Question Ryzen 1st Gen CPU's optional uses

R81Z3N1

Member
Jul 15, 2017
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Folks;

Just wanted to post this here, but had an Asus x370 Pro board go dead on me, I was counting on it for a new build. I bought a Ryzen 9 3900x, and updated the bios of the board before inserting the new CPU.

Installed everything, and would not post, cleared cmos, and pulled battery. Still no dice, but back in a r5 1600, and motherboard is dead, no lights, on sign of life. Put new CPU in another X370 board words great am typing on it now.

I am a little upset, as now I have 2 gen 1 cpu's that I can't use unless I buy another board. I am concerned that after the supply of b450 boards are used up what are my options. For the record I did buy a cheap 450 board just to have as it will replace my dead Asus board.

I am hoping for some good 550 boards, and put new r9 in it, and reuse my x370 board. Then wait for ddr5 for a better upgrade. Granted my boards are nearing 3 year mark, and have served me good, but it seems the old addage of using one cpu per board is going to be normal for me.

But my hope of using these CPU's in a file server, or doing BOINC work might be hampered as I don't want to chase the rabbit hole, or through good money after oldish parts. I do hope that my x370 board will last a good long while maybe another 2 years.

With the cost of new motherboards going up, I feel a little quezy even spending 80 dollars on a board that will take gen 1 cpu's. Granted I could of got something for 30, but have a use case for wifi, so purchased a board with that option.

R81z3n1
 

ao_ika_red

Golden Member
Aug 11, 2016
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Used A320 board is cost to nothing. You can abuse it whatever you want with BOINC and it will probably still live for another year granted you still use stock (downdraft) cooler to help cooling its VRM.
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
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Sounds like you know your stuff, but I will ask anyways. Did you do this barebones, or put everything in the case? You updated to the latest AMD chipset drivers before flashing the bios? That is prerequisite sited by most manufacturers before flashing. Which method did you use to flash the bios? Did you try jumping the power pins with the 1600 installed and only 1 stick of ram? Did you try more than 1 PSU with that build? Because if you can get it to even power up, you can use the crashfree bios utility to recover the board. I have to say, I am a fan of the boards with bios flashback built in. Being able to flash it without installing hardware is sweet.

I do have a couple of boards that stop supporting Pinnacle, Raven, Summit and Bristol Ridge CPUs properly, if you update the bios past a certain version. Maybe that is the problem?
 

Muadib

Lifer
May 30, 2000
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As your board is still under 3 years old, I would get in touch with Asus, asap. Asus has a 3 year warranty on the PRIME X370-PRO. I don't know if that's your board, but I'd bet that the warranty is the same.
 

R81Z3N1

Member
Jul 15, 2017
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When I put in the r5 1600, board acted like it was not getting any power, but yet was working fine after the bios install, and even with the new CPU board came to life. Could see lights and even CPU Heat sink turned for a sec, unless I had a total PSU failure which is probably not what happened.

As far as warranty is concerned about 6 months ago I had a Silverstone front panel that housed two ssds, I wanted to swap out one of the ssds, turns out that it pulled out the usb 3.1 header block, only left the pins. So not only I lost the use of the front panel, but most likely voided the warranty as well. Board still worked but really liked the front panel, as it had extra usb, and micro card slots.

My ambient temperatures are high in summer it can get probably 30C -35C degrees in the room the system was in, no joke have 4 case fans, but outside of case would be hot to the touch. I would say temperatures would be 85F-95F this is with air on. It is located in an up stairs room. So getting 2 3/4 years out of it is not that bad.

Even if I water cooled the ambient might be too high for effective cooling, granted I am running BOINC 24/7, primegrid, and WCG, and TN which are taxing the GPU, and CPU at 100%. HWINfO64 was showing about 81C-85C CPU tdie temps. So board might of been thermal stressed, but never did see any throttling. I did overclock the first year, to like 3.8 this is on a r7 1700, but last 2 years just ran it stock. I was getting errors once in a while in primegrid, so decided to go with stock.

