[CdnJoe]

Hi guys,

Decided to leave intel after the 13/14 gen bs, I currently have a 14900ks defective of course w an msi ace pro max and patriot viper venom ddr5 32GB 6600MHZ

I don't need a discrete video card, my goal is to run a single threaded app max stable OC.
Planning to run this on Ubuntu also and NOT windows

Have a h170i corsair and love the temps I get 66-72c on intel @6.3Ghz

Ordered a 9950x, and I want a decent motherboard that I plan to run OC'd 24/7 thinking 6GHZ for 1 or 2 cores, if possible..

So board I am considering in order of preference:

MSI ACE X670E
GIGABYTE X670E MASTER
ASROCK TAICHI b650e/x670e
and last would be hero/ extreme crosshairs but really don't like asus as a company and how they treat thier customers so..last resort.

So far my last few builds have been good w MSI and gigabyte, never tried asrock.

I am not sure if I need an eclk and or bclk gen or both, I think I need an elck for the OC on the 9950x?

I have never overclocked on a AMD build before and my last amd was early 2000s

I am definitely open to cheaper boards, but stability is my main goal.

I am wondering if I can achieve what I want with other chipsets? B650/B650e/x670/x670e

Kinda a pipe dream but is it possible and boards that support a 9950x have out of band management and can overclock?

Would greatly appreciate advice and insight. Anyone rocking a 6GHZ stable OC on the 9950x? Or is that to extreme..I am not planning on H2 just AIO cooling

Thanks!

 

[Blameless]

Chipset is completely irrelevant to anything other than I/O, as long as it's not an A620 or B840, as those are the only AM5 chipsets that don't allow core OCing.

The 9950X has an unlocked multiplier and can be OCed without an eCLK, but you may find better peak clocks and better granularity with one. However, 6GHz, with anything resembling real stability, is a pretty big ask. Unless you get very lucky, are running sub-ambient cooling, or are disabling tons of cores, I would not count on it. You can't really set per-core multipliers or FMAX limits on AM5, though you can tune per-core F/V curves.

Gigabyte's AM5 boards are rather annoying. The UEFI GUIs are full of redundant settings--or worse, settings that seem like their duplicates but have different options, or still need to be set in conjunction with others of the same name--and they have some of the worst memory training times, especially with Granite Ridge. No idea if they'll fix that with a firmware update or not.

Personally, I'd recommend the ASRock B650E Taichi Lite, if you can find one. It's got an eCLK generator, and is probably one of the best OCing boards under $500.

 

[CdnJoe]

Thank you, I am hoping to disable cores as really I only need 1 for my application, but tend to run 2 or 4. Appreciate the heads up on slow memory training. What about bclk? Or do I only need that for memory OCs? One issue I heard about the taichis is that some times they were slow to boot or have boot lockups? Spec wise it does seem to offer the most bang for buck though..And how is the asrock for Linux support?

 

[Blameless]

If you're disabling the weak CCX and all but the best four cores on the better CCX, 6GHz is going to be much easier. The 9950X will need a slight BCLK OC to hit 6GHz as the max for PBO 5.95GHz. An eCLK isn't strictly necessary, but will probably help.

I believe the Taichi's training issues were resolved a while back and haven't heard of any particular issues with Granite Ridge on it. I also haven't had any particular problems with Linux on ASRock's boards, but I haven't done much of anything with virtualization that would depend on good IOMMU grouping, so I can't comment on this.

 

[Sector-z]

ASROCK TAICHI b650e but the lite one

 

[CdnJoe]

Fantastic info guys thank you! I Appreciate all I can get, still shopping lol

 

[lostking]

The default boost clock of 9950x is 5.7G.
After you enable +200MHz offset in the PBO, you get 5.9G.
To get 6GHz, you may need blck overlock. Ideally, you want a motherboard with external clock gen. Even though, I prefer not to touch bclk.
The boards you mentined, they are all solid choices.
For ASUS, you can get x670e Gene if you can get one at reasonable price.

