Thanks for getting to these little units! The AM4 itx has been a fairly limited product. With gigabyte, asrock, and biostar being the only ones to have boards out. I know Asus was releasing boards today (but haven’t seen them for sale yet).
Would be nice to see a more in depth look at the power delivery system on these boards. I’ve been using the gigabyte board and it has unbelievable bad voltage control. With cpu voltage set to 1.325v for a 3.85ghz OC, and a low offset I expected no more than .5v over. But I see voltage bounce to 1.58v using HWMonitor. And temps are beyond scary on the vrm’s. Even with a fan directly blowing air over the vrm’s HWMonitor reports ~120c under full load at the mentioned voltage.
I’ve also been a little disappointed in rear I/o availability across the boards, and the Asus boards look to be the worst. I’m also quite surprised to see the lack of the new usb 3.1 gen 2 motherboard connector on any of these boards.
Yikes! That much deviation sounds like a defect - hopefully just software and thus easily fixable - I'm surprised voltages that high haven't bricked anything. >1.5v is generally only safe with something cooling the chip below ambient temperatures.
I’ve seen peaks of 1.68v. I’ve actually contacted gigabyte several times and have received no response back. Latest bios did nothing to bring this under control.
I’ve actually sully contacted gigabyte a couple of times and have received no response. I was going to place an Rma on the board but I’ve ran across some posts on various forums who experience this issue as well. So I’m kinda suspecting it’s a problem with the board.
HWMonitor has reported voltage max values upwards of 1.68v when I was trying to push 4.0ghz. That’s with a set value of 1.375v and the same low setting offset. After a week of testing and putting it through the works I wound up reverting back to default settings and then undervolting it... which strangely lead to slightly higher turbos and faster overall exporting times from premier (which I don’t understand).
The latter sounds like the stupidly high voltages were causing thermal protect circuity to intervene and drop your voltage/clocks briefly to prevent the CPU from cooking itself.
Yes! That was the first thing I thought of as well. But when I went back to review the data I collected, cpu temps were all reporting below thermal maximums and verified using ryzen master software. Data collected from HWMonitor. I also didn’t see any cpu throttling when I ran aida64’s stress test. So either I’m reading the data incorrectly (which wouldn’t surprise me) or I’m just plain missing something (which would also not surprise me). Either way the system runs better at stock settings with under volt settings.
Was hoping the Asus boards would be made available today. Would like to swap boards and do my own testing all over again to see what the results would be in comparison.
I resigned my office-job and now I am getting paid £64 hourly. How? I work over internet! My old work was making me miserable, so I was forced to try something different, two years after...I can say my life is changed-completely for the better!
I have the asrock itx B350 and a 1600. I have my voltage set to 1.375 in the bios. In HWMonitor its .384V-1.392V; stays at 1.392V consistently. If ASUS doesnt work out consider asrock, ive been very happy with it so far.
I don't get it. If you are going to build an ITX board, you are clearly going for a niche market where price isn't as sensitive to the potential buyer. So why cheap out on shit like an ALC892? To further exacerbate the problem, since it is ITX, it is inherently not upgradable since there is no room for expansion.
This board is BIOdegradable. Asus and ASrock are doing a substantially better job at outfitting their boards with more premium components. You'd be a sucker to buy something like this for a system when you could get a premium board for 20% more.
The BioStar was released prior to availability of the B350 chipset. The ASRock using the X370 chipset costs $150, a substantial amount more than this board.
In my years of building rigs, Gigabytes had the worst voltage control for the CPU. Moreover, their boards' bios and softwares were behind their competitions and weren't working too well. It seems they haven't improved in the last few years. My advice to anyone who plans to overclock - avoid Gigabytes.
this sort of thing is why itx is bad for high wattage components. you cant expect much from this gigabyte board. the cooling on the vrm is awful. horindusly bad. these motherboards should not be overclocked too high for the long run. if you look up guides on the design of them they all miss the mark in components and cooling. so all in all. mini itx, dont do it on ryzen. atleast for overclocking long term. your problem is not new.
It would be great to see a better look into the vrms (efficiency, mosfet temps, etc.). AM4 VRMs seem to have been a hot topic (pun intended) since Ryzen launched due to boards with pretty budget vrms being able to run with 8 core CPUs. I would like a more in depth look into the vrms of each board to see how worthy all of them are.
I have had this motherboard for since June and to be honest, I can not recommend it. If you are running an old version of the BIOS the motherboard is so unstable that it crashes all the time. My first unit died on me during a BIOS update (there's no backup BIOS), but luckily I was able to update the BIOS on the second one.
