Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12024/the-msi-b350-tomahawk-motherboard-review



Without key buzzwords such as 'RGB' and 'gaming', MSI is looking to target AMD users on a strict budget with the B350 Tomahawk. Compared to X370, the B350 boards lack multi-card graphics support, but at $85 the B350 Tomahawk looks to have a couple of tricks up its sleeve.

The MSI B350 Tomahawk Review

From first glance, the MSI B350 Tomahawk combines a very unique styling of shiny grey and black PCB, with a complimented set of small, but adequate, power delivery heatsinks. The rather thin PCH heat sink resembles a shield, and looks pretty fitting when compared to the rest of the boards styling. The B350 Tomahawk from MSI follows what seems to be a common trend for MSI in the bare components department, and uses components regularly found in boards of this price range. This includes the use of a Richtek RT8894A PWM controller running in 4+2 phase mode, with a compliment of averagely suited NIKOS MOSFETs used.

To keep costs down, the MSI B350 Tomahawk uses the budget oriented controllers, such as the Realtek ALC892 audio codec and a Realtek 8111H network controller. Onboard video includes a HDMI 1.4 port, a DVI-D port and VGA. Users with an APU expecting a DisplayPort will have to look at pricier motherboard options.

While the B350 Tomahawk does technically support 2-way CrossFire, there is only a single PCIe 3.0 x16 slot featured with a second slot which actually runs at PCIe 2.0 x4; there are a further two PCIe 2.0 x1 slots as well as two PCI slots. Visually, the B350 Tomahawk features LED lighting due to four banks of red LEDs. There is  also an LED RGB header.

Storage comes via four SATA 6Gb/s ports, two of which are vertical on the board, and a single M.2 port. There are also four USB 3.0 ports on the rear (three Type-A, one Type-C), four USB 3.0 ports capable from the internal headers, two USB 2.0 ports on the rear, and two USB 2.0 headers. There is a single USB 3.1 Type-C featured, but further ports have been omitted thanks to a limitation on the B350 chipset. There is the odd scenario of MSI not including any USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports on the motherboard, especially as the chipset supports them.

It is clear that MSI's focus is system builders and users looking for a wallet-friendly low cost option, but without sacrificing on component quality and overall performance. Throughout our testing, we saw very comparable results within the testing against an array of X370 options. For a very basic board featuring a little LED backlighting, power consumption seems in line with similar boards on paper, and when under load, the results are favorable for MSI due to the limited features. That being said, the MSI B350 was drawing more power than the other B350 we have tested.

Performance on the B350 Tomahawk was a relatively stable. Our performance graphs shows that the B350 chipset is certainly on par with the X370 chipset. The B350 target market is more cost sensitive, so using mid-range Realtek hardware will be a standard, but this is something that this price segment is certainly used to. The MSI B350 Tomahawk takes a very solid place in the budget motherboard segment, along with similar priced ATX B350 motherboards such as the Gigabyte AB350-Gaming and the ASRock AB350 Gaming K4.

Other AnandTech Reviews for AMD’s Ryzen CPUs and X370/B350

To read specifically about the X370/B350 chip/platform and the specifications therein, our deep dive into what it is can be found at this link.

Ryzen 7 1700 Overclocking

Users on a budget who wanted to squeeze a little extra performance from their Ryzen processors will be pleased to know the MSI B350 Tomahawk comes with a one-click OC button, but only through software. A disadvantage to this feature is usually over-volting, to ensure the processor is running with enough headroom for stability. Speaking of over-volting, practically all of the X370/B350 motherboards tested thus far have over-volted, even when manually overclocking; this is often trial and error, and although a little bit of extra voltage (0.1-0.3 V) is unlikely to hurt in the grand scheme of things, extra voltage does account for an increase in thermals from the chip, which leads to a rise in power consumption.

AMD's best Ryzen 7 processors can overclock to 4.2 GHz on ambient cooling, while the Ryzen 7 1700 that we use in our testing can go towards 4.0 GHz quite happily at around 1.375 volts. 

Methodology

Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with POV-Ray and OCCT to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.

For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from previous testing, starts off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed, and the process repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (100ºC+). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.

