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Welch
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ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:46 pm

Anyone using this board?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... -_-Product

It looks to be a decent sale, quality, series, ect. Thinking of pairing it with one of a few chips. 1600x - 1700 or 1800x. I've got a 240mm Cooler Master Lite CLC to attach to the CPU, so the WRaith fan from factory isn't a must or even wanted at this point.
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Fri Jan 12, 2018 9:07 pm

I've gone back to micro-ATX. Do you like the TUF B350M-Plus Gaming, the GA-AB350M-Gaming 3 or the B350M Mortar? What are they lacking that you really like about the RoG Strix B350-F Gaming?

Edit: Corrected the link to the Gigabyte board. Motherboard names are getting harder and harder to decypher.
Last edited by JustAnEngineer on Fri Jan 12, 2018 9:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Welch
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Fri Jan 12, 2018 9:21 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
I've gone back to micro-ATX. Do you like the TUF B350M-Plus Gaming, the GA-AB350-Gaming 3 or the B350M Mortar? What are they lacking that you really like about the RoG Strix B350-F Gaming?



Nothing specific, I'll have to look at those. I did build a few systems based on different MSI and Gigabyte boards for customers. Just looking for myself to see if I can get a long term board that won't have me wanting 3-4+ years down the road. It's either go premium B350 and pay the extra 30-40 bucks or save that cash and get a mid grade B350 to later sell or pass down to the wife.... or just be happy with the mid grade option.


Looking at those boards really fast I'd have to say the Strix has a lot to offer for about $10 difference, except the MSI Mortar which is on sale for $69.... worth a serious look. The Strix has an Intel NIC, what looks to be higher quality Audio and all of the software that goes along with it, not sure how well that stuff actually works... but it's there. It's their higher end series, So I'd hope it means the support for BIOS revisions would be more than their main stream offerings. If i'm reading it right, there Strix also has 2 x PCIe 3.0 ports, both running 16x. It looks like for crossfire like all other decent B350 would run in 8x/4x mode. I'm not likely to Crossfire but it would be a nice possibility. It does state that both of these slots are direct to chip, not PCH... so that is something to consider. It comes with an additional 16x slot at the bottom for when I'd assume the 2.5GB/s or 5GB/s NICs take off, which I guess would make the internal 1GB/s Intel NIC somewhat moot. Also have 4+4 phase VRM whereas it looks like most other B350 boards are 4+2.

Oh... and RGB :lol:
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

1600x | Strix B350-F | CM 240 Lite | 16GB 3200 | RX 580 8GB | 970 EVO | Corsair 400R | Seasonic X 850 | Corsair M95 / K90 | Sennheiser PC37x
 
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:23 am

At first glance it looks like a decent board to me. If I was building a Ryzen rig today I'd probably consider it.

OTOH, like JAE, I'd also consider going (back) to micro-ATX. I had switched to micro-ATX back in the Socket AM2+ generation, but went back to full ATX when AM3+ hit due to the severe lack of decent micro-ATX AM3+ offerings.
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Welch
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sat Jan 13, 2018 9:05 pm

just brew it! wrote:
At first glance it looks like a decent board to me. If I was building a Ryzen rig today I'd probably consider it.

OTOH, like JAE, I'd also consider going (back) to micro-ATX. I had switched to micro-ATX back in the Socket AM2+ generation, but went back to full ATX when AM3+ hit due to the severe lack of decent micro-ATX AM3+ offerings.