Currently my problems are with memory where the motherboard sometimes fail to boot at XMP settings, which then requires me to set them again and hope that it works. My memory problems could be down to AGESA and seems to have been more stable since I got a BIOS update with AGESA 1.0.0.6b, but it still fails once in a while.
Does yours power cycle 5x when it fails a boot as well? I'm rolling AGESA 1.0.0.6b as well, Trident Z F4-3200C14D-16GTZR 14-14-14-34, with XMP settings. I've wound the mem voltage up to meet 1.35v
Yeah, that is exactly what it does. The 5 times power cycle is a fail-safe designed to catch errors in BIOS settings. From what I have read the problem with the board seems to be, that it cannot get the correct voltage for the RAM and therefore fails boot. I am running G.Skill Ripjaws V, which runs at higher latencies.
mITX-boards are allways nice, but without an APU a mITX-board is pretty much useless for the majority of people, who would want to build a silent and powerefficient HTPC or SFF-office station with these.
Yeah, right now some of the value is lost by the lack of iGPUs on AM4, but the video outs are there for the APU version of Zen. I don't know if such an APU is worth waiting around to get since HTPC and SFF office boxes are probably fine with currently available hardware. Biostar will at least have a mITX board available for when the new APUs come out.
True, but these boards are perfectly fine for people who want to build smaller single GPU boxes and know they don't need a 2nd PCIe card. The limitations of mITX have gotten small enough that using it instead of miniATX for a smaller build is an increasingly attractive option.
"One perhaps disappointing omission from the BIOS is the inability to call upon XMP profiles from any installed memory."
This is just plain wrong. I don't know if it's your BIOS, your board, or your RAM, but mine can load XMP profiles just fine, and has done that since long before AGESA 1.0.0.6. I'm not running Ryzen-optimized RAM, either, just some TridentZ 3200 sticks that I bought before Ryzen even launched. This warrants some further investigation, though. I can easily provide screenshots if you want.
There's just one issue I am having with this board. Every so often, the system will fail a boot, but then will short cycle power 5x before booting back into CMOS defaults. I think there's something not quite right with the BIOS.
I have the same issue, but from what I can tell it only happens when I run my RAM at 3200 (what it's rated for, XMP profile). At 3000 or below (same timings), it's never happened to me, at least.
XMP profiles, as far as I know, are only optimized for Intel's controllers. AMD tends to not perform as well so it makes sense that you would need to lower RAM speed to use those timings.
Let me save this little puppy: i choose this board, because my case have a special desing and need to use a big tower-like cooler on cpu and this board designe was the only one what can i choose. The board arived whit 1.0.0.4b bios. Simply put together with 1800x and G.skill cl14 ram and boot up. I set 1,35V to ram, reboot, set 3200Mhz and XMP reboot. From that time it run without any problem. Later I try all of the bios settings, and choose the best conbination for smooth gameplay. It takes 42 reboot to find it. I do update to 1.0.0.6 next month. Its able to set up manualy the memory timings, it way beter than leave the XMP on and the timeing "auto".
There is no any issue whit this x370GTN Biostar board.
I've had this board since late november 2017 and I've never encountered a single issue with it. Yes it's not made by the most well known brand, however biostar has been around just as long as Asus and other manufacturers so they must be doing something right. I have mine paired with a R5 1600 @ 3.8Ghz 1.35625V through ryzen master and 16GB 3200Mhz ram in a CoolerMaster Elite 130 with a . The one downside that is mentioned in the review is the lack of setting a fixed voltage value in the BIOS, however ryzen master works just fine. For all the people whinging about the small vrm heatsink, most VRMs don't even need a heatsink as they designed to run without one and can be rated from 85C-125C and still function just fine, the problem is when you push voltages high and have no airflow or a heatsink on them, so as long as there is either a heatsink or airflow, but ideally both, you'll be fine.
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wolfemane - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
Thanks for getting to these little units! The AM4 itx has been a fairly limited product. With gigabyte, asrock, and biostar being the only ones to have boards out. I know Asus was releasing boards today (but haven’t seen them for sale yet).Would be nice to see a more in depth look at the power delivery system on these boards. I’ve been using the gigabyte board and it has unbelievable bad voltage control. With cpu voltage set to 1.325v for a 3.85ghz OC, and a low offset I expected no more than .5v over. But I see voltage bounce to 1.58v using HWMonitor. And temps are beyond scary on the vrm’s. Even with a fan directly blowing air over the vrm’s HWMonitor reports ~120c under full load at the mentioned voltage.