Overclocking Results

The Ryzen 7 1700 processor we are using has a 3.0 GHz base core clock speed and a 3.7 GHz turbo, and is rated at 65 W TDP (defined at base frequency). When overclocked to 3.9 GHz with 1.375 volts, the overall power consumption taken at the wall was pushing around 196 W at peak, which is a 63 W increase on the stock performance.

POV-Ray @ 3.9GHz

Power OCCT (w/GTX 980) - Overclocking

Our testing shows that nothing is lost when using this B350 motherboard to overclock a Ryzen processor.



Board Features

The B350 Tomahawk is a solid option given the component choice and offers virtually everything you would expect from a $100 offering. One of the defining features of this particular B350 model is that it does technically support two-way CrossFireX multi graphics cards configurations. The top PCIe 3.0 slot, which has been reinforced with MSI’s Steel Armor, operates at x16 with a single GPU, whereas the second slot operates at x4, but is only PCIe 2.0. 

MSI B350 Tomahawk ATX Motherboard
Warranty Period 3 Years
Product Page Link
Price $95
Size ATX
CPU Interface AM4
Chipset AMD B350
Memory Slots (DDR4) Four DDR4
Supporting 64GB
Dual Channel
Up to 3200 MHz
Video Outputs HDMI 1.4, DVI-D, VGA
Network Connectivity Realtek 8111H Gigabit
Onboard Audio Realtek ALC892
PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU) 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16
PCIe Slots for Other (from PCH) 1 x PCIe 2.0 x4
2 x PCIe 2.0 x1
2 x PCI x1
Onboard SATA Four, RAID 0/1/10
Onboard M.2 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4, on Front
USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) N/A
USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) 1 x Type-C Rear Panel
3 x Type-A Rear Panel
2 x Header
USB 2.0 2 × Header
2 x Rear Panel
Power Connectors 1 x 24-pin ATX
1 x 8-pin CPU
Fan Headers 1 x CPU (4-pin)
4 x System (4-pin)
1 x System/Pump (4-pin)
IO Panel 3 x USB 3.0 Type-A
1 x USB 3.0 Type-C
2 x USB 2.0 Type-A
1 x Network RJ-45 (Realtek)
1 x HDMI 1.4
1 x VGA
1 x DVI-D
1 x Combo PS/2
6 x 3.5 mm Audio Jacks

Even though the B350 Tomahawk doesn’t have support for NVIDIA SLI, users looking to utilize more than one graphics card should look towards the X370 chipset as this has far better options, and X370 supports SLI too. An interesting element is that this board does not have any USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports, despite the chipset supporting them.

Visual Inspection

The MSI B350 Tomahawk conforms to the usual ATX sizing (305 x 244mm) and features a shiny grey PCB with red accents on the power delivery heat sinks. This is a budget focused board, so the PCB is scarce beyond the aesthetics, but this is normal for a board of its price range.

On networking, the Realtek 8111H controller is located on the rear panel, and for audio is the Realtek ALC892 codec. Based on our performance numbers, the ALC892 as the low-end 7.1 option does perform a little bit worse than the slightly more expensive ALC1150 and ALC1220 codecs. The B350 Tomahawk does not feature a S/PDIF output, but rather it makes use of an additional 3.5mm audio jack which puts the total up to six on this particular model. The audio component section features an isolation line from the rest of the PCB to reduce inductance between the digital and audio traces, but there is no EMI shield on the codec. There are a set of Nippon Chemi-con gold audio capacitors to support the on-board audio.

There is a full compliment of DRAM slots on the MSI B350 Tomahawk, with support for up to a maximum of 64GB of DDR4, and the motherboard is listed up to DDR4-3200 for Ryzen CPUs/APUs or DDR4-2400 for Bristol Ridge APUs.

Underneath the darker grey heatsinks is a formidable (for the price range) set of midrange NIKOS MOSFETs, supplemented and controlled by a single AMD SVI2 compliant Richtek RT8894A PWM phase controller. The phases run in 4+2 configuration with the two being designed for the APU and SoC segments of the chip. With a lot of heat (pun intended) on motherboard manufacturers to improve the power delivery cooling, MSI has gone with a very reasonable offering of a metal bulk for better heat dissipation. It is nice to see a lower end board feature more function than flash, and a better design than some RGB enabled plastic.