 

[zzztopzzz]

Personally, I'd recommend the ASRock B650E Taichi Lite, if you can find one. It's got an eCLK generator, and is probably one of the best OCing boards under $500.
[/QUOTE]
If I'm buying the top of the mark CPU, I'm definitely not going to scrimp on the motherboard. For a measly $50 more one could have The X670E Tiachi with a host of more accents.

 

[zzztopzzz]

Chipset is completely irrelevant to anything other than I/O, as long as it's not an A620 or B840, as those are the only AM5 chipsets that don't allow core OCing.

The 9950X has an unlocked multiplier and can be OCed without an eCLK, but you may find better peak clocks and better granularity with one. However, 6GHz, with anything resembling real stability, is a pretty big ask. Unless you get very lucky, are running sub-ambient cooling, or are disabling tons of cores, I would not count on it. You can't really set per-core multipliers or FMAX limits on AM5, though you can tune per-core F/V curves.

Gigabyte's AM5 boards are rather annoying. The UEFI GUIs are full of redundant settings--or worse, settings that seem like their duplicates but have different options, or still need to be set in conjunction with others of the same name--and they have some of the worst memory training times, especially with Granite Ridge. No idea if they'll fix that with a firmware update or not.

Personally, I'd recommend the ASRock B650E Taichi Lite, if you can find one. It's got an eCLK generator, and is probably one of the best OCing boards under $500.

If I'm buying the top of the mark CPU, I'm definitely not going to scrimp on the motherboard. For a measly $50 more one could have The X670E Tiachi with a host of more accents.

 

[Blameless]

For a measly $50 more one could have The X670E Tiachi with a host of more accents.

I wasn't scrimping on motherboard when I recommended the B650E Taichi Lite; I consider it to be a superior board to the X670E Taichi. The Taichi Lite is also closer to $150 less than the X670E Taichi.

Where you accents, I see wasteful clutter.

The X670E Taichi barely has more usable I/O, which makes the extra Promontory 21 chip that distinguishes the B650E from the X670X little more than dead weight. There is also a silly VRM fan (which is going to sound great once the ball bearing starts to fail) on the X670E Tachi. The VRM is fantastically overbuilt (and the same) on both of these boards; the OP isn't trying for a 16-core all-core world record attempt on LN2...just a fistful of ~6GHz cores, which could be done by four of the twenty-four phases on these boards with margin to spare, and no heatsink, let alone a fan, on them at all.

Even for those X670 boards that do leverage the additional I/O, I consider the extra Promontory 21 chip on the X670 a disadvantage more often than not. The extra I/O it provides often goes unused and it's daisy chained through the first Promontory chip anyway; if you use anywhere near all it simultaneously, you saturate the shared PCI-E 4.0 4x link to the CPU. The extra chip is also more traces that need another couple of PCB layers to get the same isolation elsewhere (and these are both eight-layer boards), and is another potential point of failure.

As far as I am concerned, the next step up from the Taichi Lite is the ROG Crosshair X670E GENE, and only because there isn't a B650 GENE.

 

[zzztopzzz]

I wasn't scrimping on motherboard when I recommended the B650E Taichi Lite; I consider it to be a superior board to the X670E Taichi. The Taichi Lite is also closer to $150 less than the X670E Taichi.

Where you accents, I see wasteful clutter.

The X670E Taichi barely has more usable I/O, which makes the extra Promontory 21 chip that distinguishes the B650E from the X670X little more than dead weight. There is also a silly VRM fan (which is going to sound great once the ball bearing starts to fail) on the X670E Tachi. The VRM is fantastically overbuilt (and the same) on both of these boards; the OP isn't trying for a 16-core all-core world record attempt on LN2...just a fistful of ~6GHz cores, which could be done by four of the twenty-four phases on these boards with margin to spare, and no heatsink, let alone a fan, on them at all.

