MSI B350 Tomahawk Review & Linux Test | Level One Techs

Level1Techs
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I can only recommend this motherboard for limited overclocking and Linux use cases; Linux is fine, but you seem to only be able to run one GPU. Software/UEFI updates will resolve this.

Otherwise this is a value-oriented board. With the Ryzen 7 1700 or Ryzen 5 series CPU, it would be a good fit for a budget system.

It would be the perfect home server board with ECC support!


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://level1techs.com/video/msi-b350-tomahawk-review-linux-test
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@wendell Nice video.

Have you discussed with MSI engineers about fixing the ACS issues so we can get better IOMMU groups in MSI boards?

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yep

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Cool, how did they respond in regards to giving this issue priority? Were they willing to fix it as the Gigabyte engineers?

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yeah, there was no iommu option (disabled) in uefi before I asked for it. So thats good, but its low on the priority list. Given the iommu situation is identical on every board I've looked at, I think we're waiting on AMD.

It has been about a month, I pung them recently, still waiting for info. I'll just have to visit them in texas if I dont hear back soon :smiley:

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Damn, just before seeing this video, I had actually decided on getting a Tomahawk for a Ryzen 1700 build with an R9 380X I have, which I later want to upgrade with Vega and then use for PCIe passthrough with those two GPUs. But this sounds like that wouldn't be possible.

@wendell Do you think the passthrough situation will improve over what they gave you or should I reconsider an X370 board?

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@wendell : Nice Geiger counter - Office of Civil Defense; or obsessive compulsive, or even over-clocked, take your pick from the shelf.

When you make that field trip to AMD perhaps we can give them some poll data on the use of VM's and hardware passthrough on the desktop. I almost never game but I do need AutoCAD, that is until Dessault Systems brings Linux support fully compliant to BIM industry standards, as one business application that requires GPU passthrough. Dual booting is ridiculous. I intend to view Windows as merely an API to be used only when necessary because, reasons ...

Perhaps this will not be an issue with Naples? If so then I would go with a server build. Server builds for CAD layers on other issues however.

I know I am a data point of one here but I feel AMD has an opprtunity window now with many factors at play. Intel has some vulnerability in the server space, Apple has forgotten that there is a desktop, the real profit magins for GPU's are in deep learning and whoever you can convince that augmented reality is "ready", Microsoft is going more big blue than Big Blue IBM, and AMD needs cash- BIG TIME.

AMD needs Ryzen to be as versitile as possible. I think we know that hardware passthrough is a critical piece of infrastructure that allows for that flexibility that makes adoption and expansion assured.

Great coverage as always ... Cheers!

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Radian GPUs. Lol.

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it'll probably be fine with updated uefi.
The "best" situation on ryzen is having the host gpu on the pch.. now if only we gould get the uefi to init pch graphics first.. hmmm :smiley:

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Anybody know where the Ryzen memory compatible thread is

I am running 2x 1700's both on MSI tomahawks
I am running fine with G.SKILL F4-3200C14D-16GTZ Trident Z Series @ 3200 14 14 14 34 1t

latest official 1.03 bios

Oh how rude thx for the Vid :slight_smile:

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Nice video!

I've one Tomahawk running ¿almost? fine with the R7 1700 in my dual booting workstation. Just some issues with Dual Rank memory not reaching 3200 MT/s (but running fine at 2666 MT/s) and some Windows intermittent performance issues. Had to install kernel 4.10, as expected, for Ryzen support in Ubuntu. I'm using UEFI/BIOS 1.41 beta, BTW.

I've not noticed any abnormal temps in the VRMs, but I'm running stock clocks in the 1700, and even if I've an aftermarket tower cooler, I've a good airflow setup in my case. The 1700 goes to 3750 single core/3200 all core turbo with no problems at all.

Cheers!

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what voltage at that overclock? that's a good overclock on the 1700 if the voltage is reasonable.

Did you have any trouble with AMD's GPIO driver and/or do you know if it is enabled in your kernel?

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I have the 1700 and the b350 tomahawk running at 4ghz with 1.3625 volts, I backed it down to 3.925mhz with 1.35 volts for everyday running completely stable. At 4ghz I run into a little instability which I believe can be fixed with a little more voltage but it's probably not worth it to me, but it's benchmark stable at 4ghz for the bragging rights.

