Soldato
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UPDATE: Bios F40 has been released a bit ago bringing support for 3rd gen Ryzen. Not sure if it brings any new functionality but things seems shifted a bit in the bios. Also Gigabite has released a list of the supported cpu's which includes to my surprise really the 16c 32 thread monster.

UPDATE: New F30 bios has been released for this board and therefor some or all of what is written in this post may no longer be valid. I need to test things further and time is not something I have a lot at the moment so it will be a while.


So i bought this board recently because it fitted my budget and it was the only b450 mATX board within that budget with the proper PCIe layout to fit both my vega 64 and my Xonar Essence STX soundcard as angled riser cards are difficult to find here in DKK from shops i actually trust for price that makes sense (you want what? 100 pounds? what?!? The mining boom is over dude.).

I actually don't regret this purchase anymore.. So yaa for that

Biggest issues:
1) No direct voltage control, only offset which is bad when you are trying to overclock a non x ryzen cpu due to the lower stock voltage it has. If you want voltage control you have to do it through p-state overclocking.
2) No control over host clock aka "BCLK". -Host control added in bios F30
3) The host clock("bclk) will not stay fixed at 100mhz and are usually going down as fare as 99.0. - F30 - Host clock seems to stay fixed if you set it manually to 100 which is good.
4) and this is the worse part of this board, NO LLC controls. The vdroop is terrible. I have to feed around 1.41volts through p-state overclocking for it to boot at 4,050 mhz. But put under stress from cinebench, prime, whwatever really, it drops to a 1.36v. WHAT?!? - F40 - Vdroop till leaves a lot to be desired, i will need to test this to see how it does after tweaking but for now using stock settings the vdroop on my board is 0.07v under load.

Minor issues:
1) No heatsink on the top vrms/soc. Fixed this myself. Pretty easy and temps are fine now
2) The onboard sound quality is ****, very very bad. Thank god for my xonar essence stx.
3) overall bios layout is silly and messy and there are menu's within the main menu with just 1 more menu inside then and then 1 or 2 options inside that.. Complete waste. F30-F40 things seems to have been improved a little. So for now disregard this minor issue.

Yet again i'm to slow to get things tested. Good thing i am not trying to be a professional reviewer then :p. The board has been performing well ever since the f30 bios update. The F40 update is no different, works well and no issues. My cold boot problems are gone as well. The fact that gigabyte has enabled host control and improved on the stability of it is a big plus in my book. Sure vdroop is not looking too good but you can work around it. Overall the board has been a champ as of late for the small amount i paid. Well done Gigabyte, the faith I lost in you, back in the x58 days, are slowly coming back.

A new conclusion has to wait until i have tested this new F30 bios a lot more.. I am excited however, very excited. If nothing else but the ability to set host control has been added then it's still a win for me and at least a small sign that perhaps Gigabyte is listening.

Overall i cannot recommend this board if overclocking is something you want to do. I'd wish i had gone through the hassle and bought a MSI or an Asrock board instead and a riser cable for my soundcard. The board works fine out of the box. Performance has been good but there are too many idiot decisions taken with this board and it's bios design that i cannot recommend it personally. The latest BIOS(F2, F3) didn't fix any of these annoyances for me. If Gigabyte were to fix the issues under "Biggest issues", especially 2,3 and 4, it would be a whole other vibe this post would have and it would actually get an approval from me.

So @GIGA-Man perhaps it's time for a change and some fixes. Cause if that happened the board is actually pretty good. Lots of changes so thanks to the gigabyte team.

EDIT: Just a small update as of 15th of April 2021. Several bios have been released since with included support for Ryzen 5000 series and SAM/REBAR which works great atm with my 6700xt. The board has been absolutely stable and just trucking through on bios F60 and there is even a newer one fixing some issues with Ryzen 5000 series CPUs. The fact that they keep supporting the board with new updates coupled with how well the board has been running is the sole reason while I most likely will be looking at a gigabyte board the next time I'm in for an upgrade.
 
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Soldato
Joined
12 Feb 2014
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Somewhere Only We Know
So i bought this board recently because it fitted my budget and it was the only b450 mATX board within that budget with the proper PCIe layout to fit both my vega 64 and my Xonar Essence STX soundcard as angled riser cards are difficult to find here in DKK from shops i actually trust for price that makes sense (you want what? 100 pounds? what?!? The mining boom is over dude.).

Well, i regret buying this board as its such a drag when it comes to overclocking and here is why.

Biggest issues:
1) No direct voltage control, only offset which is bad when you are trying to overclock a non x ryzen cpu due to the lower stock voltage it has. If you want voltage control you have to do it through p-state overclocking.
2) No control over host clock aka "BCLK".
3) The host clock("bclk) will not stay fixed at 100mhz and are usually going down as fare as 99.0.
4) and this is the worse part of this board, NO LLC controls. The vdroop is terrible. I have to feed around 1.41volts through p-state overclocking for it to boot at 4,050 mhz. But put under stress from cinebench, prime, whwatever really, it drops to a 1.36v. WHAT?!?

