Motherboard Group Buy/Crowdfunded Modded BIOS for the Asrock A300m (Deskmini A300)

Windfall

Shrink Ray Wielder
SFFn Staff
Nov 14, 2017
2,117
1,582
I do not think that the performance difference is very meaningful, and with memory being cheaper now the cost isn't that big a difference either. If there is an STX board with all the tuning and nobs we hoped the A300W had, a performance difference would be pretty negligible. It would be down to whether you first hit the limits of the CPU's memory controller or the RAM chips. I suspect a lot of SODIMM ram is underrated compared to what it is capable of with a motherboard that can overclock it.

Frankly I think an ITX board with sodimm would be nice too! Surely they could fit 4 of them, I'm pretty sure asrock has done it before.
Yep, X299e-itx/ac.

Nice thing is, you then get quad channel, which for some workloads is a huge performance boost.
 

GLSRacer

Average Stuffer
May 31, 2019
80
58
Frankly I think an ITX board with sodimm would be nice too! Surely they could fit 4 of them, I'm pretty sure asrock has done it before.

Now in that use case, I'd agree. If we could get four 16 GB SODIMMs in a SFF PC it would be really cool.
 

W4RR10R

Cable-Tie Ninja
Original poster
Jan 29, 2019
211
211
I don't really see the point of the A300W for non-APU use as an ITX case would be a better bet for those wanting dedicated graphics.
Well considering I (the person who started this movement/post) only needs the non APU support specifically for my sleeper PC build, ITX doesnt fit in a gamecube, there are also use cases for headless encoding servers that only draw ~100W and are in a tiny case. So its kind of important, to me at least.
 

W4RR10R

Cable-Tie Ninja
Original poster
Jan 29, 2019
211
211
Yeah, it seems I seriously underestimated the various needs of forum members haha.
Well no, its just not your use case. I don't totally see the the draw of unlocking the cpus on the A300, while the APUs do overclock decently I doubt they would sustain significant gains on this board as they apparently cant sustain stock boost clock for long on the board anyway.

Honestly almost everything that everyone on this site wants is a niche within a niche, this just happens to be one layer deeper.
 

GLSRacer

Average Stuffer
May 31, 2019
80
58
With granular control over CPU and GPU voltage we might be able to get a bit more out of the APU, but I agree that it's barely worth the trouble. I'd like to see the features added in large part because I don't like having gimped products.
 

Bob

Minimal Tinkerer
Sep 10, 2019
3
1
Hi guys, I just discovered this thread, was searching for any info on 3700x support for a300 as its a 65w CPU. Just wanted to let you know that I am using A300/3400G with RADEON 7 via external PCIe slot connected to an M.2 slot on the motherboard. It's working like a charm, both in Win 10 and Debian, kernel 4.19 and 5.2 tested. Games are running on ULTRA settings on a 4k monitor, both in win and Linux. It took a day or two dealing with mesa and GPU drivers in Linux but I managed to make it all work. As for Windows, not a single issue so far. And I am using this build for over two months now.
 
  • Like
Reactions: GLSRacer

W4RR10R

Cable-Tie Ninja
Original poster
Jan 29, 2019
211
211
Hi guys, I just discovered this thread, was searching for any info on 3700x support for a300 as its a 65w CPU. Just wanted to let you know that I am using A300/3400G with RADEON 7 via external PCIe slot connected to an M.2 slot on the motherboard. It's working like a charm, both in Win 10 and Debian, kernel 4.19 and 5.2 tested. Games are running on ULTRA settings on a 4k monitor, both in win and Linux. It took a day or two dealing with mesa and GPU drivers in Linux but I managed to make it all work. As for Windows, not a single issue so far. And I am using this build for over two months now.
As of right now there is no support for any Ryzen CPUs only the APUs (2200/3200g and 2400/3400g). The issue seems to a problem with POST, essentially when you put a a non APU part in the A300 the fans spin up but the power light does not turn on, we think that the issue is that ths POST process is checking for the igpu and not seeing it (because its not there) and hanging at that point. This may be able to be fixed by either removing that part of the test or just fixing its value to pass/true.

I started this thread with the original goal of only fixing the CPU support, and it seemed promising for awhile but our resident BIOS modder hasn't updated us in awhile (as I understand it they're a college student so things get busy and this a hobby).

I'm trying to get back in touch with Asrock because the answer I was given back in March/July was essentially that it could work but they where to busy to work on it (ie Zen2/x570). With the potential of new threadripper boards looming on the horizon I don't know if their answer will change but Im still going to ask.

Ive been meaning to look into learning how to mod the BIOS myself but havent got around to it as I'm a student too, but I will look into it and potentially see if there is anyone in my schools computer engineering department that may be able to help.
 

Bob

Minimal Tinkerer
Sep 10, 2019
3
1
Thanks for the reply W4RR10R,

We had a similar issue in Debian, the external GPU would not work because the system didn't expect to see an external PCIe slot and another vega on it so he didn't know what to do with it. You might be correct when you say that the issue is likely POST related, the hardware is all there to support 3700x, its the software that doesn't know that it can.
 