I pulled the trigger on that Strix + and a 1600x. $334.98 for both of them. $219 for the CPU and $109 for the motherboard. There was a $15 discount for them as a combo and a $20 MIR on the CPU. I think I'll be happy with that setup. I didn't want to go with the 1600 as it was only $15 difference I wanted the higher bin and stock clocks higher + XFR. Can always overclock later down the road. Didn't go 1700 because much lower clocks and don't want the hassle of OCing a chip that isn't amazingly overclockable. Considered the 1800x but I couldn't justify the price difference for 2 more physical cores. Already getting 3 times the thread count over my 2500k.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
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1600x | Strix B350-F | CM 240 Lite | 16GB 3200 | RX 580 8GB | 970 EVO | Corsair 400R | Seasonic X 850 | Corsair M95 / K90 | Sennheiser PC37x
 
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sat Jan 13, 2018 10:39 pm

I'm supposedly getting a windfall soon. If it happens, I'd like to buy that board to get my system back in shape.

If it doesn't, I'll just finally RMA my Gigabyte. It worked well enough for a while.

I could technically do it now, just been a bit preoccupied with my Xbox One X and my brother skiing off into the next world. Heh :p

That said, for my usage full ATX makes no sense. I use...the GPU slot. Hell, I should be considering using ITX.
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Welch
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sun Jan 14, 2018 12:18 am

I'm going to be reusing my Corsair 400r case so it wouldn't matter to me if a board was ATX or mATX. If me getting an ATX board means they have more room to put higher quality components on the board or they don't cut corners with the number of headers, ect... Then I'll take the ATX board for sure.

What about skiing into another world?
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

1600x | Strix B350-F | CM 240 Lite | 16GB 3200 | RX 580 8GB | 970 EVO | Corsair 400R | Seasonic X 850 | Corsair M95 / K90 | Sennheiser PC37x
 
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sun Jan 14, 2018 12:30 am

Welch wrote:
I'm going to be reusing my Corsair 400r case so it wouldn't matter to me if a board was ATX or mATX. If me getting an ATX board means they have more room to put higher quality components on the board or they don't cut corners with the number of headers, ect... Then I'll take the ATX board for sure.

I hear that. With all the crap components on Ryzen boards I'm considering the same.
What about skiing into another world?

Fresh snow above rocks, faceplant and braindeath from lack of oxygen. The fun stuff. (There was mention of his heart and his old neck injury but they didn't say if it was part of the cause or just the process.)
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Welch
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sun Jan 14, 2018 1:33 am

I'm so sorry to hear that Lost, truly sorry.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

1600x | Strix B350-F | CM 240 Lite | 16GB 3200 | RX 580 8GB | 970 EVO | Corsair 400R | Seasonic X 850 | Corsair M95 / K90 | Sennheiser PC37x
 
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sun Jan 14, 2018 3:25 am

Welch wrote:
I'm so sorry to hear that Lost, truly sorry.

Hell theoretically you might've met him or passed by him a time or two in Alaska. He was working at Coal Point for a while before he became a corrosion engineer.
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sun Jan 14, 2018 9:28 am

Welch wrote:
If me getting an ATX board means they have more room to put higher quality components on the board or they don't cut corners with the number of headers, ect... Then I'll take the ATX board for sure.

Yeah, it really pissed me off when the "dumbing down" of micro-ATX boards started a few years back. Yes, they've always been aimed at more budget-conscious users; but there were generally at least a few decent options, before you got into the full-size boards. My Asus M3A78-CM (Socket AM2+) is a real workhorse; pulled desktop duty for several years, kept receiving CPU support BIOS updates through the Phenom II X6 releases, and still runs my file server.

AFAICT there wasn't a single decent micro-ATX option for AM3+.

LostCat wrote:
What about skiing into another world?

Fresh snow above rocks, faceplant and braindeath from lack of oxygen. The fun stuff. (There was mention of his heart and his old neck injury but they didn't say if it was part of the cause or just the process.)

Wow. So sorry to hear that. At least it sounds like he went doing something he enjoyed.
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Welch
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sun Jan 14, 2018 10:13 pm

LostCat wrote:
Welch wrote:
I'm so sorry to hear that Lost, truly sorry.

Hell theoretically you might've met him or passed by him a time or two in Alaska. He was working at Coal Point for a while before he became a corrosion engineer.


