I upgraded a Ryzen 1700 to 3700x on cheapo Asrock B350 mb!

[Burticus]

So my plex/video encode home "server" is/was a $50ish B350 Asrock matx board with a Ryzen 1700. This works fine for Plex, but video encodes/recodes are not the fastest.

I picked up a sweet deal 3700x from a guy on Hardforum that had upgraded. The Asrock site said you had to flash TWICE, if you were not at sufficient level (5.40) you need to flash to that... THEN flash up to current (6.40) before it would recognize the new cpu.

ASRock > AB350 Pro4

ATX; ASRock Super Alloy; Supports AMD Socket AM4 A-Series APUs (Bristol Ridge) and Ryzen Series CPUs (Summit Ridge & Raven Ridge); Supports DDR4 3200+ (OC) (Ryzen CPU) / 2400 (A-series APU); 2 PCIe 3.0 x16, 4 PCIe 2.0 x1; AMD Quad CrossFireX™; Graphics Output: HDMI, DVI-D, D-Sub; Supports Triple...

www.asrock.com

First flash was no big deal, took a few minutes then booted up. The second flash up to 6.4 however, took FOREVER. 2-3 mins for the first one, triple for the second. I went to the toilet AND made a drink. Then it rebooted. From what I read I was expecting it to not do anything until I swapped the CPU at this point, however it does try to POST but never makes it... cannot get into BIOS/UEFI.

Swapped the cpu at this point, and did some housecleaning inside the case. Use a whole can of air on all the fans and such. And away we go...

The first boot with the "new" 3700x cpu took so long, I thought something was wrong. But eventually, 5 or so minutes later (I do have a raid card and it slows things down), it booted into windows and started re-detecting everything (likely from the flash). More reboots as it detected new devices.

Eventually we are up and running on new (to me) 3700x cpu on this bargain bin, old motherboard. I left overclock in bios on auto, and ryzen master to default (I left PBO disabled). I am noticing my fans have gotten much louder since the upgrade, I may need to adjust fan curves.

My handbrake jobs went from 60-70ish fps in handbrake on the 1700 to 120+ fps on the 3700x, without turning on PBO. Temps are under 70 at load on an old Hyper 212+. Case is old Antec 300, not greatest... I could rig 2 more fans in if I had to, but is stable.

Anyway, big props to AMD for their AM4 CPU/socket support for a moderately easy drop in 50% cpu boost and less voltage.

Dreams do come true! LOL

So if you have an older AM4 board... maybe or maybe not you get Zen 3 bios support. But if not (and I wasn't expecting to ever see it on this cheapo board) find someone who is upgrading and throw the cash at them. Cheap and moderately easy upgrade.

 

[LazyGamer]

Congrats on taking the chance and having it pull through!

I would recommend a CPU cooler upgrade, perhaps the cheapest thing from Noctua, or even just the fans. I have a retired AIO in my fileserver, but its not my Plex box and only has a 7600K to cool, but my domain controller was limping along with the stock anemic Intel cooler and a new Noctua 120mm tower did wonders.

 

[Burticus]

Congrats on taking the chance and having it pull through!

I would recommend a CPU cooler upgrade, perhaps the cheapest thing from Noctua, or even just the fans. I have a retired AIO in my fileserver, but its not my Plex box and only has a 7600K to cool, but my domain controller was limping along with the stock anemic Intel cooler and a new Noctua 120mm tower did wonders.

Thanks!

The Hyper 212 is hanging in, it doesn't get above 70c at full load (in my limited observation anyway), and redline is 90c. I can still add another fan for push pull if I want, or fully populate the case fans. It is what I was using on the 1700 and the 3700x is same wattage @ 65w.

Pretty sure my fan noise is result of the bios flash wiping out my fan curves, will need to play with those. It's not horrible though. No one ever accused an Antec 300 of being a silent case. And I have 5 hard drives in there too.

I am out of motherboard fan headers though, any more fans and I have to bust out the molex adapters and lose speed control

 

[David_Schroth]

The Hyper 212 is hanging in, it doesn't get above 70c at full load (in my limited observation anyway), and redline is 90c. I can still add another fan for push pull if I want, or fully populate the case fans. It is what I was using on the 1700 and the 3700x is same wattage @ 65w.

