NEVER buy Gigabyte motherboards for overclocking

[BPoil]

Same ram kit, 3 Mini ITX motherboards.

Asus Z390 - full stable at 4000 Mhz 18-22-22, unstable at 4133 same timings (1.48v).

Gigabyte Z390 - No boot at 3400 CL16, and fast errors / crashes at 3300 CL16 (1.45v)

Asus Z490 - full stable at 4133 Mhz 17-22-22 1.5v:

https://i.imgur.com/KGTm26R.png

Also approx 10 loops stable at 4200 Mhz 17-22-22.


Also ....

Asus Z390 - 5.3 Ghz at 1.34v on my 9700K.

Gigabyte Z390 - same voltage for 5.2 Ghz with instabiliy.

The Asus boards also have 8 + 2 VRMs, 8 for the CPU, 2 for ram, and memory testing software only detects two DRAM slots.

Gigaybe only had 6+1 VRMs, and memory software detects 4 DIMM slots on a 2 slot board, which I highly suspect to be the problem with why it cant overclock ram, yet the board was falseley advertised as supporting up to 4400+ MHz ram.

This is why I will never again buy non Asus boards, at least other than the Asrock Fatality ones I do not see Gigabyte or MSI making as good mini ITX boards. Even if they say they support 5000 Mhz ram or some such, they actually wont.

[emoticorpse]

I thought that was overclocking 101?

[BPoil]

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

I thought that was overclocking 101?

I've had people keep on defending Gigabyte boards and claiming that the problem was that I didnt know how to overclock.

Whatever overclock anyone does manage on a Gigabyte board, Asus will do it better or the same with less voltage / tighter timings for ram.

[emoticorpse]

Originally posted by BPoil:

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

I thought that was overclocking 101?

I've had people keep on defending Gigabyte boards and claiming that the problem was that I didnt know how to overclock.

Whatever overclock anyone does manage on a Gigabyte board, Asus will do it better or the same with less voltage / tighter timings for ram.

Were those people on this forum?

[BPoil]

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Originally posted by BPoil:

I've had people keep on defending Gigabyte boards and claiming that the problem was that I didnt know how to overclock.

Whatever overclock anyone does manage on a Gigabyte board, Asus will do it better or the same with less voltage / tighter timings for ram.

Were those people on this forum?

Yes.

[emoticorpse]

Originally posted by BPoil:

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Were those people on this forum?

Yes.

Remember who they are so you don't listen to them again. Would help you out unless you want to get wrong answers again.

[xSOSxHawkens]

First - No models listed, obviously different VRM qualities, likely different price ranges, thus apples to oranges comparison.

Second - Have a few pretty high end OC's on Gigabyte boards that would like to have a talk with you, though admitadly nothing personal recently as I have been on MSi for awhile. But one of the best specifically was the GA-EP45T-UD3P which I used to push a 2.66Ghz/1066Mhz Q6700 to 3.6Ghz/1866Mhz back in the day on a Hyper 212.

Third - A number of high end system builders, as well as a few tech youtubers, seem to trust the upper teir modern Gigabyte boards quite allot for their overclock testing on both Intel and AMD. I consistently see things like the Aurorus line being used just as often, and to just as good an ability, as the likes of upper end Asus, Asrock, and MSi boards. The ROG/Aurorus/Taichi/ACE are all common boards to see high end overclockers use and few seem to have the issues you are having, unless they are using lower end boards in which case the issues affect all brands realitively equally.

To me this seems like a case of ocmparing a lower end gigabyte board to a couple better offerings from Asus and then making the captain obvious statement that the Asus ones are better, but phrasing it as gigabyte is bad...

Bring me a valid comparison between the same chipset, with two boards build with the same (or nearly identical) VRM sollutions. Lets look at a pair of Z390 boards, both with the same physical and detected RAM slot configs, both with similar RAM trace lenghts (eg ATX vs ITX), same VRM config (both 6+2, or both 8+2, etc), with the litteral *only* difference being the name on the board.

If, at that point, the gigabyte board fails, then sure, it sucks. Same for any brand. But chances are much higher that the differences will be within margin of error and non-applicable to real world performance. Till then you are making a pretty invalid comparison.

[xSOSxHawkens]

All that said, the one place Gigabyte boards have known issues (in terms of their modern high end) is indeed running super fast RAM (such as your kit). This is because, at least to my understanding, they have currently focussed their memory designs on better support for 4 stick configurations over support for high speed configuration.

Running 4 sticks with stablity has always been an issue, and for *that* purpose their boards do seem to excel past many others in terms of stablity, but that comes at a direct expense to speed due to design choices, again, at least form what I have read.

[UserNotFound]

RAM support has been improving on GB boards, though I'm using a high end X570 Aorus Xtreme. XPG D60H 4x 3200CL16 ran just fine, so did 2x 3733CL18 Patriot Viper Steel, but was pretty unstable with 2x Patriot ViperRGB 3600CL17, it was unstable after a couple of BIOS updates. But, the last BIOS update I'd tried (F12e) got the ViperRGB to run just fine. I'd prolly be getting a B550 board when the Ryzen 4000 series is released, gonna popped my 3900X into it and use my X570 for the new Zen 3 chip....

[Mad Scientist]

Let me show you why they're right in regard to what you say here:

Originally posted by BPoil:

I've had people keep on defending Gigabyte boards and claiming that the problem was that I didnt know how to overclock.

Originally posted by BPoil:

Same ram kit, 3 Mini ITX motherboards.

You don't typically buy mITX boards for overclocking, you buy ATX/E-ATX boards with more VRMs and of higher quality, stronger chipsets, better caps etc.

Yeah, I'd say gigabyte is fine since you're using mITX instead of a more dedicated motherboard for the entire purpose of easily overclocking with more stability.