W4RR10R

Cable-Tie Ninja
Original poster
Jan 29, 2019
211
211
It would be interesting to see a 3700X in the A300W, you'd probably need a beefier power brick though.
You might not though, the 3700x is a 65w TDP chip. While TDP is not real world power draw its usually a pretty good estimate. Likely if you are using a 3700x you would also have a beefier power setup to also power the gpu. If you went with a headless setup for like a mini home server depending on your workloads I dont see the the system exceeding the 120w ac adapter, barring having 2 m.2 drives 2 hdds and alot of usb devices without external power.
 

GLSRacer

Average Stuffer
May 31, 2019
80
58
A 3700X with PBO enabled can use between 110 and 115 watts. That's running pretty close to max on the stock power brick. I guess if you kept PBO disabled then you could limit CPU power draw under load to 90ish watts.
 

kroaler

Minimal Tinkerer
Aug 18, 2019
3
0
Bob - I was going to message you but figured it would be better to post public for all to see. So you are running Radeon 7 via external pcie that connects at m2? Care to share what riser you are using? How are you powering the GPU?
 

codehunter

What's an ITX?
Sep 22, 2019
1
0
Hello everyone,

By chance just happen to see this thread a few days ago.My AS Rock 300 is on the way , I've just order it together with the Ryzen 5 3400G. As I'm looking for a solution to this topic too , specially regarding CPU+IGPU overclocking and it seems you were not able to come up with a viable BIOS I want to share a video review in which it seems that AS Rock themselves had released initially a BIOS that support these features.Maybe this information will provide itself useful.

Have look on this video review:

There clearly can be seen that the OC functions for CPU+IGPU are available.
Maybe we can ask the guy which BIOS version did he used.Hopefully it was not an engineering sample or some sort of.

Best Regards
 
Last edited:

NateDawg72

Master of Cramming
Aug 11, 2016
398
302
Hello everyone,
There clearly can be seen that the OC functions for CPU+IGPU are available.
Maybe we can ask the guy which BIOS version did he used.Hopefully it was not an engineering sample or some sort of.
Hello

Early bios versions did indeed have options, but they did not work. I believe Asrock did not intentionally put those options there, rather they forgot to remove them (as they were not functional). Later asrock removed the options from the Bios...
 
  • Like
Reactions: GLSRacer

W4RR10R

Cable-Tie Ninja
Original poster
Jan 29, 2019
211
211
Hi guys, I just discovered this thread, was searching for any info on 3700x support for a300 as its a 65w CPU. Just wanted to let you know that I am using A300/3400G with RADEON 7 via external PCIe slot connected to an M.2 slot on the motherboard. It's working like a charm, both in Win 10 and Debian, kernel 4.19 and 5.2 tested. Games are running on ULTRA settings on a 4k monitor, both in win and Linux. It took a day or two dealing with mesa and GPU drivers in Linux but I managed to make it all work. As for Windows, not a single issue so far. And I am using this build for over two months now.
Hey so Ive just started working on my GameCube PC again, when I setup my e/dgpu it doesn't get detected and I cant remember how I did it the last time. If you wouldnt mind running through how you got it working. Im running a vega 56 btw.

The card does work I can install it another system and it works just fine.
 

W4RR10R

Cable-Tie Ninja
Original poster
Jan 29, 2019
211
211
Hey so Ive just started working on my GameCube PC again, when I setup my e/dgpu it doesn't get detected and I cant remember how I did it the last time. If you wouldnt mind running through how you got it working. Im running a vega 56 btw.

The card does work I can install it another system and it works just fine.

Nvm, I think one of my m.2 adapters is broken. Swapped it and it just worked
 
  • Like
Reactions: Soul_Est

Bob

Minimal Tinkerer
Sep 10, 2019
3
1
Bob - I was going to message you but figured it would be better to post public for all to see. So you are running Radeon 7 via external PCIe that connects at m2? Care to share what riser you are using? How are you powering the GPU?

My apologies for the late reply guys, very busy schedule. Yes, the card we were using for testing was Radeon VII (cos it looks nice and fits perfectly into our design), the riser was manufactured by this company... https://www.adt.link/

However, we have switched now to Thunderbolt 3 riser (our own design) since ASRock has T3 mini ITX motherboards for both AMD and INTELL chipsets now.

X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3
Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac

Those 2 motherboards are only 2cm larger in size then A300W and it's much more convenient to use T3 instead of M.2 slot.

In the case of MINI- STX build ( external GPU connected via M.2) GPU is powered via small 650 W DAGGER PSU, for the MINI ITX build (external GPU connected via bothT3), we are using a custom made 650W PSU that supplies power to both, PC and External GPU enclosure.
 
Last edited:

rook

Average Stuffer
Jul 9, 2018
74
78
Does anyone know if the 3400G APU enables PCIe 4.0 like other Ryzen 3000 series chips? It looks like ASRock has enabled this on at least one of their motherboards, the X570. Sadly, I haven't found a single m.2 to PCIe 4.0 adapter.