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

[chinevo]

And this is quite expected, because the AMD A300 does not support OC, and everyone knows it. Stop hating and pushing AsRock, they support the SFF community for a long period of time. If you want to OC, you must wait for the B / X chipset.

 

[NateDawg72]

And this is quite expected, because the AMD A300 does not support OC, and everyone knows it. Stop hating and pushing AsRock, they support the SFF community for a long period of time. If you want to OC, you must wait for the B / X chipset.

Wait for what B / X chipset? I wouldn't believe one is even in the works.

 

[chinevo]

This is not a reason to add OC capabilities to nonOC chipset or hate the company.
As for me, I want to have an Asrock A300 NanoITX (120 mm x 120 mm), and I know that it is not in development. But I'm still grateful for unique MiniSTX product.

 

[NateDawg72]

I don't think anyone here hates Asrock, we all know well how they have pushed the boundaries for sff with STX and HEDT mATX motherboards. This is just a bunch of enthusiasts doing enthusiast things Nothing being discussed here takes away from or hurts normal usage of the product they have made.

 

[Windfall]

This is not a reason to add OC capabilities to nonOC chipset or hate the company.
As for me, I want to have an Asrock A300 NanoITX (120 mm x 120 mm), and I know that it is not in development. But I'm still grateful for unique MiniSTX product.

Nobody hates Asrock, but nobody appreciates when a company software limits a product.

 

[thewizzard1]

Anybody know where I can snag one of these in the US? Everything I've checked is sold out!

 

[Valantar]

This is not a reason to add OC capabilities to nonOC chipset or hate the company.
As for me, I want to have an Asrock A300 NanoITX (120 mm x 120 mm), and I know that it is not in development. But I'm still grateful for unique MiniSTX product.

Remember that the A300 isn't actually a chipset, it is a platform designation for a chipset-less Ryzen platform that uses the SoC capabilities of Ryzen. There's also the X300, which allows overclocking and SLI/CF, which is also chipset-less. While I don't know the details of the implementation of such a platform, it's hard to believe that it's a question of much more than updated firmware, microcode or something similar. As such it would likely be possible (if not exactly likely) for Asrock to bios-update this into an OC'able state.

 

[chinevo]

About A300 vs X300. Yes and no.
1. X has more powerful VRM, capacitors, circuitry quality etc etc
2. AMD (not Asrock) has price policy, for A chipset AsRock pays one amount of royalty, for X pays other amount.
3. OC also affects the warranty policy.

 

[Valantar]

About A300 vs X300. Yes and no.
1. X has more powerful VRM, capacitors, circuitry quality etc etc
2. AMD (not Asrock) has price policy, for A chipset AsRock pays one amount of royalty, for X pays other amount.
3. OC also affects the warranty policy.

You're right about all that (though we don't know about the royalties, at least it's likely). The VRM quality/capacity question isn't a requirement though - there's no way for the SoC to know what VRM components it is connected to, it just asks for a voltage - just a safety/quality feature. It would still be theoretically possible for ASRock to provide a BIOS update for this (they could charge for it to cover any licensing issues) - whether it would be a good overclocker is another question entirely (it very likely wouldn't).

Of course this not being very realistic is no reason to dislike Asrock whatsoever, but there is a reason to be annoyed at them when they remove features commonly found on other non-OC platforms (A320) such as undervolting and iGPU OC.

 

[TwinHaelix]

Anybody know where I can snag one of these in the US? Everything I've checked is sold out!

I believe only Newegg sells them in the US. They come back in stock every few weeks and sell out in a day or two (currently sold out).
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856158064

 

[ShamedGod]

So I have been trolling the forum a bit since I bought an A300W and decided to sign-up. I did a bunch of research before buying the parts for this build and think I've optimized the setup.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2400G
Storage: Intel 660P
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4-3200

I've also replaced the thermal paste with a graphite pad, as I have no idea how long this build will be in service, and added two 2.5" drives on the shelf collecting dust.

Baseline benchmarks can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Sj3oA2x32nJXmNm3mBtOt_sLE_zsAYjq?usp=sharing

The only settings that are changeable in the BIOS, that will actually work to alter performance, is RAM. The baseline above was with the XMP profile.

Everything is rock solid with those setting however I wanted to play around with the ram to see if I could squeeze out more proformance.

I changed all the settings to AUTO and then altered the DDR speed to 3200 just to see what the BIOS set the ram to VS the XMP Profile. After that I took the lowest of all the settings (between AUTO and XPM) and hard set the configuration. Performance increased by about 5% and everything remained rock solid.

Now I'm stuck. I can push the RAM speed to 3400+ when I loosen the timings and have CPUID running for hours with out an issue. Temps never climb above 81 and the CPU never drops below 3.7 on all cores; but every time I move the ram speed above 3200 and do any type of Graphics testing the machine BSODs or just completely freezes.

Anyone else having issues like that? Did I just lose the Silicon lottery and need to be happy with the mild performance boost I've achieved? Been banging my head on this for a couple weeks :/

Also @thewizzard1 - I had to set NewEgg to auto notify me when the A300W came back in stock and buy it ASAP after seeing the email. It was out of stock in less then 24 hours. You could build an ITX version for about the same price ATM with a B450 board, cooler Master elite 130, and SeaSonic or EVGA fully modular power supply and have more flexibility with upgrades. That was what this build was going to be if the A300W remained out of stock.

 

[Slowjim]

What message is it giving you on the BSOD?

 

[ShamedGod]

@Slowjim

 

[Kmpkt]

I get those BSODs occasionally at RAM speeds > 3200 as well.

 

[Danlopez1222]

Increasing SOC voltage is what helped me with GPU crashing on overclocked RAM. SOC and GPU are on the same rail, and the Vdroop can be excess of 100mv under load.