I have some cheap 3000mhz ram which I can only get to 2666mhz so far. But overall the board has been solid for me. Had some install issues with the 1.0 bios, but it was fixed in one of the first betas that came out.

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8:20 4.8GHz? that's impressive :stuck_out_tongue:

Interesting review, not my kind of Board though I think.

I'm really missing a B350 that's got more power-phases... The power phases seem to all be reserved to the X370 boards, even though the B350 is also supposed to be for overclocking :confused: hitting 3.9 on this is nice and all, but I'm not sure I'd be willing to run this for a few years...

The most Phases I can find are on the ASRock AB350 Pro4 and on the ASRock AB350 Gaming K4 with 9 phases. Which is nice, but those boards are kinda ugly (red doesn't really fit a theme I'd want to build and the white stripe is kinda.. ew.

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level1tech-000-msib350tomahawkheatsink.png1680x1050 1.37 MB

Look at the massive heat sink?

Has AMD given any hint as to whether there will be a processor on par with about a 1600 that also has graphics built in? If they were to build such a processor, does it have a market? I'm trying to learn why MSi bothered with the display/graphics ports...

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AM4 will include APUs, so not including the option for graphics output will mean they can't be used with the APUs. So if you have this board you could swap an APU into it in the future and pick up a later revision of a motherboard with possibly better support or whatever. As far as I've seen all the b350 boards have the graphics options. I know the MSI Titanium x370 board and the Gigabyte Gaming 5 do as well, the Taichi and Crosshair vi hero do not. Guess it depends on the manufacturer if they include it on the x370s.

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Because it's easier putting one on now then making a completely new model once the APUs hit the market.

Doesn't matter how powerful the APUs will be, it's just easier having less SKUs.

Well, technically they could, but you'd have to put in a dedicated graphics card which kinda defeats the purpose.

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Hey guys,

your Youtube video brought me here. I recently purchased the MSI B350 Tomahawk along with a Ryzen 1700 and 4x8GB Corsair LPX rated "3200Mhz 16-18-18-36" (<- what's on the box). PSU is a Corsair AX760 Platinum, GPU is a Zotac 1080 AMP! BIOS is up-to-date.

I really got some trouble and stability issues with that combo, hope this is the right place to ask. Neither Reddit nor the official MSI support was able to help me.

I overclocked the Ryzen to 3.8Ghz at 1.275V and the memory to 2667Mhz at 1.340V, 14-16-16-34, CPU NB Voltage 1.085V.

The machine runs totally awesome, it's been prime-stable for 8h, Blender CPU rendering stable for 6h, rest of the time 4k gaming, zero issues.

Here's the problem:
On each reboot the machine turns off, then on for 0.5s, then off again, on again -> then boots without issues*.

Sometimes, pretty randomly, it's worse: Turn on -> off -> on -> off -> on and BIOS shows auto-reset message, I need to enter the BIOS again and load my OC settings. After that on-off thingy the machine runs fine as described before.

*(To clarify, it doesn't reset any of my OC settings after that on-off procedure, like it would if you entered arbitrary values that just don't work.)

After a few days of trial & error I kinda "solved" the issue by relaxing the timing to 22-22-22-38 and increasing all voltages. This is kinda sad cause all components run at much better values except for the on-off issue.

Second problem:
Sometimes I boot into Windows 10 and HWMonitor shows only 2-4 (it's pretty random) cores overclocked to 3.8Ghz while the rest of the cores is at 3.2Ghz. (?)

I already re-seated all components, unplugged external hardware, changed the BIOS battery, tried running with only 2 of my 4 memory sticks etc.

Anybody has a clue what's going on?

Thanks,
Manuel.

EDIT: MSI's answer to all these problems was basically "Erm yeah... we're still working on it.."

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@wendell
I noticed that MSI made a big deal out of advertising AMD Crossfire support, and that you also made a point of discussing this in your video.
Based on MSI's advertisement for Crossfire support, I came literally came from within an inch of purchasing this product as my cursor was an inch from the Buy button. What stopped me was an incoming post explaining that Crossfire on the B350 is split between the CPU and the Southbridge chipset, and also runs both slots at only PCI-E x4 lane speeds.
Is this correct?

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Main slot is always x16. Depending on mobo, the crossfire slot has to be pcie2 x4 off the PCh or pcie3 x4 off the nvme lanes.

If you crossfire with 2 480s an x370 may be better