Now the system I am running with my new r9 3900x housed my r5 1600, which probably did not stress the system much if any. I was also running WCG, and then later primegrid. It would also get hot to the touch but housed 5 fans, and is now doing fine. With my 3900x, I am seeing temps while running WCG, and TN, at 87C-93C doing full load. In Boinc decided to restrict useage to 60% core but still seeing similar temps. This is with a Dark Rock 4 cooler, with fan in pull position. Yes I did reapply the thermal paste, and reset the cpu, these new CPU's are hot, but so was 1 gen, so not that worried.

I never imagined you would have to pull memory, and install new drivers before an upgrade. When I did the Asus board bios update, cleared bios defaults, ran update from USB stick, board finished rebooted and ran Windows like before no problems whatsoever. I did not update the new chipset drivers but know they were somewhat fresh. I usually have a linux distro on usb, that I can use, I could not get to bios kind of tells me it's not a driver issue. Otherwise I would use linux to verify things worked.

That is what I was thinking about, bet board would of still worked, if I did not do a cpu upgrade. I do follow some of the overclocking scene seems people have problems with this board, especial with current bios. We shall see how well my MSI does, it's also discontinued, its an X370 sli plus so who knows it acts like a champ and will probably go outside of warranty.

R81z3n1
 

ArisVer

Golden Member
Mar 6, 2011
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You updated to the latest AMD chipset drivers before flashing the bios? That is prerequisite sited by most manufacturers before flashing.

Where did you read that, give me a link. Flashing should have nothing to do with chipset drivers as they are installed in the OS.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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Where did you read that, give me a link. Flashing should have nothing to do with chipset drivers as they are installed in the OS.
I've seen it too, on certain mobo vendor sites, in the BIOS version listings. Some list a minimum chipset driver frevision before flashing that particular BIOS version.

Not sure how common this is, or hat actually happens if you don't heed the instructions.
 
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DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
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Where did you read that, give me a link. Flashing should have nothing to do with chipset drivers as they are installed in the OS.
You do know you can flash the UEFI/BIOS from windows right? Most OEM systems I work on update the firmware from their software that comes pre-installed on the system, or windows update, as well. Certainly not the preferred method since more can go wrong.

I am going to provide links, even though your post reads as confrontational and demanding. Chill out, everyone here is just trying to help each other.

I own 3 Asrock, 1 Gigabyte, ( I will link all of them) and 1 MSI AM4 board, and the MSI is the only one that did not specifically state it in the instructions. It is really for APUs that they ask you to do it first, but better safe than sorry imo. Also, my first gen B350 series board require you to install one or more bridge bios to get to the latest version. While that is not what you "asked" for, it may help someone else that lands here from a search. Because updating can fail if you try to skip the bridge bios necessary. I had to flash the B350 board I am linking 3 times before putting a 3600 in it.

https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/B450 Steel Legend/index.asp#BIOS

https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard/B450-AORUS-ELITE-rev-10/support#support-dl-bios

https://www.asrock.com/mb/amd/Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming K4/index.asp#BIOS

https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4/index.asp#BIOS
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
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When I put in the r5 1600, board acted like it was not getting any power, but yet was working fine after the bios install, and even with the new CPU board came to life. Could see lights and even CPU Heat sink turned for a sec, unless I had a total PSU failure which is probably not what happened.

R81z3n1
@R81Z3N1

If you have not tried it already, I would make a fresh USB with the BIOS you want installed, just in case something went wrong/corrupted on the last one. Put it in and power the board on. The crash free bios 3 is supposed to auto find it and start EZ Flash 3 https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1012219/
 

ArisVer

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Mar 6, 2011
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@ DAPUNISHER
Thanks for taking the time to answer and of course for the links (that I badly requested/demanded).
I was thinking of starting a thread about this, but what you said about flashing from within Windows makes sense (I still think flashing shouldn't have a problem if done at the BIOS level).
It gave me a chill when I read it, because the first thing I did when I got my new system was updating the BIOS and it's the first time I've read anything like this.
 
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