 

[ShamedGod]

@Danlopez1222 - Thank You! Are you on BIOS Version 3.40?

I was so disappointed my GFX frequency wouldn't stick and that Ryzen master wouldn't work for overclocking I didn't change the SOC voltage from AUTO. I hard set it to 1.2; DDR4-3400 settings looks like they're sticking. Moving to 3533 i had to up the voltage to 1.25 and that seemed a bit much so after five minutes I moved back to 3400. At DDR4-3533 the machine temperatures topped out quickly and throttled down to 3.7 in a couple minutes. Didn't seem worth pushing the limits on an air cooled Mini-Desktop.


UserBenchmarks: Game 31%, Desk 111%, Work 74%
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2400G - 89.2%
GPU: AMD RX Vega 11 (Ryzen iGPU) - 22%
SSD: Intel 660p NVMe PCIe M.2 1TB - 240.9%
HDD: Toshiba MQ04ABF100 1TB - 81.6%
HDD: Seagate Momentus 2.5" 1TB - 62%
RAM: G.SKILL F4 DDR4 3200 C18 2x8GB - 104.6%
MBD: Asrock A300M-STX

Also, ASRock got back to me on why the OC Tweaker settings didn't seem to be functioning properly:


https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2763-amd-chipset-comparison-x370-b350-a320

So it looks like this is about as good as it gets - Until the Ryzen 3600G

 

[Danlopez1222]

I'm on 3.20 because of the more extensive RAM voltage options.

Glad it worked for ya!

 

[Primerib]

Still hoping someone could post the tightest timings they could get with the G Skill 3200C18D-16GRS @3200mhz (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232724) if anyone else has the models with Hynix dies, Samsung timings won't help a whole lot unfortunately.

 

[ShamedGod]

Still hoping someone could post the tightest timings they could get with the G Skill 3200C18D-16GRS @3200mhz (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232724) if anyone else has the models with Hynix dies, Samsung timings won't help a whole lot unfortunately.

It's all a lottery. What I did was set everything to AUTO and manually set the ram speed to DDR4-3200

I then saved and exited the BIOS.

I went back into the BIOS and recorded what timings where automatically generated across the board.

I then changed the settings to to the XMP profile and recorded the settings that come preset in that profile from G.Skill.

I then Manually set all the timings to the lowest number between the two profiles; The numbers that where left set to AUTO by the XMP profile where not touched.

That became the Best stable performance I found at the DDR4-3200 speed. I tried lowering the timings a bit more afterword but couldn't get the machine to post properly or be stable. I found that MOST of the settings in the XMP Profile either Matched what was automatically found by the BIOS Or where lower. There was one or two settings (I'd have to look back at my chicken scratch notes) that the BIOS actually found where lower then the preset XMP.

Of course your millage will very but if I could go back and save myself the hours of testing and just stop at my initial stable DDR4-3200 configuration I would. The Majority of people would be 100% satisfied with the pre-configured G.Skill XMP profile if my single experience, with my one ram kit, can be trusted

Also I was able to get the chips stable at 3400 and 3600 BUT the performance gain was minimal and the increased heat required to set the SOC voltage to 1.2 and then 1.25 lowed my overall long term performance. At 3200 the machine stayed stable and the boosted clock rates are always above 3.7 and below 80 degrees, even after 30+ minute on CPUID stress test, with the stock Wraith cooler. Don't believe spending money on a Noctua - NH-L9a would be worth the money VS hopefully upgrading the APU to a Ryzen 3000 series when they come out And unsure if the nh-l9x65 would REALLY fit in the case.

 

[Primerib]

It's all a lottery. What I did was set everything to AUTO and manually set the ram speed to DDR4-3200

I then saved and exited the BIOS.

I went back into the BIOS and recorded what timings where automatically generated across the board.

I then changed the settings to to the XMP profile and recorded the settings that come preset in that profile from G.Skill.

I then Manually set all the timings to the lowest number between the two profiles; The numbers that where left set to AUTO by the XMP profile where not touched.

That became the Best stable performance I found at the DDR4-3200 speed. I tried lowering the timings a bit more afterword but couldn't get the machine to post properly or be stable. I found that MOST of the settings in the XMP Profile either Matched what was automatically found by the BIOS Or where lower. There was one or two settings (I'd have to look back at my chicken scratch notes) that the BIOS actually found where lower then the preset XMP.

Of course your millage will very but if I could go back and save myself the hours of testing and just stop at my initial stable DDR4-3200 configuration I would. The Majority of people would be 100% satisfied with the pre-configured G.Skill XMP profile if my single experience, with my one ram kit, can be trusted

Also I was able to get the chips stable at 3400 and 3600 BUT the performance gain was minimal and the increased heat required to set the SOC voltage to 1.2 and then 1.25 lowed my overall long term performance. At 3200 the machine stayed stable and the boosted clock rates are always above 3.7 and below 80 degrees, even after 30+ minute on CPUID stress test, with the stock Wraith cooler. Don't believe spending money on a Noctua - NH-L9a would be worth the money VS hopefully upgrading the APU to a Ryzen 3000 series when they come out And unsure if the nh-l9x65 would REALLY fit in the case.

Funny. I just bought that Noctua yesterday. Mainly because I was sick of tying to shove the AMD cooler into that tiny case (I like to swap the 2.5 drives a lot) more than for heat reduction reasons, also have other SFF builds in mind that I could use it for and it seems to be one of a kind. As far as that G Skill RAM I found some okay timings, I can get it down around 15-16-16-16 and am not too upset but I really wanted C14 @3200 as that tends to be Ryzens best friend. I am still planning on returning my Kingston 2933 memory but if I can find someone selling their known B die 3200 sodimms I'll probably buy them just to have an extra set for said other projects.