MSI TOMAHAWK B350 Review

👤by Tony Le Bourne Comments 📅19-04-17
Test Setup & Overclocking
Test Setup
CPU AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
Cooling Noctua U12S
Motherboard TOMAHAWK B350
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz @ 2667MHz
Graphics AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB
Storage Corsair Force LE 480GB
PSU Corsair RM750X 80 Plus Gold Certified PSU


Benchmarks
Cinebench R15 – CPU/OpenGL Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA – CPU & Memory benchmarks
POV-RAY – CPU benchmarks
TrueCrypt – CPU benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks & Memory
PCMark 8 – Home Suite & Photoshop
3DMark FireStrike – 3D Benchmark
Games – Rise of the Tomb Raider & Total War: WARHAMMER


Other Software
Temperature Analysis: Aida64 & Ryzen Master
Stress Testing Software: AIDA64 Stability Test
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z
Performance Monitoring: MSI Afterburner


BIOS
On entering the BIOS, we are presented with the nicely laid out MSI Click BIOS 5. Our board was shipped with BIOS version .114, and we then updated to.115 (latest at time of writing is .130). The MSI BIOS is very user friendly and easy to navigate with a host of advanced features for overclocking and generally controlling your system.




Overclocking
The BIOS features A-XMP allowing you to set your memory to their rated specifications whether they have XMP or AMP memory profiles, however we weren't able to get 3200MHz stable. Overlocking was as easy as expected, and our 1800X hits the wall at 4.05GHz with a nice 1.41V. Though something we did notice is that the Hardware Monitor was rather slow and laggy while we were testing for stability. This resulted in a rather slow reaction from the fans in regards to the temperature when using automatic or normal or default 'Smart Fan' mode. This resulted in some thermal based protective measures kicking in as it took a little while to discover what was going on. Using the AIDA64 stability tool, CPU temperatures were reported to hit 95°C before the fans even started to spin faster, resulting in an obvious black screen/restart with the fans then spinning up to 100% trying to catch up. These kind of temperatures could possibly damage your rather expensive CPU, so if you plan on overclocking pay attention to your thermals, and what cooler you are using. If you are overclocking it is good practice to set your cooler to 100% to find your coolers thermal limit anyway, but be wary. We would expect this to be fixed in a later BIOS update.






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