Prebuilt [SFFn] ASRock's DeskMini A300 - Finally!

[HydrAxx747]

Hi guys,

I have A300 with BIOS 3.60S.

Is A300 supports Ryzen 5600/5700G?

No, only Renoir's APU (4xxxG/GE) sorry.

 

[A300]

No, only Renoir's APU (4xxxG/GE) sorry.

X300 supports 5xxxG, so Asrock forced us to buy a new one in order to upgrade.

Bad policy, will not buy Asrock products again if not necessary.

 

[rubicoin]

hi guys, i'm back a bit as i'm about to switch from 2400g to 4350g in my old a300 this weekend. reason is win11 compatibility and ram speed (based on my 4650g i sold earlier this year, renoir can do 3200 mhz with my g.skill 3000 mhz ram, 2400g only 2933 mhz). i'm curious if it would be plug & play on 3.60S, and if igpu peformance could match the 11 CU in 2400g. and also looking forward to seeing how cpu performance/heat output of 4350g with same core count but 7nm zen2 architecture compares.

will report some results here. bought 4350g for the exact same price i got 2400g for a couple of months ago (and the money i'll sell it for, ~120 EUR).

 

[akisu]

Hey rubicoin, where can I find a 4350G for 120 Euro? I have more or less the same plan.

 

[rubicoin]

Hey rubicoin, where can I find a 4350G for 120 Euro? I have more or less the same plan.

hi, good to hear that i'm not alone there is not much info about a300+4350g around, found only this article.

i'm afraid i can't help you, bought mine locally, used, oem version. it was on sale in retail here in hungary for a couple of weeks back in august 2020 when i also purchased my 4650g. already regretted selling it for ~190 EUR never seen renoir cpu-s selling ever since.

 

[g_l]

well... I just flipped the switch on my fully charged Metabo 18V 10ah powertool battery, to power my DIY X300-based live music rig.
The problem? fully charged it's actually 20.7V . Did the X300 survive? watch me turn it on the first time:

To update, I've been running the rig quite a few times now on the fully charged battery (max 20.7V), and it seems to be fine. too early to tell if there are any long-term consequences, but I suspect (but can't guarantee) 21V is OK.

The way to be reasonably sure is to find the voltage converter chip(s) and look up the specs. I will install a 5700g on Sunday, so unless someone knows the chip, I'll look for it.

 

[g_l]

I will install a 5700g on Sunday, so unless someone knows the chip, I'll look for it.

(of course I forgot to look for it, but I'm opening up again soon so will try again.)

I just installed the 5700G on my X300 (upgraded from a 4750G) with liquid metal:

5700G:
- seems great & runs fine so far, somewhere around 18% faster in single-core, ~15% in multicore.

- my Ballistix 32GB mem that would only run reliably at 3433Mhz with 16-18-18-36 timings on the 4750G now runs the same timings at 3600mhz without any MemTest errors (I've read that the memory controller quality can change chip-to-chip, so this isn't necessarily due to upgrading from a 4750G, or maybe it is).

- S3 Sleep still isn't supported.

- seems about the same thermal and real-world power draw, possibly slightly more on both (but that could also be chip quality)


LM:
this is a portable rig (built into a camera style case), so I went all out with LM safety - both with conformal coating spray (to protect exposed motherboard contacts) + a foam dam to catch any LM balls should they dislodge from knocks (although my application is sparse, there may not be any leakage).

It doesn't seem to help with general temps or 100% CPU use, but probably with bursty workloads. It seems to transfer heat faster to my Noctua NH-L9a-AM4 heatsink (customised with slim Noctua 120mm fan), but the heatsink/fan combo is the bottleneck as it can only shift so much heat.

After high CPU usage that suddenly stops, it takes quite some time for the temperature to get down. That suggests the heatsink is fully saturated and the fan is unable to clear the heat quickly.

So while it doesn't help max temps, it should help bursty workloads, as they can dump heat quickly into the heatsink (until it's saturated).

Overall probably not worth it unless you have a better sink/cooler combo.

 

[yuusou]

Maybe condider trying the Thermalright AXP-90c? It seems to handle a bit more heat than the NH-L9a.

 

[g_l]

Maybe condider trying the Thermalright AXP-90c? It seems to handle a bit more heat than the NH-L9a.

interesting, how much better is it?

 

[rubicoin]

4350g arrived, installed, working just fine:

cpu-z benchmark results for all the apus i've ever tried in a300 (single/multi-thread score):

• 459/2674 (4350g 3.60S 3200mhz cl16)
• 522/4296 (4650g 3.60S 3200mhz cl16)
• 344/1976 (2400g 3.60S 3000mhz cl16*)
• 424/1660 (2200g 3.60 3000mhz cl16*)

*had to lower speed to 2933mhz later

4350g crushes 2400g. will be curious how the graphics performance of the igpu compares though.

 

[yuusou]

interesting, how much better is it?

There's a few benchmarks here on the forums if you search around you'll find it.

 

[HydrAxx747]

interesting, how much better is it?