Some users may care that the heat sinks do not feature RGB LED lighting, or any lighting for that fact, but MSI has implemented red LEDs on the rear to provide an ambient red glow (of sorts) when installed into a “closed” chassis. There is an additional 4-pin RGB header towards the bottom of the board.

One of the biggest differences between the B350 and X370 chipsets is storage support: the B350 chipset has native support for four SATA 6Gb/s ports, while the X370 chipset supports six. On the MSI B350 Tomahawk, two of the SATA ports are angled while the other two are vertical with the board. Typically this vertical arrangement is seen on cheaper motherboards. Along with the SATA ports is a single PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, suitable for NVMe drives up to 110mm.

On the rear panel, from left to right, there is a combination PS/2 connector, two USB 2.0 ports, a VGA video output, a DVI-D video output, a HDMI port, a USB 3.0 Type-C port, three USB 3.0 Type-A ports, a network port, and the audio jacks.

In the Box

The MSI B350 Tomahawk has a fairly limited set of accessories, but with that said, more than enough is included for an initial setup. We get the following:

  • Driver Disk
  • User & Quick Start guide
  • AMD Screw CPU Cooler guide
  • Rear I/O Plate
  • Two SATA Cables (One right angled and one straight)
  • Thank you card



BIOS

MSI's Click BIOS 5 interface is usually seen as a good intro to BIOS options. It has a very easy to use 'Easy' mode upon entry, with the core information about the CPU and the hardware installed in the top third, while the rest of the screen gives different options for information windows, flashing the BIOS, and others. Two of the key elements in the EZ mode are the one button overclock and XMP tools in the top left, called GAME BOOST and A-XMP.

With GAME BOOST enabled, the system enabled an overclock on our Ryzen 7 1700 processor, to a safe and meagre 3.4GHz clock speed, but the disconcerting thing was the sheer amount of voltage the board felt like it needed for maximum stability. With GAME BOOST enabled, the B350 Tomahawk essentially removes AMDs Cool’n’Quiet, sets a x34 multiplier, and a relatively large 1.4 volts on the CPU. Compared to our manual overclocks, this is very inefficient - we can run 3.9 GHz at 1.375 volts.

Other notable and useful options include a switch to enable support for WHQL support for Windows 10, a BIOS Log review to see what changes have been made in the BIOS, and the Hardware Monitor interface, which controls the fans with a user adjustable multi-point temperature/power curve. The fans can be adjusted between DC and PWM modes here, and be controlled individually.

The BIOS has a more advanced mode by pressing F7. The finer details of the system can be adjusted here, such as controller settings, manual overclocking settings, updating the BIOS, adjusting overclocking profiles, and the Board Explorer to see what is being recognized as attached.

For the extra overclocking settings, there is a Normal mode and Expert mode, with the latter giving a few more options. There is a sufficient range of options here to hit our peak overclocks, however the B350 line typically has a few features missing, such as the lack of an external clock generatior, which means control over the base clock of the processor is restricted.

 

Software

MSI's software revolves around the Command Center. The utility is a hub for what is seen in most of the BIOS: fan curve profiles, overclocking options for CPU/DRAM, and hardware information. 

Also bundled in the software is the MSI Gaming App. This offers a selection of three profiles, 'OC Mode', 'Gaming Mode' and 'Silent Mode', with the aim of the first two to boost overall system performance. That being said, we didn't detect any difference in the CPU clock speed or memory frequency when using the first two. 

Although the B350 Tomahawk only features red LED lighting, MSI includes a single RGB header for further customization. To adjust the LED settings on this board, the Gaming App software has a variety of effects, such as breathing/flashing.

The MSI Gaming LAN Manager is a utility for network traffic shaping. This software allows for the throttling of network capable applications, so a user can direct bandwidth to where it is needed. The interface is a cFos-like implementation, but not as detailed as a Killer device for sure.

The best utility of the bunch is MSI's Live Update 6. For a number of years, this application has been the forerunner for quick and easy updating of all installed drivers and software relating to the motherboard. When running an automatic scan, it also lists pre-approved software that is not installed as well. Live Update 6 also allows for quick and easy updating of the BIOS.