Even for those X670 boards that do leverage the additional I/O, I consider the extra Promontory 21 chip on the X670 a disadvantage more often than not. The extra I/O it provides often goes unused and it's daisy chained through the first Promontory chip anyway; if you use anywhere near all it simultaneously, you saturate the shared PCI-E 4.0 4x link to the CPU. The extra chip is also more traces that need another couple of PCB layers to get the same isolation elsewhere (and these are both eight-layer boards), and is another potential point of failure.

As far as I am concerned, the next step up from the Taichi Lite is the ROG Crosshair X670E GENE, and only because there isn't a B650 GENE.

Well sir, I reserve the right to disagree with you. here are a few reasons:

• 1 more M.2 sockets. 4vs3.
• 4 more SATA 3 connectors. 8vs4.
• 2 more USB 3.0 ports (through expansion) ...
• 2 more USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (USB-A) ...
• 1 more PCIe 5.0 x16 slots. ...
• 1 more Thunderbolt 4 ports. ...
• 1 more USB 4 40Gbps ports. ...
• 2 more USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports (through expansion)

To me, if I'm building a better gamer another $100-$150 doesn't mean all that much. After all, the build isn't destined to be Aunt Millie's parlor browser, and It's not like you're going to be doing this year on end. If you're on the piggy bank strict budget then of course go with lesser model. You can be pennywise and dollar foolish is this genre.

 

[Blameless]

Well sir, I reserve the right to disagree with you. here are a few reasons:

• 1 more M.2 sockets. 4vs3.
• 4 more SATA 3 connectors. 8vs4.
• 2 more USB 3.0 ports (through expansion) ...
• 2 more USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (USB-A) ...
• 1 more PCIe 5.0 x16 slots. ...
• 1 more Thunderbolt 4 ports. ...
• 1 more USB 4 40Gbps ports. ...
• 2 more USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports (through expansion)

The second PCI-E 16x slot on the X670E Tachi is 8x electrical and using it knocks the main slot down to 8x as well. The second slot on the Taichi Lite, though shared with the third M.2, is completely independent of first PCI-E 16x slot. There are situations where 8x/8x without needing to rely on a cable or bifurcation would be useful, but they're pretty niche...as is needing piles of USB ports that are going to be bottlenecked at the chipset level anyway (if one just needs craptons of USB ports, nevermind the speed, there are hubs for that) and Taichi Lite has more ports directly on the board itself.

To me, if I'm building a better gamer another $100-$150 doesn't mean all that much.

That's probably the first time I've heard someone imply any of these features makes for a better gamer (how many drives are you connecting to a gaming build?), but the OP's use case is most certainly not gaming.

Without very specific needs, none of which were hinted at by the OP, I'd never recommend the X670E Taichi over the Taichi Lite.

After all, the build isn't destined to be Aunt Millie's parlor browser, and It's not like you're going to be doing this year on end. If you're on the piggy bank strict budget then of course go with lesser model. You can be pennywise and dollar foolish is this genre.

Dollar foolish is wasting money for the sake of wasting money. If my budget is a million dollars, I am not spending $150 extra on an integrated SATA, USB, M.2 dongle (which is what the second Prom21 is), unless I really need that I/O.

 

[zzztopzzz]

The second PCI-E 16x slot on the X670E Tachi is 8x electrical and using it knocks the main slot down to 8x as well. The second slot on the Taichi Lite, though shared with the third M.2, is completely independent of first PCI-E 16x slot. There are situations where 8x/8x without needing to rely on a cable or bifurcation would be useful, but they're pretty niche...as is needing piles of USB ports that are going to be bottlenecked at the chipset level anyway (if one just needs craptons of USB ports, nevermind the speed, there are hubs for that) and Taichi Lite has more ports directly on the board itself.



That's probably the first time I've heard someone imply any of these features makes for a better gamer (how many drives are you connecting to a gaming build?), but the OP's use case is most certainly not gaming.