Having only tested the Cooler Master MasterAir G200P, ID-Cooling IS-40X and Alpenföhn Black Ridge before, and I can say that for me the Thermalright AXP-90R FullCopper and its "almost" 500 grams of copper is the best heatsink I have the opportunity to test on my "AMD Nuke" config, here are its specs:

-AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G (TSME Disabled, PBO Activated and iGPU@2425MHz Stable with vSOC/vGFX@1,275v)
- Motherboard ASRock X300M-STX rev1.02 under BIOS v1.72 (from a DeskMini X300)
-RAM Corsair Vengeance DDR4-4000 SODIMM 2x8Gb Kit (from a 4x8Gb kit originally) tuned to 4133MHz@18-24-24-48-1T under 1.35v with double-sided copper heatsinks and graphene coating.
-SSD Crucial P5 1TB NVMe PCIe3.0 4x with EKWB EK-M.2 NVMe "Black" heatsink.
-WiFi/Bluetooth card Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX210 (Gig+) and BT 5.2
-MiniSTX Case SilverStone SST-VT02B (Vital 2 Black) with 2xSlots USBv2.0 extensions and ASRock DeskMini ARGB Strip module (working on the same single USB2.0 extension port thanks to a doubler adapter magnetically glued in the case)
-Original ASRock 120Watts adapter replaced by more better Asus ADP-180HD B Adapter which can output 180 Watts (19V@9.5A).

And from memory, on all the stability tests that I was able to perform, it seems to me that the worst CPU temperature I could see was 75 or 76°C and yet I had carried out all these tests then it was midsummer around July/August.

 

[akisu]

I am not sure if there was a change with the mainboard heatsink on the X300, but the Thermalright AXP-90R doesn't fit on the A300 unless you cut off 5mm on one side

 

[yuusou]

I am not sure if there was a change with the mainboard heatsink on the X300, but the Thermalright AXP-90R doesn't fit on the A300 unless you cut off 5mm on one side

It fits fine, you have to loosen the VRM heatsink, tighten down the AXP-90, then tighten down the VRM heatsink again. It'll sit a little crooked but will function fine.

 

[HydrAxx747]

I am not sure if there was a change with the mainboard heatsink on the X300, but the Thermalright AXP-90R doesn't fit on the A300 unless you cut off 5mm on one side

Not really, it's tight but it works and no need to cut anything, just show a little trick: I just had to loosen two half turns (or a full turn) the two fixing screws of the VRM heatsink so that it can move slightly if necessary, after I just insert the Thermalright AXP-90R FullCopper heatsink and there it blocks a bit normally and well you just have to push the VRM heatsink slightly towards the outside (or towards the edge of the motherboard as you want) so that it leans about 30° and there by holding the VRM heatsink lean in this position then we can insert the Thermalright AXP-90R CPU heatsink and fix / tighten it definitively without being in any way blocked or hampered by the VRM heatsink and afterwards do not forget to tighten the two screws of the latter, and this is how you can mount and fix a Thermalright AXP-90R CPU heatsink with their original ASRock VRM heatsink on an ASRock DeskMini A300 or X300 motherboard without the slightest problem and especially without having to cut anything!

 

[HydrAxx747]

It fits fine, you have to loosen the VRM heatsink, tighten down the AXP-90, then tighten down the VRM heatsink again. It'll sit a little crooked but will function fine.

Strange ... for me who guessed from myself the same technique you describe for everything assembled together, and well once I tightened the 2 screws of the VRM heatsink, there is nothing that was crooked because I checked well before reattaching my motherboard in my MiniSTX SilverStone case, maybe then it was just luck and my mounting holes (for the CPU heatsink) had more tolerance in their dimension ... where then on those of the VRM heatsink but if it is neither of the two then I do not know where it can come from...

 

[GLSRacer]

X300 supports 5xxxG, so Asrock forced us to buy a new one in order to upgrade.

Bad policy, will not buy Asrock products again if not necessary.

I just built a 5950X system and used a Gigabyte MB. I was going to buy an ASRock MB but I have an A300W and I hate it when companies limit compatibility for no reason other than to sell a new product.

 

[A300]

Hi guys,

I have A300, 4650G, with BIOS 3.60S. Are this CPU, motherboard and BIOS supports GPU passthrough?

Tried to find IOMMU in BIOS, no luck, I did enabled SVM, is this enough?

Want to Install Linux Mint on this machine and install Windows 7 as a VM, but need GPU passthrough for Windows 7.

 

[GLSRacer]

Proxmox VE should allow passthrough. I run Win10 with Hyper-V for VMs on my A300 but I have Proxmox on my server running a Ryzen 5950X.

 

[A300]

Proxmox VE should allow passthrough. I run Win10 with Hyper-V for VMs on my A300 but I have Proxmox on my server running a Ryzen 5950X.

Interesting, I just read their website.

There's one requirement I don't know if it's supported by 3.60S BIOS

For PCI(e) passthrough a CPU with VT-d/AMD-d CPU flag is needed

I tried to find this setting in the BIOS, still no luck.