher guaranteed clocks out of the box and whatever else I could squeeze out of it would be icing on the cake.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[DaveB]

Hey all, I think with the budget I have I'm going with a R5 1600, and an Asus ROG Strix B350 motherboard. I was curious as to how well the 1600 has overclocked for everyone? I wanted to get the 1600x just to have higher guaranteed clocks, but I've read a lot of people get pretty close to the 1600x and I really need a cooler for the AM4 platform and getting a non-x CPU is the cheapest way to go. I'd really like to get into a 1700 for the 8 cores, but the budget doesn't allow, so I think 1600 is gonna be my best bet.

Also, I'm not sure if the Asus ROG Strix is gonna be the best motherboard, but from the specs it looks to have the best potential out of the B350 boards I have been looking at. 6+2 power phase, is something you do not see on most of the B350 boards, so at some point if I upgraded to an R7 it should have enough power to OC those decently as well. Any thoughts or opinions would be appreciated, thanks.

I ran a Ryzen 7 1700 @ 3.9 GHz on an ASRock AB350 Pro4 ATX board and Ryzen 5 1600 @ 4 GHz on an ASRock AB350 Pro4 mATX board. The 1700 was air cooled with the Vcore @ 1.3875V and the 1600 was water cooled with the VCore @ 1.425V. The ASRock boards were quite inexpensive, costing only $90 and $80, respectively before the Microcenter $30 combo discount. Both were rock solid with no VRM issues.

 

[Thentilian]

I ran a Ryzen 7 1700 @ 3.9 GHz on an ASRock AB350 Pro4 ATX board and Ryzen 5 1600 @ 4 GHz on an ASRock AB350 Pro4 mATX board. The 1700 was air cooled with the Vcore @ 1.3875V and the 1600 was water cooled with the VCore @ 1.425V. The ASRock boards were quite inexpensive, costing only $90 and $80, respectively before the Microcenter $30 combo discount. Both were rock solid with no VRM issues.

That's some nice results. Those boards VRM use doubling schemes don't they? I'm guessing that doesn't seem to effect the overclocks since you got solid results with two different CPUs. I'm gonna take a look at those boards, but I'm pretty made-up on the features the ASUS board offers. Although none of them are must have, just nice to have an Intel NIC, and the newest audio codec.

 

[PetrolHead]

Those boards VRM use doubling schemes don't they? I

Nope. They are 3+3 phase boards with each CPU VRM phase having just double the components (which is where the "6"+3 phases comes from). There's no actual doubling because the control chips do not support it, the components for each phase just run in parallel.

 

[Thentilian]

Nope. They are 3+3 phase boards with each CPU VRM phase having just double the components (which is where the "6"+3 phases comes from). There's no actual doubling because the control chips do not support it, the components for each phase just run in parallel.

What does that do for power? Just make the components split the load and run cooler?

 

[PetrolHead]

I guess better power dissipation is the upside (apart from the marketing aspect), when comparing to 3 "normal" phases. Compared to a four phase VRM the theoretical downsides are lower efficiency and worse voltage regulation, but to get a similar power capability with four phases would take up more space on the PCB. The used components matter, so without a direct comparison it's tough to say whether these ASRock boards are worse or better for overclocking than competitors' similar boards.

Here's Buildzoid's PCB breakdown for the ASRock AB350M Pro4:

 

[Johan45]

What does that do for power? Just make the components split the load and run cooler?

Here's a good go to article to help you understand motherboard power delivery and the benefits/drawbacks of the different schemes. http://sinhardware.com/index.php/vrm-articles/82-vrm-guide
Asrock had a very poor reputation with the last gen of AMD using thei "fake" phase scheme. This pic is from Sins areticle Asrock uses the third one down

 

[Thentilian]

Here's a good go to article to help you understand motherboard power delivery and the benefits/drawbacks of the different schemes. http://sinhardware.com/index.php/vrm-articles/82-vrm-guide
Asrock had a very poor reputation with the last gen of AMD using thei "fake" phase scheme. This pic is from Sins areticle Asrock uses the third one down

View attachment 192924

Reading that right now. Just want to have a good B350 board to power an 8 core eventually. I know this socket is supposed to be good til at least 2020, so the next gen of Zen cores should fit this socket and I don't like upgrading a perfectly good working motherboard every CPU cycle.

 

[Thentilian]

I watched a video where Buildzoid went over the VRM's of the B350 boards basically stated the MSI Pro Carbon B350 and Krait Gaming B350 were the best VRM's out of the B350 boards, but that video was done months ago. So, I'm not sure how good the Asus ROG Strix B350-f VRM is in comparison. I also saw information that said the ROG Strix was a 4+2+2 set up and not a 6+2. I'm gonna have to dig around since this information isn't always clearly posted by motherboard manufacturers all the time.

 

[trents]

All that VRM stuff will make very little difference in the end result of overclocking the R5 1600. Power draw is not the limiting factor. Core voltage is. The Ryzen's all have a low overclock ceiling because of that.

 

[Thentilian]

All that VRM stuff will make very little difference in the end result of overclocking the R5 1600. Power draw is not the limiting factor. Core voltage is. The Ryzen's all have a low overclock ceiling because of that.

I'm aware of that. But at some point I might want to put an 8 core R7 on the same board, which can make the VRM section more important. Also, the next gen Zen cores are supposed to fit the same AM4 socket, so whatever they might have in the next couple of years I just want to have a motherboard I don't need to toss in the trash, like the Intel boards after a couple of CPU cycles.