Very possible, I wonder where he was located most of the time while here. Probably near Anchorage, but I meet and deal with people from all over the state, so you never know.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
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1600x | Strix B350-F | CM 240 Lite | 16GB 3200 | RX 580 8GB | 970 EVO | Corsair 400R | Seasonic X 850 | Corsair M95 / K90 | Sennheiser PC37x
 
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sun Jan 14, 2018 10:54 pm

Yep, very happy with it, and added extra RGB's to the case. Only issue is the Asus ai3 bug, which I haven't addressed yet.
 
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Wed Jan 17, 2018 9:34 pm

What sort of bug with Ai3?

BTW.... It started.

Image
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

1600x | Strix B350-F | CM 240 Lite | 16GB 3200 | RX 580 8GB | 970 EVO | Corsair 400R | Seasonic X 850 | Corsair M95 / K90 | Sennheiser PC37x
 
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Wed Jan 17, 2018 10:02 pm

Welch wrote:
What sort of bug with Ai3?
AI Suite 3 crashes on launch and reports that "The server threw an exception." ever since the meltdown/spectre update for Win10.
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Wed Jan 17, 2018 10:17 pm

Ohhh geeez, not looking forward to that. So I'll avoid installing Ai3 until things are resolved. I'm sure it has something to do with how information about the hardware is passed on to Ai3 and subsequently to their servers to update requests?
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

1600x | Strix B350-F | CM 240 Lite | 16GB 3200 | RX 580 8GB | 970 EVO | Corsair 400R | Seasonic X 850 | Corsair M95 / K90 | Sennheiser PC37x
 
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Wed Jan 17, 2018 10:41 pm

Welch wrote:
Ohhh geeez, not looking forward to that. So I'll avoid installing Ai3 until things are resolved. I'm sure it has something to do with how information about the hardware is passed on to Ai3 and subsequently to their servers to update requests?

AI3 should be patched soon according to an extreme overclocker with Asus contacts. The forum that this was posted on is presently down for maintenance unfortunately.
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Welch
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Thu Jan 18, 2018 8:15 am

Apparently the Ai3 bug was already patched on the 16th...

Version 3.00.13
2018/01/16146.47 MBytes
ASUS AI Suite 3
Fix compatibility issue between the latest Windows 10 update KB4056892.

- AI Suite 3 v3.00.13
- Dual Intelligent Processors 5 v1.05.13

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

On a side note... HOLY CHIPSET BATMAN! 1.2GB download...
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

1600x | Strix B350-F | CM 240 Lite | 16GB 3200 | RX 580 8GB | 970 EVO | Corsair 400R | Seasonic X 850 | Corsair M95 / K90 | Sennheiser PC37x
 
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Thu Jan 18, 2018 8:42 am

Welch wrote:
So I'll avoid installing Ai3 until things are resolved.


I'd recommend avoiding Ai3 altogether. Across a decade of Ai Suite, I've never had one that truly added anything other than issues. The Asus firmware has decent fan control anyway, and there are better utilities for monitoring than Ai Suite, without any of its drawbacks, bloat, focus-stealing, fullscreen application interruption or other quirks it has resulted in over the years.
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Thu Jan 18, 2018 8:47 am

I was going to say, I always avoided the Ai suite too but figured maybe I was missing something in this newest version. Have you tried v3 Chrispy?
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

1600x | Strix B350-F | CM 240 Lite | 16GB 3200 | RX 580 8GB | 970 EVO | Corsair 400R | Seasonic X 850 | Corsair M95 / K90 | Sennheiser PC37x
 
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Mon Jan 22, 2018 7:24 pm

You're missing nothing by not installing AISuite except all the headaches. The first thing you will do after installing it is...uninstall it. You need zero of those programs. If you want Aura, just install Lighting Control (although I've had no luck with 1-0-0-5-28 version). If you want BIOS updates, just download the ZIP and extract the CAP to a USB stick.