Without very specific needs, none of which were hinted at by the OP, I'd never recommend the X670E Taichi over the Taichi Lite.



Dollar foolish is wasting money for the sake of wasting money. If my budget is a million dollars, I am not spending $150 extra on an integrated SATA, USB, M.2 dongle (which is what the second Prom21 is), unless I really need that I/O.

You're trying to make a case and pulling straws out of thin air. Number one, and since this is a gaming thread (site), I take it more or less for granted that the OP is a gamer. If not, he could drop by his local computer store/shop and get all the info he needs for a number cruncher. Now, if I going all in and paying 700 for a chip, 1800 for a video card, 300+ for RAM, 300 for storage, 225 for a PSU, 170 for a case, and some other intangibles, I surely can afford a better mobo to plug it all in to. Also, you have a long way to go to prove to me by just your combing through all of the on line network stats that this lite board his better than mine. Now, if you have purchased or otherwise come into possession of those 2 boards and are making 'hands on' evaluations, that's a different story. But, there are people and articles that have already made tons of comments and recommendation about all of this.

You articles and input are greatly appreciated on this site.

 

[dansi]

I agree with blameless. The extra money to spend on x670e taichi is not worth what b650e taichi lite already provides. The differentiation like pcb layers, vrm, eclk, bios, audio, network, both boards give users more than enough.

X670e taichi don’t even provide for 2x gen5 nvme slots. The dual gen5 nvme is supposed to be -E variants differential over none -E

In fact i will go lower and get the new b650 steel legend, sure you lose the eclk but it comes in ATX size while both taichi are eATX

All the extra I/O in -E are still bottleneck by AMD only giving pcie4x4 from cpu to chipset. AM5 -E marketing is nonsense, it’s different from say Intel hedt x299 -E

 

[zzztopzzz]

I agree with blameless. The extra money to spend on x670e taichi is not worth what b650e taichi lite already provides. The differentiation like pcb layers, vrm, eclk, bios, audio, network, both boards give users more than enough.

X670e taichi don’t even provide for 2x gen5 nvme slots. The dual gen5 nvme is supposed to be -E variants differential over none -E

In fact i will go lower and get the new b650 steel legend, sure you lose the eclk but it comes in ATX size while both taichi are eATX

All the extra I/O in -E are still bottleneck by AMD only giving pcie4x4 from cpu to chipset. AM5 -E marketing is nonsense, it’s different from say Intel hedt x299 -E

Hey, I'm not try to start a fight over this. Good for you and your build and I'm sure you'll be quite happy with it. BTW, unless you're going to run RAID it doesn't make much difference concerning the lack dual Gen5 slots. My box has 4TB in that slot and 6TB spinning rust.

 

[Blameless]

You're trying to make a case and pulling straws out of thin air.

Speak for yourself.

The sole distinction of note between these boards is I/O. For most use cases, even a B650 has plenty of I/O.

Number one, and since this is a gaming thread (site), I take it more or less for granted that the OP is a gamer.

This is not a gaming site, this is an overclocking/tweaking oriented site that covers many adjacent and more general topics. Gamers are certainly well represented, but gaming is far from the only reason to tweak a system.

Assuming the OP is building a gaming system would have been dubious the moment they said 9950X (which is not a gaming oriented CPU) in the title, and put to rest a few lines later with "I don't need a discrete video card, my goal is to run a single threaded app max stable OC. Planning to run this on Ubuntu also and NOT windows". This system is not for gaming and the OP makes that clear very early on.

If not, he could drop by his local computer store/shop and get all the info he needs for a number cruncher.

Probably not for something specific enough to justify the OP's specific requirements.

Now, if I going all in and paying 700 for a chip, 1800 for a video card, 300+ for RAM, 300 for storage, 225 for a PSU, 170 for a case, and some other intangibles, I surely can afford a better mobo to plug it all in to.

Being able to afford more is not the issue, your definition of 'better' is.