Despite using the budget Realtek ALC892 audio codec, MSI has paired it up with the Nahimic 2 audio software. With a similar feel and look to the Creative SoundBlaster software, the most notable aspect is the ability to cycle through a variety of different presets ranging from gaming, to music and films. Also featured is a range of settings on how to adjust the microphone sound over voice communication software such as Skype or Discordor others.

There are also options for streamers, which include the Nahimic Audio Launchpad that allows users to allocate sound bites and audio samples to specific key binds; it has shades and the familiarity of the Elgato Stream Deck, but without the complication or the need to spend $100+ on additional hardware.



Test Bed

As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

Test Setup
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 1700, 65W, $300,
8 Cores, 16 Threads, 3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo)
Motherboard MSI B350 Tomahawk (BIOS 7A34v19)
Cooling Thermaltake Floe Riing RGB 360
Power Supply Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200W Gold PSU
Memory 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400
Video Card ASUS GTX 980 STRIX (1178/1279 Boost)
Hard Drive Crucial MX300 1TB
Case Open Test Bed
Operating System Windows 10 Pro

Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.

Many thanks to...

Thank you to ASUS for providing us with GTX 980 Strix GPUs. At the time of release, the STRIX brand from ASUS was aimed at silent running, or to use the marketing term: '0dB Silent Gaming'. This enables the card to disable the fans when the GPU is dealing with low loads well within temperature specifications. These cards equip the GTX 980 silicon with ASUS' Direct CU II cooler and 10-phase digital VRMs, aimed at high-efficiency conversion. Along with the card, ASUS bundles GPU Tweak software for overclocking and streaming assistance.

The GTX 980 uses NVIDIA's GM204 silicon die, built upon their Maxwell architecture. This die is 5.2 billion transistors for a die size of 298 mm2, built on TMSC's 28nm process. A GTX 980 uses the full GM204 core, with 2048 CUDA Cores and 64 ROPs with a 256-bit memory bus to GDDR5. The official power rating for the GTX 980 is 165W.

The ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB (or the full name of STRIX-GTX980-DC2OC-4GD5) runs a reasonable overclock over a reference GTX 980 card, with frequencies in the range of 1178-1279 MHz. The memory runs at stock, in this case 7010 MHz. Video outputs include three DisplayPort connectors, one HDMI 2.0 connector and a DVI-I.

Further Reading: AnandTech's NVIDIA GTX 980 Review

Thank you to Crucial for providing us with MX200/MX300 SSDs. Crucial stepped up to the plate as our benchmark list grows larger with newer benchmarks and titles, and the 1TB units are strong performers. The MX200s are based on Marvell's 88SS9189 controller and using Micron's 16nm 128Gbit MLC flash, these are 7mm high, 2.5-inch drives rated for 100K random read IOPs and 555/500 MB/s sequential read and write speeds. The 1TB models we are using here support TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 (eDrive) encryption and have a 320TB rated endurance with a three-year warranty.

Further Reading: AnandTech's Crucial MX200 (250 GB, 500 GB & 1TB) Review

Thank you to Corsair for providing us with Vengeance LPX DDR4 Memory

Corsair kindly sent a set of their Vengeance LPX low profile, high-performance memory. The heatsink is made of pure aluminum to help remove heat from the sticks and has an eight-layer PCB. The heatsink is a low profile design to help fit in spaces where there may not be room for a tall heat spreader; think a SFF case or using a large heatsink.

Benchmark Overview

For our testing, depending on the product, we attempt to tailor the presentation of our global benchmark suite down into what users who would buy this hardware might actually want to run. For CPUs, our full test suite is typically used to gather data and all the results are placed into Bench, our benchmark database for users that want to look at non-typical benchmarks or legacy data. For motherboards, we run our short form CPU tests and our system benchmark tests which focus on non-typical and non-obvious performance metrics that are the focal point for specific groups of users.

The benchmarks fall into several areas:

Short Form CPU

Our short form testing script uses a straight run through of a mixture of known apps or workloads, and requires about four hours. These are typically the CPU tests we run in our motherboard suite, to identify any performance anomalies.

