having ran the MSI B450 Tomahawk Max for a couple of years with the cheapest chip that wasn’t a series 1 or an APU at the time, i thought it would be nice to get something more serious for a bit of longevity out of the system now that AM4 is in it’s twilight years. Just done the latest bios update pre install and the PC is telling me windows 11 upgrade is available. Has anyone done this Hardware upgrade and know of any issues to look out for?
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let me know how that works out for you. I have the same board and think it’s truly the weak link in my setup using a Ryzen 3600, but I have nothing to test that theory with. I want to upgrade my CPU, but I’m bothered that craptastic power delivery system will hinder any future performance.
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Will do. I’ll be doing it at the weekend at some point. The motherboard gotta come out too. Got a ‘be quiet TF 2’ cooler rated to 230W TDP for plenty of VRM cooling with twin 135mm fans blowing straight onto the MB
VRM’s aren’t usually an issue with those chips unless you’re attempting high oc’s. I think that fan assembly may be slightly overkill, especially if it’s blowing DOWN to the motherboard, that has been shown to be typically weaker cooling than typical cooling up blowing the heat up and away from the source.
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I think it should work ok as at the rear of the case I have a 140 mm fan exhausting rearwards and a 140mm fan exhausting upwards near by where the CPU cooler is, and 2x 140mm fans at the front of the case pulling air in. I’m not after overclocking the 5900X either, but it would be nice if the ‘gaming OC’ setting on the B450 can be left enabled without issues.
I don’t even know what that setting does and I have the same board, there’s no real documentation on WHAT it is supposed to do. I just use PBO.
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Well I guess it will be interesting to see how a cooler that cost almost as much as the MB will perform. I strictly wanted not water cooling, AIO or otherwise lol
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Anyone know if the OG B450 Tomahawk (I.e., not the Max) will get a BIOS update with the latest AGESA? I know it’s a long shot but it’d still be nice.
OK, Chip is in, That heatsink was a pig to install, had to put my 2 memory modules as close to it as possible too as i got another pair on the way and there was no way they will get in the slots nearest the CPU. Enough clearance once they are in though, but the heatsink/Fan arrangement has to be kinda disassembled to get them in. running damn cool so far, but memory not at an ideal speed yet. Ran Cinema Bench R15 and R20 just out of curiosity.
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picture of that beast installed?
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Damn that this is barely clearing that upper fan and you can’t even see the RAM, tbh it kinda looks good not seeing RAM sticks just sitting there like pimples on a motherboard.
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Not a bad improvement from the 2600X with memory in wrong slots currently. cores boosting to 4.8-4.9ghz nicely
Sorry dude, no clue as i don’t have that board, best place to check will be the MSI site and see what bios updates they got on there
All Memory now installed. 32Gb (4x8 sticks) of patriot viper 4000. Running at 3733Mhz, CL16. It was running at 3600Mhz CL14 but got the occasional blue screen of death. Infinity fabric running happily at 1866Mhz (it didn’t like 1900 Mhz with memory at 3800 Mhz CL18). The Tomahawk Max B450 seems perfectly capable of getting the most out of a 5900X. The limiting factor seems to be the memory, in hindsight I would have originally got the 4400 Patriot memory, but happy with the end result.
I forgot to ask earlier, is the the 1st version TomMax or the V2 that recently came out?
It’s the first version of the max.