I built a home PC with the X370 version (ROG Strix X370-F and R5-1600) just within the last two weeks, and all I can say is I'm not pleased with the 3401 BIOS. The lesser model Prime X370-Pro is already at 3404, having had 3401, 3402, and 3403 already. I have 10 BIOS files saved for the Prime X370-Pro since July 7, 2017. And a few I didn't download or keep since they were pulled by Asus. Not nearly as many it seems for the Strix compared to the Prime. I've had the Prime X370-Pro and R5-1600 in the garage since June 2017 doing vSphere hosting duty.

If anyone finds this thread having stability problems with Ryzen, one of my first questions would be "How many DIMMs?" The appropriate answer is TWO. Not to say 4 is impossible, but you will have more stability problems, and you will be limited in your RAM speed quest. Seems like 2400 is max stable IMO with 4 DIMMs on Ryzen. I tried 4x8GB G.Skill Trident 3200 and Chrome couldn't even successfully load a tab. I moved that set of RAM over to a Kaby Lake i5-7600K and Chrome also couldn't successfully load a tab. Turned RAM down to 2800 on the 7600K and found stability there. Tried upping DDR voltage, MC voltage, etc, to no avail.

I got into that predicament by buying a 16GB set of RAM on Black Friday for a "good deal" knowing that the price was likely to keep going up. It was preemptive, without having a specific home the RAM, just guessing that it would come in handy by year's end. And it was more expensive by January when the need arose, but that meant that I needed another set to actually do anything. Cities Skylines and VMware Workstation put me firmly in the 32GB camp - less is painful. Also painful is a constantly crashing system, especially BSODs implicating Memory Management. A few nights ago I lost several hours of city-building and at that point, shut the Ryzen system down and ripped out the 4x8GB G.Skill Trident 3200, and replaced it with 2x16GB Mushkin Ridgeback 2400, which has been perfect so far.

I've had so little stability from the RAM until now that I haven't even fiddled with overclocking this one yet! The Ryzen ESXi server in the garage runs 4x16GB G.Skill FlareX 2400, and I've had the occasional purple screen and the occasional hung/pegged VM (usually my DNS so it's pretty easy to spot: get home from work and host names won't resolve or browsing sucks), but the many BIOS updates for the Prime X370-Pro have helped (though there has been the occasional regression).
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Tue Jan 23, 2018 2:15 am

MOSFET wrote:
You're missing nothing by not installing AISuite except all the headaches. The first thing you will do after installing it is...uninstall it. You need zero of those programs. If you want Aura, just install Lighting Control (although I've had no luck with 1-0-0-5-28 version). If you want BIOS updates, just download the ZIP and extract the CAP to a USB stick.

I built a home PC with the X370 version (ROG Strix X370-F and R5-1600) just within the last two weeks, and all I can say is I'm not pleased with the 3401 BIOS. The lesser model Prime X370-Pro is already at 3404, having had 3401, 3402, and 3403 already. I have 10 BIOS files saved for the Prime X370-Pro since July 7, 2017. And a few I didn't download or keep since they were pulled by Asus. Not nearly as many it seems for the Strix compared to the Prime. I've had the Prime X370-Pro and R5-1600 in the garage since June 2017 doing vSphere hosting duty.

If anyone finds this thread having stability problems with Ryzen, one of my first questions would be "How many DIMMs?" The appropriate answer is TWO. Not to say 4 is impossible, but you will have more stability problems, and you will be limited in your RAM speed quest. Seems like 2400 is max stable IMO with 4 DIMMs on Ryzen. I tried 4x8GB G.Skill Trident 3200 and Chrome couldn't even successfully load a tab. I moved that set of RAM over to a Kaby Lake i5-7600K and Chrome also couldn't successfully load a tab. Turned RAM down to 2800 on the 7600K and found stability there. Tried upping DDR voltage, MC voltage, etc, to no avail.

