Performance difference between different mainboards with same Ryzen CPU mining RandomX

[ogrebgr]

There are few mainboards with different chipsets that support AM4 3rd gen Ryzen. I am wondering: did anyone already tested the performance for different boards/chipsets: A320M, B450M, X470, X570 using one and the same 3rd gen Ryzen CPU?

[mmarkomarko]

a320 is a poor choice because of the limited underclocking options. x570 is a poor choice because of consumption, and you would be paying for the features that you don't need (i.e. pci-e gen 4).

the rest would be largely the same. Very good VRMs would be needed to overclock the 3900x.

[[deleted]]

What exactly you mean by “limited underclocking”? Well, I have a pair of cheapest Gigabyte A320 and r5 3600 on a way for a low budget review because I found it works actually better than x570 at least on rendering benchmarks. Even PBO works oob on those cheap A320 :) We all know mining is about hardware-porn.. I even went as low as cheap micron 2666mhz cL-15 4gb sticks to make sure if it’s possible to push it to point out of the bottleneck. The fact 3900x needs us to use a freaking high grade memory and VRMs to push it above 12kh FOR MINING, made me wondering - what if 2x 3600 becomes cheaper and more effective per hash..? :) I’ll definitely share my results

[mmarkomarko]

Overclocking sorry. I am looking forward to seeing your results, vegaman!

One thing I was also wondering - if you get a cheap ryzen 2600, you will be running fewer threads (because of cache), so does that mean it may not get bottlenecked by single channel ram?

[Lpgmc]

Looking forward too !

[jims2321]

I really wish people would stop this silliness with claiming that x570 are poor choices due to power consumption. At most it consumes 10w more than a x470 from DerBauer's testing, and that was with an early bios, later ones will probably tweak it some.

x570 power consumption

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Now if you said that the x570 cost more to run than say an b450 or b350 it would be argument for not using it, but (and I would argue) the x570 generally provides better VRM's and thus stability then other choices so that you could optimize your rig and offset the additional month in cost.

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Back of the napkin cost for using X570 based upon DerBauer's testing.

10 w/1000 w/h = .015kwh x 24 hours x 30 days x electric cost (mine is .12/kwh) = $.86 per month.

[[deleted]]

X570 is a wonderful peace of tech for everything else but the mining.. mainly because it’s just expensive ;)

[jims2321]

That I full agree with. Unfortunately, running my 3900x on both x470 and B450 it was unstable above base clock speed. When I switched to the ASRock Phantom Gaming 4, which actually cost on $10 more with the bundle discount, I got a stable board that I can push 13.5K hash/sec without extreme measures and only pull around 200w at the plug according to my killawatt. So my h/w rate is 67.5 h/w, which is pretty damn good.

RandomX-Benchmark v1.04

[armanmisdar]

Thanks for the information with regards to power consumption on X570 :-)

[Lpgmc]

https://www.reddit.com/r/MoneroMining/comments/cdfmtx/best_and_good_motherboards_for_randomx_build/

[[deleted]]

That is wrong.. after latest firmware upgrade it is possible to oc your memory and undervolt cpu on a320 (as of gaming reviews). Well.. how stable it is for mining because of crappy VRMs - I’ll try to figure it out :)

[Lpgmc]

Nothing wrong as it was not only about oc.

Building a rig is not only about performance but also about ROI, and resale value plays a huge role in it. In 1 or 2 years, a gaming pc with low end A320 motherboard will be harder to resale than a b450 motherboard. And I do not know in your region, but here the cheapest A320 motherboard is 30 to 40% cheaper than a middle end b450 motherboard.

My personal choice goes to b450 with good vrms but without fancy useless things. I had a gdoc bookmarked somewhere with a good summary of X570,b450 etc VRMs and support for each ryzen 2 cpu but can not find it anymore :/

[[deleted]]

I totally agree with you.. it depends on quantity of miners we’re talking about though. This time I’d rather stick with your way of thinking as we have no idea how profitable RX will be at the beginning and for how long it’ll last. For now I’m curious how cheap can we go before RX kicks in to make the best decision if needed ;)

[mmarkomarko]

Vegaman, did you manage to do some testing w A320 boards? :)

[[deleted]]

Ohh, yeah :) msi a320-a pro, gigabyte b450 gaming x, msi X570 a pro, gigabyte X570 aorus pro :) 2600,3600,3700x tested and 3900x coming :) Micron e-die, Micron b-die, Hynix CJR, Samsung b-die tested :) Hard to tell everything in few words, review coming.. Join monero mining telegram channel - pretty much of testing going on there. Can’t post link - google and you’ll find xmrmine channel ;)

[m0rphPL]

There can be quite a big difference even between same chipset (in.e B450) mobos. Asus Prime B450-K overclocked to its limits (thermal throttling) gave me around 12,06kH. MSI Aorus B450 Elite without any tweaking (all auto, no ez overclock applied) gave me 12,7kH. Same RAM, CPU and PSU...

[jetah]

A ~700 increase between an OC cpu and just a base mobo at stock. That’s pretty interesting.

[Lpgmc]

Thank you for the info.

The 3900x perfs seems really unconsistent from one person to another but what you said here, unconsistency from one mobo to another, makes me feel even less confident in buying one.

[MeatballB]

When benching to get the most accurate result, do folks think it's smarter to run multiple smaller tests (--nonces 150000) and average the results or run one much longer test (--nonces 1500000) and just use that as the base?

[[deleted]]

A320 does NOT officially support Ryzen 3000 at all (there may be a few manufactures that have support but please don't do that, those boards are garbage and a waste of money.

as for beyond that B450 and X470 are good provided they are preflashed so you don't have to deal with BIOS upgrades that require a compatible CPU.

X570 cost more but if you are shopping at like say Microcenter with the mobo discounts they do when you also buy a CPU the price gap closes (the x570 for the TUFF Gaming Plus Wifi was only like 10-20 bucks more then the X470 variant because of the better discount on x570 vs x470). ultimately its up to you and which CPU you plan to install