Your own system, unless you're using that second TB port or something, is using less I/O than my ITX setups. You gained nothing from spending so much on the board; and within the budget of your system, that $150 could have gone to faster memory (using four DIMMs on AM5 is automatically sub-optimal as far as performance potential goes), a better PSU (the Seasonic Prime TX is great, but not the best, especially if one wants to power silly numbers of USB ports without external hubs...Seasonic's +5v rails are tuned too low for the ports to get 5v+ after board losses; you need 5.1-5.15v at the PSU for this...and you do intent to use those USB ports you spent $150 for, right?), or custom cooling for the GPU (I have a 4090 Suprim Liquid X, which is fine, but the cooler has issues much past 500-550w, and if I'm pushing for maximum performance I can easily get my more demanding games to 600w+ on my other 4090 with custom water).

Not saying you should run out and replace your board, of course. The X670E Taichi is a great board, but chances are that you'd barely notice if it were swapped for a Tachi Lite, or even something much cheaper than that.

Also, you have a long way to go to prove to me by just your combing through all of the on line network stats that this lite board his better than mine. Now, if you have purchased or otherwise come into possession of those 2 boards and are making 'hands on' evaluations, that's a different story. But, there are people and articles that have already made tons of comments and recommendation about all of this.

I don't plan on owning either of these boards (then again, I have piles of boards I never planned on owning). They are both wasteful overkill for my systems as I don't need an eCLK gen to do what I want to do and they have too many DIMM slots, which hampers their memory overclocking potential. If I'm spending more than $150 (not $150 more, more than $150 total the board itself) on a motherboard, for any system that can get by with 96GiB or less main memory, it cannot have more than one DIMM slot per channel, certainly not on an eight-layer PCB, unless it's positively magical. However, I've definitely seen them both firsthand, not that I would have needed to; the block diagrams in the manuals that show how the I/O is routed, and that is the only functional difference between these boards.

They are as close as two boards can get aside from the second chipset. If I had observed any differences between the boards that didn't come down to I/O, it would be more likely due to sample-to-sample variance than a nonexistent design change with anything that would be relevant to the overwhelming majority of gamers or overclockers...and if I was pushing things enough to want to bin boards, that's way easier to do with the cheaper board. The only reason ASRock even has different PCB designs for these boards (which is only different away from the CPU socket...everything related to CPU, memory, primary PCI-E/M.2 slots, or power delivery is essentially identical) is because the daisy chained Prom21 needs different trace routing to leverage it's additional I/O.

There is no quality article and no rational argument the puts the X670E Taichi above the B650E Taichi Lite for gaming or overclocking. If one needs the extra I/O, that's one thing, but you're arguing for spending more to get features that probably aren't going to be leveraged, which is irrational at any budget.

 

[zzztopzzz]

Speak for yourself.

The sole distinction of note between these boards is I/O. For most use cases, even a B650 has plenty of I/O.



This is not a gaming site, this is an overclocking/tweaking oriented site that covers many adjacent and more general topics. Gamers are certainly well represented, but gaming is far from the only reason to tweak a system.

Assuming the OP is building a gaming system would have been dubious the moment they said 9950X (which is not a gaming oriented CPU) in the title, and put to rest a few lines later with "I don't need a discrete video card, my goal is to run a single threaded app max stable OC. Planning to run this on Ubuntu also and NOT windows". This system is not for gaming and the OP makes that clear very early on.



Probably not for something specific enough to justify the OP's specific requirements.



Being able to afford more is not the issue, your definition of 'better' is.

Your own system, unless you're using that second TB port or something, is using less I/O than my ITX setups. You gained nothing from spending so much on the board; and within the budget of your system, that $150 could have gone to faster memory (using four DIMMs on AM5 is automatically sub-optimal as far as performance potential goes), a better PSU (the Seasonic Prime TX is great, but not the best, especially if one wants to power silly numbers of USB ports without external hubs...Seasonic's +5v rails are tuned too low for the ports to get 5v+ after board losses; you need 5.1-5.15v at the PSU for this...and you do intent to use those USB ports you spent $150 for, right?), or custom cooling for the GPU (I have a 4090 Suprim Liquid X, which is fine, but the cooler has issues much past 500-550w, and if I'm pushing for maximum performance I can easily get my more demanding games to 600w+ on my other 4090 with custom water).