I got into that predicament by buying a 16GB set of RAM on Black Friday for a "good deal" knowing that the price was likely to keep going up. It was preemptive, without having a specific home the RAM, just guessing that it would come in handy by year's end. And it was more expensive by January when the need arose, but that meant that I needed another set to actually do anything. Cities Skylines and VMware Workstation put me firmly in the 32GB camp - less is painful. Also painful is a constantly crashing system, especially BSODs implicating Memory Management. A few nights ago I lost several hours of city-building and at that point, shut the Ryzen system down and ripped out the 4x8GB G.Skill Trident 3200, and replaced it with 2x16GB Mushkin Ridgeback 2400, which has been perfect so far.

I've had so little stability from the RAM until now that I haven't even fiddled with overclocking this one yet! The Ryzen ESXi server in the garage runs 4x16GB G.Skill FlareX 2400, and I've had the occasional purple screen and the occasional hung/pegged VM (usually my DNS so it's pretty easy to spot: get home from work and host names won't resolve or browsing sucks), but the many BIOS updates for the Prime X370-Pro have helped (though there has been the occasional regression).


Wow, sorry to hear you're having all of those issues. It's not been my experience so far as I also updated to the 3401 BIOS (assuming same base code between models) and things have been ultra stable. D.O.C.P has these G.Skill Ripjaw V 3200 sticks running at their advertised voltage, speed and timings of 16-16-16-36. Granted I know you are running 4 DIMMS but I wonder if you don't have a bad stick in the bunch? I don't know much about RAM speeds on the Intel platform but if it wasn't able to hit 3200 on Intel which IIRC didn't seem to have issues hit above that, then it sounds like you got a bad DIMM.

The whole RAM debacle for Ryzen reminds me so much of the Phenom II X4 965 BE. They had an I and M nomenclature and you could not run RAM at the support 1333 if you populated all DIMM slots, it would run 1066. Not until they released a revised version of the 965 BE could you use all 4 at 1333. Feels just like that, at least in the beginning.

I'm going to keep an eye on my system since I'm running the RAM at 3200, no other "Overclocking" going on, which is one of the reasons I bought the 1600x, didn't want to roll silicon lottery dice and have something be unstable. One day I'll put this puppy to the test.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

1600x | Strix B350-F | CM 240 Lite | 16GB 3200 | RX 580 8GB | 970 EVO | Corsair 400R | Seasonic X 850 | Corsair M95 / K90 | Sennheiser PC37x
 
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Tue Jan 23, 2018 7:02 am

Welch wrote:
I was going to say, I always avoided the Ai suite too but figured maybe I was missing something in this newest version. Have you tried v3 Chrispy?


Can't remember what version it was, it was about 18 months ago, so probably not v3 if that's new.

AFAIK, users of v3 can expect IOMap64.sys bluescreens, overlay interference, conflicts with other software, fullscreen software hijacking (overlay related and/or outdated systray icon update polling) to name just a few unresolved issues according to Asus forums and reddit users.

Even if they fixed all those problems and it was completely stable, it's a massive heavy set of tools riddled with unnecessary bloatware, skins, feature-creep and mystery stuff that eats far too many system resources. All of the other options like speedfan or HWinfo are far lighter, less intrusive, known to be stable across multiple platforms (Asus can't even provide stability on their own platform!) and better at their jobs than anything in AI suite anyway.

I'm going out on a limb here, but I would put money on V3 being about social network integration and RGBLED lighting than any actual bugfixes over V2. Call me cynical, but I've been watching Asus' software team for 20 years now and that's their modus operandi.
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 8:01 am

So now I'm financially stable again for at least ten seconds. Should I buy this board or just finally replace the one I've got?

A dilemma.
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 8:04 am

Chrispy_ wrote:
Even if they fixed all those problems and it was completely stable, it's a massive heavy set of tools riddled with unnecessary bloatware, skins, feature-creep and mystery stuff that eats far too many system resources. All of the other options like speedfan or HWinfo are far lighter, less intrusive, known to be stable across multiple platforms (Asus can't even provide stability on their own platform!) and better at their jobs than anything in AI suite anyway.