Pretty sure my fan noise is result of the bios flash wiping out my fan curves, will need to play with those. It's not horrible though. No one ever accused an Antec 300 of being a silent case. And I have 5 hard drives in there too.

When you hit about 67C, Ryzen chips will pull back the boost a little bit and reduce performance. If you can take it a little cooler you'll get a more consistent boost speed out of it.

 

[Burticus]

When you hit about 67C, Ryzen chips will pull back the boost a little bit and reduce performance. If you can take it a little cooler you'll get a more consistent boost speed out of it.

Is the temp reading from Ryzen Master to be trusted? The numbers I see in speccy don't even line up.

 

[LazyGamer]

Is the temp reading from Ryzen Master to be trusted? The numbers I see in speccy don't even line up.

It would probably be more effective to review a plot of clockspeeds vs. whatever temperature monitor you're using.

 

[Daniel_Doty]

This is awesome news @Burticus !!!! I have that exact same board that I grabbed a couple of months ago off [H] as well. It was a bargain board also.

Haven't even picked up a chip yet and with this post you made, I'm looking at needing a 1000 or 2000 series chip and also a 3000 series chip.

Of course the 1000 series chips are getting pretty cheap so that won't be a biggie I guess. LOL

Do you want to sell your 1700 cheap?

 

[Endgame]

Thanks!

The Hyper 212 is hanging in, it doesn't get above 70c at full load (in my limited observation anyway), and redline is 90c. I can still add another fan for push pull if I want, or fully populate the case fans. It is what I was using on the 1700 and the 3700x is same wattage @ 65w.

Pretty sure my fan noise is result of the bios flash wiping out my fan curves, will need to play with those. It's not horrible though. No one ever accused an Antec 300 of being a silent case. And I have 5 hard drives in there too.

I am out of motherboard fan headers though, any more fans and I have to bust out the molex adapters and lose speed control

Wow - I thought I was the only one still using an Antec 300. I’ve had that thing forever! Still using the stock 3 speed fans?

 

[Burticus]

Wow - I thought I was the only one still using an Antec 300. I’ve had that thing forever! Still using the stock 3 speed fans?

Yeah I've had it forever. It's my server case now. I replaced the fans a long long time ago.

 

[Burticus]

This is awesome news @Burticus !!!! I have that exact same board that I grabbed a couple of months ago off [H] as well. It was a bargain board also.

Haven't even picked up a chip yet and with this post you made, I'm looking at needing a 1000 or 2000 series chip and also a 3000 series chip.

Of course the 1000 series chips are getting pretty cheap so that won't be a biggie I guess. LOL

Do you want to sell your 1700 cheap?

You have PM! Honestly the 1700 is still a decent cpu and with 8 cores it's not a terrible encoder. I just wanted faster/newer.

 

[Ready4Droid]

I just have bad luck... My b450 needed an RMA because it failed to run my 3700x. My 1600 would run 100% solid in the board. Tried like 3 different bioses before giving up. RMA sent a refurbed board, the nvme screw was broken off in the board. Was able to get that out with the eraser side of a pencil. Finally got my 3700x running. The new board was a slightly different part #, so not sure if there was a design change or what. Luckily I had 2 3700x's and a spare b550 for testing (bought my son a b550 + 3700x and a 3700x for myself to out in my board). Anyways, congrats, it's amazing what a 65w part can do!

 

[Eduardo_Domingot]

Plex and AMD... I need to make that move. I am using an intel iGPU for the heavy lifting right now.
Do you use any GPU for Plex or just the 3700x?

 

[LazyGamer]

Plex and AMD... I need to make that move. I am using an intel iGPU for the heavy lifting right now.
Do you use any GPU for Plex or just the 3700x?

Really should just use Nvidia. 1650 Super or above (or 1050Ti for last-gen) for current NVENC, use Linux (probably something Debian-based) and unlock the number of video transcoding streams.

 

[Eduardo_Domingot]

Really should just use Nvidia. 1650 Super or above (or 1050Ti for last-gen) for current NVENC, use Linux (probably something Debian-based) and unlock the number of video transcoding streams.