Minor issues:
1) No heatsink on the top vrms/soc. Fixed this myself. Pretty easy and temps are fine now
2) The onboard sound quality is ****, very very bad. Thank god for my xonar essence stx.
3) overall bios layout is silly and messy and there are menu's within the main menu with just 1 more menu inside then and then 1 or 2 options inside that.. Complete waste.
4) Cannot get Ryzen master to work on this board but that may be something i've missed or are doing wrong?

Overall i cannot recommend this board if overclocking is something you want to do. I'd wish i had gone through the hassle and bought a MSI or an Asrock board instead and a riser cable for my soundcard. The board works fine out of the box. Performance has been good but here are to many idiot decisions taken with this board and bios design/features that i cannot recommend it personally. The latest BIOS(F2) didn't fix any of these annoyances for me. If Gigabyte were to fix the issues under "Biggest issues", especially 1,3 and 4, it would be a whole other vibe this post would have and it would actually get an approval from me.

So @Gigabyte-Gaming perhaps its time for a change and some fixes. Cause if that happened the board is actually pretty good.

3) The host clock("bclk) will not stay fixed at 100mhz and are usually going down as fare as 99.0.

That's why I got rid of my Gaming 7, their top tier board, does the same thing, and all its missing to lock it is spread spectrum control, even though it had host clock control, you could dial in 100 and it would still fluctuate like that, one second at 99, the next 100, then 101, then back down again, a nightmare trying to get the CPU stable with it doing that, great boards, crap bioses, sent it back to where I brought it and got an MSI Gaming M7 AC instead, way way better bios and not had a issue since.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
10 Oct 2012
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3) The host clock("bclk) will not stay fixed at 100mhz and are usually going down as fare as 99.0.

That's why I got rid of my Gaming 7, their top tier board, does the same thing, and all its missing to lock it is spread spectrum control, even though it had host clock control, you could dial in 100 and it would still fluctuate like that, one second at 99, the next 100, then 101, then back down again, a nightmare trying to get the CPU stable with it doing that, great boards, crap bioses, sent it back to where I brought it and got an MSI Gaming M7 AC instead, way way better bios and not had a issue since.

Good to know.. MSI does look like good boards.. Didn't like the last one i had though, the z97 krait but i know a few who have been happy with theirs. This isn't the first time gigabyte has disappointed me but it is the last time in a long long long while i will be buying from that brand unless they fix these issues and show some sincerity.
 
Soldato
Joined
12 Feb 2014
Posts
2,803
Location
Somewhere Only We Know
Good to know.. MSI does look like good boards.. Didn't like the last one i had though, the z97 krait but i know a few who have been happy with theirs. This isn't the first time gigabyte has disappointed me but it is the last time in a long long long while i will be buying from that brand unless they fix these issues and show some sincerity.

I used to be a Gigabyte fanboy years ago, right up to the sniper green and black intel boards, built in DDR2 RAM for the ethernet, and on-board Creative Core 3D Audio chip, loved them, feature packed, then they started going a bit sloppy after that, especially with the bioses, I gave up with them after that, the recent release of X470 boards, I thought id give them another try, big mistake, the bioses are getting worse, I had an MSI B350 and MSI X370 motherboard, don't know why I just didn't stick with MSI, pretty much fell in love with them, they used to be rubbish, but improved themselves a lot, the MSI B450 boards are supposed to have the best VRMs out of the lot.

If you're looking for an mATX board the one that gets talked about a lot is the MSI B450 Mortar, cheap but strangly high performing ATX board would be the MSI B450 Tomahawk and then high end you'll be getting into the X470 Gaming Pro Carbon, the flagship is the Gaming M7 AC.

Where Threadripper is concerned, people seem to love the MSI X399 MEG, ive not used it myself so cant really comment on it, but over on the MSI forums I see a lot of regret of not buying it in the 1st place when users have gone for Gigabyte and ASUS instead to start with.
 
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Associate
Joined
18 Aug 2014
Posts
366
Thanks for this OP
I have an Gigabyte since the P35 boards, and have been looking at this as it had what I needed. I think I will look at the MSI boards instead
 
Associate
Joined
18 Aug 2014
Posts
366
You are welcome :) whatever you end up with please give us some feedback. Would certainly help future buyers.
The misses is buying it me for Xmas, but have gone for the MSI B450M Mortar board. I wanted 4 RAM slots and 2 PCI-E slots and the one review I have seen rates it highly. Will report back some time after Xmas
 
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