I find that all OEM tools (be they MSI, Gigabyte, ASUS, or whatever) are equally ****. Maybe that's not literally true, but they certainly don't play well with win10 and I don't care to spend so much time trying to get them to just work.
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 8:07 am

Which one do you have?

Granted I've only had the board for a hot minute, hard for me to say it's great. It's working good so far, no issues hitting 3200 first shot with the current BIOS update of 3401. Will have my Mass Drop Senheisser headphones soon to test the supposedly isolated "supreme FX" sound.

For the $109 I paid I think it was worth it, which is why I bought it. Lots of fan headers, 90* SATA, 3 PCIe x16 slots (CPU) of which 2 are fast enough for most Crossfire 8/4 for now. The Intel NIC and better sound were worth a $30 premium to me over the economy B350.
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1600x | Strix B350-F | CM 240 Lite | 16GB 3200 | RX 580 8GB | 970 EVO | Corsair 400R | Seasonic X 850 | Corsair M95 / K90 | Sennheiser PC37x
 
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 8:51 am

I'm on one of the originals - Gigabyte AB350 Gaming rev1

Nothing really wrong with it other than their component choices. I could use an optical port too since I'm not doing a receiver through HDMI on my PC anymore.
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Chrispy_
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 9:56 am

Welch wrote:
Will have my Mass Drop Senheisser headphones soon to test the supposedly isolated "supreme FX" sound.


Please post an update on this.

I thought I'd give onboard audio another shot with this Gigabyte H97-HD3. It's not exactly a high-end board but they used an ALC887 codec which isn't audiophile grade, but it's at least decent - and then paired it with high-quality capacitors on their own isolated bit of PCB:

Image

Needless to say, I could still hear plenty of EMI interference from the graphics card and some sqealing through my Presonus studio monitors, so I'm running through an external DAC instead which is perfectly clean, within the limits of my hearing at least.
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LostCat
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 7:09 pm

Meh I think I'll stick with the Gigabyte. No sense spending more money on this build than I already did unless I absolutely needed to. (If it was my primary gaming machine I'd think more strongly about it, but it isn't.)
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Welch
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Re: ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F - Anyone Using?

Sun Jan 28, 2018 2:53 am

LostCat wrote:
Meh I think I'll stick with the Gigabyte. No sense spending more money on this build than I already did unless I absolutely needed to. (If it was my primary gaming machine I'd think more strongly about it, but it isn't.)


Is the price difference from this over the Gigabyte board that much of a gap? If you were worried about audio quality later down the road, I'm sure a quality sound card after the fact would probably beat out the on-board on this board anyhow. I just figured for the $30 difference it was that much better over the other on-boards and cheaper than getting a dedicated sound card, also the NIC and other little features, ect.

Chrispy_ wrote:
Welch wrote:
Will have my Mass Drop Senheisser headphones soon to test the supposedly isolated "supreme FX" sound.


Please post an update on this.

I thought I'd give onboard audio another shot with this Gigabyte H97-HD3. It's not exactly a high-end board but they used an ALC887 codec which isn't audiophile grade, but it's at least decent - and then paired it with high-quality capacitors on their own isolated bit of PCB:

Image

Needless to say, I could still hear plenty of EMI interference from the graphics card and some sqealing through my Presonus studio monitors, so I'm running through an external DAC instead which is perfectly clean, within the limits of my hearing at least.


I'll for sure post up something about the experience. Looking forward to having some quality cans this time around. The old crappy Zalman's I'm using actually sound better on this board already, which is hard to believe, perhaps it just has enough power to actually output the volume the 6 separate smaller drivers combined need? I was really tempted to go the AKG route via Massdrop and do a good mic. I'd probably have gone that route if I were sporting a stand alone soundcard. Curious to see how this compares to a $100-150 standalone card.
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