CPU Short Form Benchmarks
Three Dimensional Particle Movement v2.1 (3DPM) 3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, derived from my academic research years looking at particle movement parallelism. The coding for this tool was rough, but emulates the real world in being non-CompSci trained code for a scientific endeavor. The code is unoptimized, but the test uses OpenMP to move particles around a field using one of six 3D movement algorithms in turn, each of which is found in the academic literature.
The second version of this benchmark is similar to the first, however it has been re-written in VS2012 with one major difference: the code has been written to address the issue of false sharing. If data required by multiple threads, say four, is in the same cache line, the software cannot read the cache line once and split the data to each thread - instead it will read four times in a serial fashion. The new software splits the data to new cache lines so reads can be parallelized and stalls minimized.
WinRAR 5.4 WinRAR is a compression based software to reduce file size at the expense of CPU cycles. We use the version that has been a stable part of our benchmark database through 2015, and run the default settings on a 1.52GB directory containing over 2800 files representing a small website with around thirty half-minute videos. We take the average of several runs in this instance.
POV-Ray 3.7.1 b4 POV-Ray is a common ray-tracing tool used to generate realistic looking scenes. We've used POV-Ray in its various guises over the years as a good benchmark for performance, as well as a tool on the march to ray-tracing limited immersive environments. We use the built-in multithreaded benchmark.
HandBrake v1.0.2 HandBrake is a freeware video conversion tool. We use the tool in to process two different videos into x264 in an MP4 container - first a 'low quality' two-hour video at 640x388 resolution to x264, then a 'high quality' ten-minute video at 4320x3840, and finally the second video again but into HEVC. The low-quality video scales at lower performance hardware, whereas the buffers required for high-quality tests can stretch even the biggest processors. At current, this is a CPU only test.
7-Zip 9.2 7-Zip is a freeware compression/decompression tool that is widely deployed across the world. We run the included benchmark tool using a 50MB library and take the average of a set of fixed-time results.
DigiCortex v1.20 The newest benchmark in our suite is DigiCortex, a simulation of biologically plausible neural network circuits, and simulates the activity of neurons and synapses. DigiCortex relies heavily on a mix of DRAM speed and computational throughput, indicating that systems which apply memory profiles properly should benefit and those that play fast and loose with overclocking settings might get some extra speed up.


System Benchmarks

Our system benchmarks are designed to probe motherboard controller performance, particularly any additional USB controllers or the audio controller. As general platform tests we have DPC Latency measurements and system boot time, which can be difficult to optimize for on the board design and manufacturing level.

System Benchmarks
Power Consumption One of the primary differences between different motherboards is power consumption. Aside from the base defaults that every motherboard needs, things like power delivery, controller choice, routing, and firmware can all contribute to how much power a system can draw. This increases for features such as PLX chips and multi-gigabit ethernet.
Non-UEFI POST Time The POST sequence of the motherboard becomes before loading the OS, and involves pre-testing of onboard controllers, the CPU, the DRAM and everything else to ensure base stability. The number of controllers, as well as firmware optimizations, affect the POST time a lot. We test the BIOS defaults as well as attempt a stripped POST.
Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.2.5 Testing onboard audio is difficult, especially with the numerous amount of post-processing packages now being bundled with hardware. Nonetheless, manufacturers put time and effort into offering a 'cleaner' sound that is loud and of a high quality. RMAA, with version 6.2.5 (newer versions have issues), under the right settings can be used to test the signal-to-noise ratio, signal crossover, and harmonic distortion with noise.
USB Backup USB ports can come from a variety of sources: chipsets, controllers or hubs. More often than not, the design of the traces can lead to direct impacts on USB performance as well as firmware level choices relating to signal integrity on the motherboard.
DPC Latency Another element is deferred procedure call latency, or the ability to handle interrupt servicing. Depending on the motherboard firmware and controller selection, some motherboards handle these interrupts quicker than others. A poor result could lead to delays in performance, or for example with audio, a delayed request can manifest in distinctly audible pauses, pops or clicks.
 


