Motherboards Build a few PCs for pepes late last year.. one has been a nightmare...

Gigabyte AX370 Gaming K5. Let me just say that I'm not a fan of Gigabyte motherboard. I upgraded my PC last year and went to AMD for the first time. I got lazy and for the first time ever didn't choose my own motherboard. I went with same choice as a friend because we thought it would be easier for me to share my overclock settings with him. So I've had a love/hate relationship with the AX 370 Gaming 5... nevertheless... it is stable, looks nice and overclocks perfectly well. Has improved with bios updates. So I assumed the Gaming K5 would be a similar story... not too much difference in price. K5 still costs over £138+ It's not the cheapest nor is it a higher end board.

Anyway... since I built that PC for client last October with Gaming K5... he's had nothing but trouble. Crash crash crash. Eventually a few months ago it stopped working completely. It booted up twice when I went over to look at it and remained dead since then. I guessed it was the CPU VRM. RMA to gigabyte... replacement board... now I have an 80mm fan blowing over the VRM. CPU is liquid cooled.

The K5 has been failing to post properly if the ram is set anything above default 2133mhz.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/team...al-channel-kit-rgb-black-tf1d4-my-08m-tg.html

3200mhz nighthawk. The ram is not on the QVL list for the K5 mobo. That in itself doesn't mean failure as my own Gaming 5 mobo has 8-pack 4000mhz ram not on the QVL for that mobo.. no issues at 3466mhz. The 3200mhz nighthawk WILL NOT post properly on either the K5 or my gaming 5 motherboard. Someone at OCUK told me the 3000mhz nighthawk IS on the QVL for gaming K5.

Here's the weird part... the 3200mhz ram was running at the full 3200mhz on the K5 that died. The replacement K5 will not work with it above 2133mhz. scan computers tested the motherboard and found it fully operational with corsair LPX 3000mhz.

So I currently have a working motherboard for client that I hate. And 3200mhz ram that is also fully operational (passes windows diagnostic).

I can't return the motherboard or the ram because they're working! Just not with each other.

There's more... The Gigabyte Ax370 gaming K5 has the worst bios I've ever seen. Most overclocking features removed... I questioned giga support about this and they said those features are removed because it's a budget board. So I explained that every other brand motherboard at £138 has FULL bios overclocking features!

I will be reviewing the gaming K5 on my youtube channel.

If anyone has some Teamgroup nighthawk RGB 3000mhz... I'd be happy to swap it for the 3200mhz nighthawk ram (16gb).

 

I'm not sure it's just limited to Gigabyte unfortunately. I've had RAM work with my ASUS Prime X370 Pro board that's not on the QVL, other RAM that is on the QVL not work properly, others again that will run but at lower speeds than they are advertised to work. Supposedly Ryzen is better for RAM compatibility than it used to be but I still find it picky as hell. That being said I wouldn't go back to Intel at this point with the i7-8700K being £450 vs £300 for the 2700X. A cut down BIOS on a £138 board though is rubbish.

 

Your board is likely the issue. GB boards are sadly just terrible at the moment.

 

Yup, I guess Piezen is fussy at this stage. I have a feeling this 3200mhz ram might be working with an old K5 bios but not with the latest 4. Haven't confirmed that yet though. Just got the K5 back from scan today... RMA certified healthy. No more Giga boards for me in future. I will go back to my policy of choosing the boards myself. Just fortunate that the Gaming 5 is tolerable with a full bios.

I'm the same regarding intel. Had only built intel systems since 486dx. Nearly went to AMD years ago when they were faster than intel.. then core duo came and I went with that. Increasingly sick of rising intel prices and thermals. IHS thermal paste. So now intel's latest uses solder but that high price is a no-go for me. I was nervous about switching to AMD last year but I like it now. Took me a long time to get over the emotional anguish of not being clocked at 4.8ghz plus (my old i5 2500k). My ryzen 1700 really took off like a rocket when I entered ALL manual timings for very low latency.

 

Yes they are... absolutely awful. They look pretty but apparently poor design and lack of interest from gigabyte. I think when a company declines in this way they really need to disappear. Within weeks of me buying the gaming 5 last year I was hearing horror stories about how bad the quality is now. Even used a modded bios because the official was lacking so many features. Giga since improved the bios. The gaming K5 is another story. No improvement there.

 

Update: I have a solution suggestion from Gigabyte... They said use F4 to F10 bios. I had a feeling the memory was running at full speed previously on the K5 that died and that must have had a bios below F20. When I got the replacement K5 via RMA I flashed the bios to latest F23. That's when the ram speed issues started but I only went back as far as F20. I'm in the process of putting the PC back together so I will download and flash F10 bios. Still my last giga purchase... they actually made the following statement: "
Hello,

Vcore voltage control option is not available for this board because it depends on hardware design.



Higher-end motherboards like AX370-Gaming 5/ K7 have more options for voltage configuration."

Yes, not just vcore control. A whole bunch of OC options are missing including switching frequency (VRM) etc. The board is £138+ at the current time. I've spent less money on Asus boards in the past with full bios!!!

In fact this is the first toy bios I've seen. A friend of mine had a toy bios on his A-bit back in the Q6600 days but even that wasn't as bad as the K5!

 

So the system works again now. Went with F10 bios per giga suggestion. First time I've experienced a bios that's split depending on CPU revision. Always been able to flash the latest bios on the various motherboards. With the K5 it's not wise to flash beyond F10 for first gen ryzen but there's no warning about it. The ram is running at the full 3200mhz on XMP profile. Tried low latency manual settings but no go. My own gaming 5 system has all manual timings at 3466mhz.

 

The BIOS is likely not optimized for those sorts of speed. That’s the joy of early BIOS revisions on first gen Ryzen.

 

I think the K5 has been around quite some time now.. it's on revision F23. Ram is working ok on F10. I told Gigabyte their policy of toy bios for a £138 mobo is bad. I explained that any other brand mobo at that price has a full bios.

 

I think it just seems to be the Gigabyte mantra these days of bare minimum requirements coupled with their "It will do" attitude to all other things - and that's irrespective of whether it's an AMD/Intel motherboard.

Gigabyte for me, well they're not even a consideration when buying new kit, it's a shame to have to say it but true none the less.

 

Have to ask seeing as though nobody else has...

Why were you only building PCs for Spanish guys called Pepe?

That's quite a niche market and mustn't be very profitable...

 

The market for building PC for spanish guys called Pepe is huge. Much bigger than people realise. I only discovered this last year when 5 x Pepe approached me for PC building over a 3 month period. I assumed they all knew each other but no. I did my research and there are countless Spanish Pepe's who need PCs.

 

Maybe an Assrock or MSI next time for a change. Never owned those brands although I have built MSI systems for Spanish guys named Pepe.

 

I'm getting away from Gigabyte as a brand until they fix their shizen. There's a decent little asrock matx board for ryzen but it only has 1 year warranty, seems standard from Asrock from my reading? Although I've seen one listed on scan with 24 months.

 

Never tried Asrock but wooden mind one. They used to be breaking OC records with Ln2 over the years.

Gigabyte used to be great for GPU. There was a heavily overclocked GPU range they had... top-binned GPU core. Ran cooler and quieter and overclocked better than the over-hyped MSI.