The MSI B350 Tomahawk Motherboard Review: Gaming On a Budget
by Gavin Bonshor on March 12, 2018 10:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- MSI
- ATX
- Zen
- AM4
- B350
- Ryzen
- Tomahawk
- Raven Ridge
CPU Performance, Short Form
For our motherboard reviews, we use our short form testing method. These tests usually focus on if a motherboard is using MultiCore Turbo (the feature used to have maximum turbo on at all times, giving a frequency advantage), or if there are slight gains to be had from tweaking the firmware. We put the memory settings at the CPU manufacturers suggested frequency, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.
Video Conversion – Handbrake v1.0.2: link
Handbrake is a media conversion tool that was initially designed to help DVD ISOs and Video CDs into more common video formats. For HandBrake, we take two videos and convert them to x264 format in an MP4 container: a 2h20 640x266 DVD rip and a 10min double UHD 3840x4320 animation short. We also take the third video and transcode it to HEVC. Results are given in terms of the frames per second processed, and HandBrake uses as many threads as possible.
Compression – WinRAR 5.4: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2017. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test v2.1: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here. We are using the latest version of 3DPM, which has a significant number of tweaks over the original version to avoid issues with cache management and speeding up some of the algorithms.
Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7.1b4: link
The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 2-3 minutes on high end platforms.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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unlockproject - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
so is this MB.https://unlock85201.ac-page.com/startup
Myrandex - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
I despise this too :( although based on the other comment below I'm hoping it actually is 3.1!unlockproject - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
I'm hoping it actually is 3.1https://unlock85201.ac-page.com/startup
Myrandex - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
The Krait website for this board says the C is a 3.1 port: https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/B350-KRAIT-GAMINGAnd for this version of the motherboard it appears that it supports 3.1 for the Front Panel connectors, so if connected to a case the front plugs could be good! https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/B350-TOMAHAWK
Geranium - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link
Those are USB 3.0 AKA USB 3.1 G1, not real USB 3.1 AKA 3.1 G2 which B350 chipset supports.unlockproject - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
good Those are USB 3.0 AKA USB 3.1 G1, not real USB 3.1 AKA 3.1 G2 which B350https://linktr.ee/unlock.coach
unlockproject - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
So what gives with no USB 3.1 Gen2 from the B350 itself?https://unlockproject01.jimdofree.com/
unlockproject - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
new more getting newshttps://www.creativelive.com/student/unlock-projec...
vkristof - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link
The MSI B350 KRAIT GAMING motherboards supports TWO USB 3.1 Gen2 ports (one Type-A, one Type-C), but does it via an "ASMedia® ASM2142 Chipset". It shows the ASM 2142 both in the features and block diagram section of the motherboard manual. The block diagram shows the ASM2142 connected between the USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports and the B350 (PCI express lanes)So what gives with no USB 3.1 Gen2 from the B350 itself?
attractionsandplaces - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
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