Not saying you should run out and replace your board, of course. The X670E Taichi is a great board, but chances are that you'd barely notice if it were swapped for a Tachi Lite, or even something much cheaper than that.



I don't plan on owning either of these boards (then again, I have piles of boards I never planned on owning). They are both wasteful overkill for my systems as I don't need an eCLK gen to do what I want to do and they have too many DIMM slots, which hampers their memory overclocking potential. If I'm spending more than $150 (not $150 more, more than $150 total the board itself) on a motherboard, for any system that can get by with 96GiB or less main memory, it cannot have more than one DIMM slot per channel, certainly not on an eight-layer PCB, unless it's positively magical. However, I've definitely seen them both firsthand, not that I would have needed to; the block diagrams in the manuals that show how the I/O is routed, and that is the only functional difference between these boards.

They are as close as two boards can get aside from the second chipset. If I had observed any differences between the boards that didn't come down to I/O, it would be more likely due to sample-to-sample variance than a nonexistent design change with anything that would be relevant to the overwhelming majority of gamers or overclockers...and if I was pushing things enough to want to bin boards, that's way easier to do with the cheaper board. The only reason ASRock even has different PCB designs for these boards (which is only different away from the CPU socket...everything related to CPU, memory, primary PCI-E/M.2 slots, or power delivery is essentially identical) is because the daisy chained Prom21 needs different trace routing to leverage it's additional I/O.

There is no quality article and no rational argument the puts the X670E Taichi above the B650E Taichi Lite for gaming or overclocking. If one needs the extra I/O, that's one thing, but you're arguing for spending more to get features that probably aren't going to be leveraged, which is irrational at any budget.

I fully understand and respect you points. What it boils down to is why buy a Cadillac, for example, when a Chevrolet will get you where you want to go just as well.

 

[CdnJoe]

So I went with a B650e Taichi I am testing now..
One huge disappointment vs my MSI Ace Max Pro Z790 is there are no temperature sensors working for CPU in Ubuntu Server. I just got the board up and running, and tinking with it, so far much slower than 14900ks. Trying to disable CCD1 atm I am talking single core application performance.

 

[CdnJoe]

The second PCI-E 16x slot on the X670E Tachi is 8x electrical and using it knocks the main slot down to 8x as well. The second slot on the Taichi Lite, though shared with the third M.2, is completely independent of first PCI-E 16x slot. There are situations where 8x/8x without needing to rely on a cable or bifurcation would be useful, but they're pretty niche...as is needing piles of USB ports that are going to be bottlenecked at the chipset level anyway (if one just needs craptons of USB ports, nevermind the speed, there are hubs for that) and Taichi Lite has more ports directly on the board itself.



That's probably the first time I've heard someone imply any of these features makes for a better gamer (how many drives are you connecting to a gaming build?), but the OP's use case is most certainly not gaming.

Without very specific needs, none of which were hinted at by the OP, I'd never recommend the X670E Taichi over the Taichi Lite.



Dollar foolish is wasting money for the sake of wasting money. If my budget is a million dollars, I am not spending $150 extra on an integrated SATA, USB, M.2 dongle (which is what the second Prom21 is), unless I really need that I/O.

Indeed, I dont need PCIE slots, or more m.2s I need fast as I can go single thread performance thats all

 

[CdnJoe]

Hmm so far I set PBO to +200Mhz ,disabled ccd 1 and only enabled 1s 4 cores on CCD 0
Seems like of that 4 best 2 cores are 2,3.
Now for some reason I am only getting 5811-5825Mhz ? and not 5.9GHZ