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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drexnx - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
the RGB-LED header on the regular tomahawk is a reduced functionality version that only gives you those 7 color choices - not 16.7 million like it shouldSaabensippen - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
In the "board explorer" in the BIOS on my tomahawk it clearly identifies two of the rear usb ports as USB 3.1 Gen2. I have never tested the speeds so I do not know if they actually run at that. Also, I have read TERRIBLE things about the latest BIOS such as RAM refusing to run below 1.5v, vcore not going below 1.3, and fan curves not being adjustable anymore. I have not updated, still on 1.9 or whatever the one from a few months ago was.Geranium - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link
The board explorer showing wrong information. Couldn't find mention of USB 3.1 AKA USB 3.1 G2 on specification page.https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/B350-TOMAHAWK/Spec...
Saabensippen - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link
Yeah, I don't really know. The tomahawk arctic which is the same but white says that it has g2 so who knows. My BIOS says it's g2... It wouldn't be the first time that something reports that it's something other than what it is.vkristof - Friday, March 16, 2018 - link
This could be a function of the B350 FCH supporting USB 3.1 Gen2 per AMD's claims, but the higher speed not actually working reliably in the real world. That might be the reason that MB manufacturers have to add the Asmedia USB 3.1 Gen2 chip for their motherboards that actually claim Gen 2 ports.I'm somewhat surprised that I haven't seen any articles that detail this AMD Gen 2 wrinkle. Maybe that AMD reddit guy might respond...
Saabensippen - Thursday, March 22, 2018 - link
I would be interested to find out. I don't run external hard drives or anything that would benefit from it though.Saabensippen - Thursday, March 22, 2018 - link
Update: The latest BIOS 7A34v1F does not have any of these problems, although I had never personally experienced them with the earlier BIOS, only read about them. For me this board has lasted a year without any issues, running a 1700 at 3.75 at 1.264v. I have read about issues with it on forums and newegg (A lot of DOAs it seems) but never experienced any. I must be lucky. Also, the board explorer still says there are two USB 3.1 Gen2 ports on the back. At least one USB port from the header IDs as USB 3.1 Gen2 as well.barleyguy - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
I bought a B350 Tomahawk at launch and mine was terrible. I had two problems. The first was corruption on an m2 ssd. The second was that it wouldn't work properly with any sound card other than the the onboard. I tried usb and pcie sound cards, all very high end, and they had glitches. Tjis was true under both Windows 10 and Windows 7.In summary, might be an ok board, but the one I owned wasn't. I replaced mine with an Asus B350 Prime Plus, which resolved all issues.
Myrandex - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
FYI I bought mine at launch and have enjoyed it, but things did get better with bios updates too, especially with memory speed capabilities.Honed1967 - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link
All the way you right