This is currently what I plan on doing but was un-sure if I missed something. Would be nice to throw my old 3700x into Plex when I get the 5900x

 

[LazyGamer]

Well, I'll say this: 'Plex' is just a service running on a server, right?

It just needs to be able to access the fileshare and be accessible by end devices; and for stuff that needs transcoding, to have that capability.

That means that it can run on essentially a potato, so long as it can transcode, if even needed. A dual-core whatever can handle the basic requirements.

That also means that you can run just about anything else on the server if you have excess resources. So yeah, the 3700X would be good for that, just note that that's a lot of horsepower that's going to be idling unless you have a real workload for it!

 

[Brian_B]

Well, I'll say this: 'Plex' is just a service running on a server, right?

It just needs to be able to access the fileshare and be accessible by end devices; and for stuff that needs transcoding, to have that capability.

That means that it can run on essentially a potato, so long as it can transcode, if even needed. A dual-core whatever can handle the basic requirements.

That also means that you can run just about anything else on the server if you have excess resources. So yeah, the 3700X would be good for that, just note that that's a lot of horsepower that's going to be idling unless you have a real workload for it!

I run Plex on my Synology powered by a potato. It works fine. I don't let it transcode anything. Plex is nice in that it can handle various different files of different formats of the same content and serve up the appropriate one, so I can re-encode on my main PC and shove the file over if I have a device that needs something a bit different. I wouldn't want to re-encode my entire library just for one device, but the option to do it on an as-needed basis with my main PC is there rather than needing to have some beefy hardware in a device that otherwise just sits there serving files to do it on the fly.

 

[Burticus]

Plex and AMD... I need to make that move. I am using an intel iGPU for the heavy lifting right now.
Do you use any GPU for Plex or just the 3700x?

I don't have a real GPU on my Plex server, just CPU. But I also don't stream outside the house.

The horsepower isn't really needed for Plex per se, but for the ripping/encoding portion, it is VERY nice to have. Anything that speeds up handbrake is welcome. Of course my library is 99% my own stuff (or a physical disc that I handled), if one is just arr-matey'ing movies off the net, they are already encoded.

 

[Ready4Droid]

I run plex without a GPU as well and end up transcoding sometimes as I record live TV OTA, and some things like the fire stick don't/didn't support MPEG2 directly and have to transcode. Then again, I have (older) dual 6/12 core xeon's, so it's not really a huge deal. I would love to swap this server out with my old 1600 that I replaced with a 3700x, it's way more efficient and just as fast as what I have, although it would cost a bit to upgrade the ram (I am currently at 96GB in my server, my 6 desktops are at 8 or 16). I'm really hoping AMD starts doing a bit more focusing on transcoding as they are pretty far behind nvidia and even iGPU intels. I was helping someone build a dedicated streaming machine recently and it was much simpler to do with a intel + iGPU rather than having to get AMD + discrete GPU. He does want to eventually throw a real GPU in so he has a second gaming box for when people come over or w/e but it's mostly just for streaming.

 

[LazyGamer]

I'm looking forward to Intel updating their Quicksync IP; we'll see how much progress they've made with their Xe GPUs.

And I remain frustrated with AMDs APU strategy. Locking ECC out of all retail parts was a bit of a dick move IMO; and their lack of developer engagement for their transcoding blocks and overall driver support is maddening.

(I've been looking at them closely for all kinds of lower-power / dGPU-less setups, and it's like they just want people to give Intel and Nvidia money instead...)

 

[Ready4Droid]

I'm looking forward to Intel updating their Quicksync IP; we'll see how much progress they've made with their Xe GPUs.

And I remain frustrated with AMDs APU strategy. Locking ECC out of all retail parts was a bit of a dick move IMO; and their lack of developer engagement for their transcoding blocks and overall driver support is maddening.

(I've been looking at them closely for all kinds of lower-power / dGPU-less setups, and it's like they just want people to give Intel and Nvidia money instead...)

When did they lock out ECC? Last I heard it's spotty support but not locked out, just MB manufacturers haven't been adding much support wise. Possibly this changed and I missed things a so haven't really looked into it for a while. I agreed I'm wonder how Xe transcoding will be, and wish AMD would upgrade their encoding implementation.