I’ve also been a little disappointed in rear I/o availability across the boards, and the Asus boards look to be the worst. I’m also quite surprised to see the lack of the new usb 3.1 gen 2 motherboard connector on any of these boards.
DanNeely - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
Yikes! That much deviation sounds like a defect - hopefully just software and thus easily fixable - I'm surprised voltages that high haven't bricked anything. >1.5v is generally only safe with something cooling the chip below ambient temperatures.wolfemane - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
I should have stayed that was with a 1700x.I’ve seen peaks of 1.68v. I’ve actually contacted gigabyte several times and have received no response back. Latest bios did nothing to bring this under control.
I’ve actually sully contacted gigabyte a couple of times and have received no response. I was going to place an Rma on the board but I’ve ran across some posts on various forums who experience this issue as well. So I’m kinda suspecting it’s a problem with the board.
HWMonitor has reported voltage max values upwards of 1.68v when I was trying to push 4.0ghz. That’s with a set value of 1.375v and the same low setting offset. After a week of testing and putting it through the works I wound up reverting back to default settings and then undervolting it... which strangely lead to slightly higher turbos and faster overall exporting times from premier (which I don’t understand).
DanNeely - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
The latter sounds like the stupidly high voltages were causing thermal protect circuity to intervene and drop your voltage/clocks briefly to prevent the CPU from cooking itself.wolfemane - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
Yes! That was the first thing I thought of as well. But when I went back to review the data I collected, cpu temps were all reporting below thermal maximums and verified using ryzen master software. Data collected from HWMonitor. I also didn’t see any cpu throttling when I ran aida64’s stress test. So either I’m reading the data incorrectly (which wouldn’t surprise me) or I’m just plain missing something (which would also not surprise me). Either way the system runs better at stock settings with under volt settings.Was hoping the Asus boards would be made available today. Would like to swap boards and do my own testing all over again to see what the results would be in comparison.
LeahFleming - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
I resigned my office-job and now I am getting paid £64 hourly. How? I work over internet! My old work was making me miserable, so I was forced to try something different, two years after...I can say my life is changed-completely for the better!Check it out what i do... http://cutt.us/EnRTV
Brother Ali - Thursday, October 26, 2017 - link
I have the asrock itx B350 and a 1600. I have my voltage set to 1.375 in the bios. In HWMonitor its .384V-1.392V; stays at 1.392V consistently. If ASUS doesnt work out consider asrock, ive been very happy with it so far.Samus - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
I don't get it. If you are going to build an ITX board, you are clearly going for a niche market where price isn't as sensitive to the potential buyer. So why cheap out on shit like an ALC892? To further exacerbate the problem, since it is ITX, it is inherently not upgradable since there is no room for expansion.This board is BIOdegradable. Asus and ASrock are doing a substantially better job at outfitting their boards with more premium components. You'd be a sucker to buy something like this for a system when you could get a premium board for 20% more.
lmcd - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link
The BioStar was released prior to availability of the B350 chipset. The ASRock using the X370 chipset costs $150, a substantial amount more than this board.sonny73n - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link
In my years of building rigs, Gigabytes had the worst voltage control for the CPU. Moreover, their boards' bios and softwares were behind their competitions and weren't working too well. It seems they haven't improved in the last few years. My advice to anyone who plans to overclock - avoid Gigabytes.Brother Ali - Thursday, October 26, 2017 - link
I have the asrock itx B350 and a 1600. I have my voltage set to 1.375 in the bios. In HWMonitor its .384V-1.392V; stays at 1.392V consistently.austinsguitar - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
this sort of thing is why itx is bad for high wattage components. you cant expect much from this gigabyte board. the cooling on the vrm is awful. horindusly bad. these motherboards should not be overclocked too high for the long run. if you look up guides on the design of them they all miss the mark in components and cooling. so all in all. mini itx, dont do it on ryzen. atleast for overclocking long term. your problem is not new.xrror - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
This is a Biostar board, not Gigabyte.Dr. Swag - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
It would be great to see a better look into the vrms (efficiency, mosfet temps, etc.). AM4 VRMs seem to have been a hot topic (pun intended) since Ryzen launched due to boards with pretty budget vrms being able to run with 8 core CPUs. I would like a more in depth look into the vrms of each board to see how worthy all of them are.u.of.ipod - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
Always happy to see small form factor reviews!!!Lurpak - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
I have had this motherboard for since June and to be honest, I can not recommend it. If you are running an old version of the BIOS the motherboard is so unstable that it crashes all the time. My first unit died on me during a BIOS update (there's no backup BIOS), but luckily I was able to update the BIOS on the second one.Currently my problems are with memory where the motherboard sometimes fail to boot at XMP settings, which then requires me to set them again and hope that it works. My memory problems could be down to AGESA and seems to have been more stable since I got a BIOS update with AGESA 1.0.0.6b, but it still fails once in a while.
