Question Will "poor VRMs" affect Ryzen 7 7800X3D performance? (not overclocking)

[King Mustard]

I am looking for an affordable microATX motherboard to go with my Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, Arctic Liquid Freezer II 240 and RTX 3080.

As of today, these are currently the cheapest AM5 microATX motherboards in the UK:



I bought the Gigabyte B650M K (top one in the table) for £100 on special a few days ago but have since watched Hardware Unboxed, who said the VRMs were "poor".

In reality, will the VRMs cause me any issues? I will not be overclocking the 7800X3D.

I will pay an extra 29% to get better VRMs if needed, for example, but it is obviously pointless if I will not notice a difference in performance.

 

[Tech Junky]

It's all relative to how you'll use the system. If you're not pushing it hard with gaming 24/7 it should be fine or you would see a ton of bad reviews on places like Amazon or NewEgg.

The biggest issue though recently was with the X3D chips melting due to uncapped voltage in the UEFI which seems to have been resolved with the most recent updates by each OEM.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Had an Asrock B420 board with garbage tier VRMs and it wasn't capable of running a newer Zen 3 processor with XMP memory at the same time, would hard reboot after a few minutes thanks to VRMs overheating.

Not saying you'll have that issue, but poor VRMs can definitely cause instability when the system is pushed or reduce the overall effective lifespan of the system by burning out over time.

 

[bba-tcg]

In that list, I would definitely pick the MSI PRO B650M-P.

 

[coercitiv]

I bought the Gigabyte B650M K (top one in the table) for £100 on special a few days ago but have since watched Hardware Unboxed, who said the VRMs were "poor".

In reality, will the VRMs cause me any issues? I will not be overclocking the 7800X3D.

I will pay an extra 29% to get better VRMs if needed, for example, but it is obviously pointless if I will not notice a difference in performance.

Speaking strictly of VRM thermals, and doing so based on the Hardware Unboxed results, the board you bought should handle the 7800X3D since HW obtained 93C backside board temp while running Cinebench on 7950X, a CPU with 50W higher TDP. The 7800XD will consume significantly less power than 7950X under Cinebench, and then significantly less power than under Cinebench when running your usual workloads (which are probably games).

As long as you won't be using the computer in a very hot room (think 30C+ ambient temps) and will make sure the case is properly ventilated, you should be more than fine. Last but not least, the heat from a powerful graphics card (200W+) may eat into the safety margins I have described above depending on your case airflow, so it's important to scale the number of case fans depending on your complete build.

 

[Iron Woode]

I am looking for an affordable microATX motherboard to go with my Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, Arctic Liquid Freezer II 240 and RTX 3080.

As of today, these are currently the cheapest AM5 microATX motherboards in the UK:

View attachment 85226

I bought the Gigabyte B650M K (top one in the table) for £100 on special a few days ago but have since watched Hardware Unboxed, who said the VRMs were "poor".

In reality, will the VRMs cause me any issues? I will not be overclocking the 7800X3D.

I will pay an extra 29% to get better VRMs if needed, for example, but it is obviously pointless if I will not notice a difference in performance.

out of all of those boards, the Asrock B650m Pro RS and the Asrock B650m PG Riptide and the Gigabyte B650m DS3H are probably the best over all boards.

EDIT: The Riptide comes with a BIOS 70C cpu limit. Remove it to get full performance.

For a Hardware Unboxed review of most of those boards listed as of February 2023:

 

[Shmee]

Those seem expensive for B650 boards. I paid about $105 for my B350M Gaming 3 board from gigabyte, and that's USD, not pounds. Now this was at Ryzen launch, but it runs my 5900X and 4x8GB for DDR4 3200 just fine today. Are the newest generation boards this much more? (AM5 and Socket 1700)

 

[Tech Junky]

Are the newest generation boards this much more? (AM5 and Socket 1700)

It's similar to ADL/RPL at launch. Prices have come down though for the x670e to around $200-250 for mid tier options.

For instance when ADL launched my board was around $250 and now about $170 but have seen It as low as $135.

I've been toying with the idea of switching to AMD for storage advantages and digging in deeper to the ecosystem more. Zen 5 looks like the ADL switch when it comes to the igpu as well with enhanced cores for better performance.

Pricing though with this stuff is all about market timing. As also it's more finicky with UEFI quirks being worked out as well for the platform.