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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PeachNCream - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
Minor typo at the end of the first paragraph in the conclusion section: "...with a slight not..." should probably read "...with a slight nod..."With the modest red LED lighting, this might be a nice board to have inside a windowless case.
timecop1818 - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
> comes with a one-clock OC buttonpretty sure you mean one-click
Flunk - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
One would hope you can turn the lighting off if you want.And sometimes windowless cases can be hard to find. Last time I bought a case I really liked the NZXT s340, but there is no option for a solid side panel. There are hundred different colors, but not solid side panels. Get off my lawn!
PeachNCream - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
There's a screenshot of the LED controls in the article and it looks like there's a software switch you can use to shut the lighting down entirely.The windowless cases I've seen available recently are very much on the low budget end of the price (and quality) spectrum so yeah, I don't think solid panels are easily found once you step up to a mid-range tier product.
errorfree - Wednesday, March 21, 2018 - link
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Its getting harder every day to find PC hardware that's not about bling. F bling IMO! Manufactures need to have two lines of products. Adult line and 3 year old line.Errorcodeexpert - Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - link
The windowless cases I've seen available recently are very much on the low budget end of the price (and quality) spectrum so yeah, I don't think solid panels are easily found once you step up to a mid-range tier product. <a href="https://www.errorcodeexpert.com/how-to-fix-minecra... Minecraft error code 5</a>Errorcodeexpert - Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - link
right.. And sometimes windowless cases can be hard to find. Last time I bought a case I really liked the NZXT s340, but there is no option for a solid side panel. There are hundred different colors, but not solid side panels. Get off my lawn!https://www.errorcodeexpert.com/how-to-fix-minecra...
Geranium - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
No USB 3.1(G2) on a platform which have native USB 3.1(G2) on it!!??Hurr Durr - Monday, March 12, 2018 - link
It`s only fair: the missile is anacronistic, and so is this MB.