twnznz - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link
Does yours power cycle 5x when it fails a boot as well? I'm rolling AGESA 1.0.0.6b as well, Trident Z F4-3200C14D-16GTZR 14-14-14-34, with XMP settings. I've wound the mem voltage up to meet 1.35vLurpak - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link
Yeah, that is exactly what it does. The 5 times power cycle is a fail-safe designed to catch errors in BIOS settings. From what I have read the problem with the board seems to be, that it cannot get the correct voltage for the RAM and therefore fails boot. I am running G.Skill Ripjaws V, which runs at higher latencies.Paull29724 - Sunday, November 19, 2017 - link
I just got this motherboard, whats your system config?jrs77 - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
mITX-boards are allways nice, but without an APU a mITX-board is pretty much useless for the majority of people, who would want to build a silent and powerefficient HTPC or SFF-office station with these.BrokenCrayons - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
Yeah, right now some of the value is lost by the lack of iGPUs on AM4, but the video outs are there for the APU version of Zen. I don't know if such an APU is worth waiting around to get since HTPC and SFF office boxes are probably fine with currently available hardware. Biostar will at least have a mITX board available for when the new APUs come out.mikestefoy - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
I wouldnt buy anything less than HDMI v2DanNeely - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
True, but these boards are perfectly fine for people who want to build smaller single GPU boxes and know they don't need a 2nd PCIe card. The limitations of mITX have gotten small enough that using it instead of miniATX for a smaller build is an increasingly attractive option.Valantar - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
"One perhaps disappointing omission from the BIOS is the inability to call upon XMP profiles from any installed memory."This is just plain wrong. I don't know if it's your BIOS, your board, or your RAM, but mine can load XMP profiles just fine, and has done that since long before AGESA 1.0.0.6. I'm not running Ryzen-optimized RAM, either, just some TridentZ 3200 sticks that I bought before Ryzen even launched. This warrants some further investigation, though. I can easily provide screenshots if you want.
twnznz - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link
There's just one issue I am having with this board. Every so often, the system will fail a boot, but then will short cycle power 5x before booting back into CMOS defaults.I think there's something not quite right with the BIOS.
Valantar - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link
I have the same issue, but from what I can tell it only happens when I run my RAM at 3200 (what it's rated for, XMP profile). At 3000 or below (same timings), it's never happened to me, at least.Oxford Guy - Thursday, October 26, 2017 - link
XMP profiles, as far as I know, are only optimized for Intel's controllers. AMD tends to not perform as well so it makes sense that you would need to lower RAM speed to use those timings.Rene23 - Sunday, October 29, 2017 - link
anyone knows if these AM4 mini-its boards POST and boot without VGA card? need this for a head-less Linux server only ;-)karan101 - Wednesday, November 1, 2017 - link
<p><a href="http://www.mechanicalworld.in ">mechanicalworld</a></p>Duracellmumus - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Let me save this little puppy: i choose this board, because my case have a special desing and need to use a big tower-like cooler on cpu and this board designe was the only one what can i choose.The board arived whit 1.0.0.4b bios. Simply put together with 1800x and G.skill cl14 ram and boot up.
I set 1,35V to ram, reboot, set 3200Mhz and XMP reboot. From that time it run without any problem. Later I try all of the bios settings, and choose the best conbination for smooth gameplay. It takes 42 reboot to find it.
I do update to 1.0.0.6 next month. Its able to set up manualy the memory timings, it way beter than leave the XMP on and the timeing "auto".
There is no any issue whit this x370GTN Biostar board.
h3ll0 - Monday, June 17, 2019 - link
I've had this board since late november 2017 and I've never encountered a single issue with it. Yes it's not made by the most well known brand, however biostar has been around just as long as Asus and other manufacturers so they must be doing something right. I have mine paired with a R5 1600 @ 3.8Ghz 1.35625V through ryzen master and 16GB 3200Mhz ram in a CoolerMaster Elite 130 with a . The one downside that is mentioned in the review is the lack of setting a fixed voltage value in the BIOS, however ryzen master works just fine. For all the people whinging about the small vrm heatsink, most VRMs don't even need a heatsink as they designed to run without one and can be rated from 85C-125C and still function just fine, the problem is when you push voltages high and have no airflow or a heatsink on them, so as long as there is either a heatsink or airflow, but ideally both, you'll be fine.