My recent experience with the new AMD 7000 series processors and related motherboards

[yamamoto2002]

On 7/27/2023 at 11:37 AM, AudioDoctor said:

I have an Asus X670E Pro Art because it has a 10GB port.

I chose AsRock Taichi X670E motherboard because it has two PCIe x8 slots and intel JHL8540 thunderbolt 4 controller which can connect eGPU

[AudioDoctor]

31 minutes ago, yamamoto2002 said:

I chose AsRock Taichi X670E motherboard because it has two PCIe x8 slots and intel JHL8540 thunderbolt 4 controller which can connect eGPU

 

I have always wondered, do the AMD boards with Thunderbolt have an Intel Thunderbolt controller somewhere on the board to accommodate the Thunderbolt ports?

 

In my case, ASUS is the brand I have all my PC experience with, so I gravitate towards their boards simply because it's what I know.

[lmitche]

Here some Reddit threads of others that have successfully booted AMD 7000 series with 4 sticks of DDR5 at 6000mhz.  These threads also include some bios settings that have works for others.

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/zy530w/comment/jjfqlld/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/yto6oy/filling_all_4_ram_slots_on_am5/

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/zy530w/getting_4_sticks_of_ddr5_6000_to_work_at_full/

[yamamoto2002]

On 7/30/2023 at 12:24 PM, AudioDoctor said:

I have always wondered, do the AMD boards with Thunderbolt have an Intel Thunderbolt controller somewhere on the board to accommodate the Thunderbolt ports?

Here I took the picture of Intel JHL8540 Thunderbolt4 controller chip on my AsRock Taichi X670E. The two USB-C ports are TB4

it is silkscreen printed as TB

 

This is from manual. Manual does not say it is Thunderbolt4 for unknown reasons.

[lmitche]

A Hdplex 500W GaN AIO(All-In-One) ATX Power Supply has just arrived. It will be interesting to hear how it sounds powering the AMD 7000 rig.

 

Stay tuned.

[yamamoto2002]

I've been using my PC for one month. There is a BIOS update and XMP training takes longer time. It takes a few minutes to show initial BIOS screen when XMP parameter is changed.

 

It seems my 2 sticks of DDR5-5600 memory is unstable with 5600MHz. Decided to disable XMP and set DRAM clock to 4800MHz. Since then the PC runs without troubles so far.

[lmitche]

On 8/14/2023 at 6:15 PM, yamamoto2002 said:

I've been using my PC for one month. There is a BIOS update and XMP training takes longer time. It takes a few minutes to show initial BIOS screen when XMP parameter is changed.

 

It seems my 2 sticks of DDR5-5600 memory is unstable with 5600MHz. Decided to disable XMP and set DRAM clock to 4800MHz. Since then the PC runs without troubles so far.

Did you look at the Reddit posts that were shared above?

 

Others have found the bios parameters that fix the long post issue and 4 stick problems.

[lmitche]

On 8/11/2023 at 10:38 AM, lmitche said:

A Hdplex 500W GaN AIO(All-In-One) ATX Power Supply has just arrived. It will be interesting to hear how it sounds powering the AMD 7000 rig.

 

Stay tuned.

 

OK, so the Hdplex 500W GaN AIO(All-In-One) ATX Power Supply break-in period is complete. After several long listening tests, as a starting point power supply for a new build, this solution is the best that I have found.

 

The blackground, imaging and spectral range all compare favorably to my Hdplex 300 watt supply powering a Hdplex 400 watt DC-ATX. Best yet the music is truly enjoyable with great pace and rhythm.

 

The only thing missing is a level of harmonic detail (AKA warmth) that adds a sense of cohesion and flow to the music, (some would say a liquid sound), delivered by the linear power supply.

 

Nevertheless, this is the best sounding SMPS ATX power supply ever heard here, and there have been dozens of others.

[Nenon]

8 hours ago, lmitche said:

OK, so the Hdplex 500W GaN AIO(All-In-One) ATX Power Supply break-in period is complete. After several long listening tests, as a starting point power supply for a new build, this solution is the best that I have found.

 

@lmitche did you have a chance to try a good quality ULPS (and well burned-in, as these things really need at least 4-5 months) with the Taiko DC to DC ATX? I guess not given the comment above. 

This is my golden standard for powering up an audio computer these days. I haven't seen anything coming even remotely close. 

 

Good to hear you like those AMDs. 

[lmitche]

12 hours ago, Nenon said:

 

@lmitche did you have a chance to try a good quality ULPS (and well burned-in, as these things really need at least 4-5 months) with the Taiko DC to DC ATX? I guess not given the comment above. 

This is my golden standard for powering up an audio computer these days. I haven't seen anything coming even remotely close. 

 

Good to hear you like those AMDs. 

@nenon To be clear, my experiment here was to find the best relatively inexpensive (<$200) power supply for someone starting from scratch. For some people, budgets mean that the cost of investing in a new music server will take some compromise. Rather than compromise on the server sound quality (SQ), many people prefer an inexpensive power supply to start. The goal is to purchase a music server that will later scale up in SQ once the funds for a better power supply are available.

 

 

Within this context, the Hdplex 500W GaN AIO(All-In-One) ATX Power Supply offers the best sounding low-cost solution tested here. My prior solution was OK, but no where near the musical performance possible with the new Hdplex AIO supply,

 

As to your question about my experience with the Taiko DX-ATX and ULPS. After much effort, including a ULPS rebuild, the AMD Ryzen 7000 builds will not boot with the Taiko supply powered with an ULPS. I do not know why.

 

• Intel builds boot with the Taiko/ULPS pair and sound better than any other power solution tested on Intel servers.
• AMD Ryzen 7000 builds will boot with an 800 watt Hdplex DC-ATX/ULPS and beats the SQ of the Intel servers with the Taiko/ULPS.

Unfortunately, there is no way to listen to the Taiko/ULPS pair and the AMD server.

 

If you know someone with a well burnt in Taiko DC-ATX/ULPS pair that can lend one, I will be happy to try again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Nenon]

On 8/24/2023 at 9:16 AM, lmitche said:

@nenon To be clear, my experiment here was to find the best relatively inexpensive (<$200) power supply for someone starting from scratch. For some people, budgets mean that the cost of investing in a new music server will take some compromise. Rather than compromise on the server sound quality (SQ), many people prefer an inexpensive power supply to start. The goal is to purchase a music server that will later scale up in SQ once the funds for a better power supply are available.

Yes, that makes perfect sense, and it's a good way to start indeed.

 

On 8/24/2023 at 9:16 AM, lmitche said:

AMD Ryzen 7000 builds will boot with an 800 watt Hdplex DC-ATX/ULPS and beats the SQ of the Intel servers with the Taiko/ULPS.

This is interesting. So the Ryzen 7700 boots with the ULPS+HDPlex800 ATX but it does not boot with the same ULPS+Taiko ATX? One could easily make an assumption that the Taiko ATX is not able to handle the load, but I think it's the other way around.

 

If a computer can't boot with a specific power supply, this is 99.99% of the time related to the 12V EPS rail. 

- The Taiko 12V rail is spec-ed at 45A (540W) and can handle 80A peaks (960W).

- The HDPlex800 12V rail is spec-ed at 60A (720W) and can handle 90A peaks (1080W).

- Technically, the bottleneck on both is the Molex connector pins. Those are spec-ed at 5A. With 8 positive pins across the 2 x 8-pin EPS connectors, we are actually limited to 40A (480W). 

In the context of a 95W TDP CPU, none of the above limits are relevant. A 95W TDP CPU can peak at 200-300-400W for a short period of time at boot, but with nearly 1000W peak capabilities on both of these ATX, that can't be a problem. 

 

So what else might be going on? The HDPlex accepts 12V-63V DC input. The Taiko accepts 16V-48V DC / optimal 19V-35V DC (much narrower range). Also, the Taiko has a very aggressive and sensitive protection. I managed to kill the first prototype within hours, so Taiko dialed-in the protection to be quite aggressive, so it can protect the sensitive GaNfets. The downside of this is that as soon you drop under 16V even for a fraction of a second it turns off automatically. That's not easy to catch with a standard voltmeter/multimeter. My guess is this is what is happening in your case. You need to use a quite size-able transformer and inductors in the ULPS, so the voltage does not drop too much at peaks. Maxing out the voltage output also helps. 

With the Taiko, you might be down to just around 16V for a fraction of a second, and the power supply will turn off. With the HDPlex you can go down all the way to 12V (which I doubt it happens).

 

The bottom line is that a well designed and sized ULPS should work fine with the the AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs (with the Taiko ATX that is).

Just to be clear - I don't build custom ULPS, so that's not the reason I promote this solution. I have zero financial benefit here. I've published everything I know for DIY, so people can enjoy a state of the art power supply. 

There are people in the "Building an Unregulated Linear Power Supply" thread who might be willing to help if you are interested to explore a cost no object solution or perhaps someone may offer a well burned-in LPS. 

 

Drop a line there if you are interested. 

Hope that helps. And I totally get your point about the affordable start with options to upgrade down the road. HDPlex will be my go to for that as well. 

[RGBK]

On 7/19/2023 at 5:46 PM, lmitche said:

using a b650 motherboard with 4 sticks of 16 gb DDR5 memory running at 6000mhz

Can I ask if that possibly happens to be the Asus ROG Strix B650E-E?

(That MB seems have if not top so at least ok power handling for being B650E, and have 3 (PCIe 5.0) direct to CPU connections/lanes from the CPU. 2 PCIe, 1 M.2)

[lmitche]

On 8/26/2023 at 2:26 PM, RGBK said:

Can I ask if that possibly happens to be the Asus ROG Strix B650E-E?

(That MB seems have if not top so at least ok power handling for being B650E, and have 3 (PCIe 5.0) direct to CPU connections/lanes from the CPU. 2 PCIe, 1 M.2)

I have zero experience with a B650E-E motherboard. Nevertheless, once booted, power draw rarely exceeds 40 watts during music playback unless you are upsampling with Hqplayer,.

[RGBK]

Thanks Larry, but my question was really about which specific Asus MB that actually could run 4 pieces of ddr5 at 6000MHz?

 

My comments within parenthesis was just my thoughts on a specific MBs power handeling and direct to CPU PCIe communication. I am aware that all 650 MBs can handle 65W TDP CPUs.

 

Best regards RGB

[lmitche]

On 8/31/2023 at 6:18 AM, RGBK said:

Thanks Larry, but my question was really about which specific Asus MB that actually could run 4 pieces of ddr5 at 6000MHz?

 

My comments within parenthesis was just my thoughts on a specific MBs power handeling and direct to CPU PCIe communication. I am aware that all 650 MBs can handle 65W TDP CPUs.

 

Best regards RGB

My point was merely that I have no experience with B650E motherboards. I expect any B650 motherboard will run 4 pieces of DDR5 at 6000mhz. My only other experience is with X670E motherboards which failed to run at 6000mhz.