System Performance

Not all motherboards are created equal. On the face of it, they should all perform the same and differ only in the functionality they provide - however, this is not the case. The obvious pointers are power consumption, but also the ability for the manufacturer to optimize USB speed, audio quality (based on audio codec), POST time and latency. This can come down to manufacturing process and prowess, so these are tested.

Power Consumption

Power consumption was tested on the system while in a single ASUS GTX 980 GPU configuration with a wall meter connected to the Thermaltake 1200W power supply. This power supply has ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.

While this method for power measurement may not be ideal, and you feel these numbers are not representative due to the high wattage power supply being used (we use the same PSU to remain consistent over a series of reviews, and the fact that some boards on our test bed get tested with three or four high powered GPUs), the important point to take away is the relationship between the numbers. These boards are all under the same conditions, and thus the differences between them should be easy to spot.

Power Long Idle (w/GTX 980)Power OS Idle (w/GTX 980)Power OCCT (w/GTX 980)

On the whole when compared to the other X370/B350 motherboards on test, the MSI B350 Tomahawk sits relatively average. At load however, there are no real advantages to being a budget B350 board.

Non-UEFI POST Time

Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we look at the POST Boot Time using a stopwatch. This is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.)

Non UEFI POST Time

Most of the POST times on X370 seem to be in the same ball-park, differing by a second or two for the most part.

Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.2.5

Rightmark:AA indicates how well the sound system is built and isolated from electrical interference (either internally or externally). For this test we connect the Line Out to the Line In using a short six inch 3.5mm to 3.5mm high-quality jack, turn the OS speaker volume to 100%, and run the Rightmark default test suite at 192 kHz, 24-bit. The OS is tuned to 192 kHz/24-bit input and output, and the Line-In volume is adjusted until we have the best RMAA value in the mini-pretest. We look specifically at the Dynamic Range of the audio codec used on the rear panel of the board.

Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.2.5: Dynamic Range

In an expected showing, the Realtek ALC892 comes reasonably close to the ALC1220 options, but can't hit the high.

DPC Latency

Deferred Procedure Call latency is a way in which Windows handles interrupt servicing. In order to wait for a processor to acknowledge the request, the system will queue all interrupt requests by priority. Critical interrupts will be handled as soon as possible, whereas lesser priority requests such as audio will be further down the line. If the audio device requires data, it will have to wait until the request is processed before the buffer is filled.

If the device drivers of higher priority components in a system are poorly implemented, this can cause delays in request scheduling and process time. This can lead to an empty audio buffer and characteristic audible pauses, pops and clicks. The DPC latency checker measures how much time is taken processing DPCs from driver invocation. The lower the value will result in better audio transfer at smaller buffer sizes. Results are measured in microseconds.

Deferred Procedure Call Latency

None of the boards tested thus far have been optimised for DPC latency, although all of the test boards managed to squeeze under 150 microseconds with relative ease. The B350 Tomahawk does fall behind from the ASRock boards in our testing by around 21 microseconds; not a massive difference in real world scenarios however.



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.

Handbrake v0.9.9 H.264: LQHandbrake v0.9.9 H.264: HQHandbrake v0.9.9 H.264: 4K60

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.

WinRAR 5.0.1 Compression Test

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.

3DPM: Movement Algorithm Tester (Multi-threaded)

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.

POV-Ray @ 3.9GHz

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.

7-Zip 9.2 Compress/Decompress Benchmark



Gaming Performance

Ashes of the Singularity

Seen as the holy child of DirectX12, Ashes of the Singularity (AoTS, or just Ashes) has been the first title to actively go explore as many of DirectX12s features as it possibly can. Stardock, the developer behind the Nitrous engine which powers the game, has ensured that the real-time strategy title takes advantage of multiple cores and multiple graphics cards, in as many configurations as possible.

Ashes of The Singularity on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB

Rise Of The Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story.

One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 3 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.

Rise of The Tomb Raider on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB

Thief

Thief has been a long-standing title in PC gamers hearts since the introduction of the very first iteration which was released back in 1998 (Thief: The Dark Project). Thief as it is simply known rebooted the long-standing series and renowned publisher Square Enix took over the task from where Eidos Interactive left off back in 2004. The game itself utilises the fluid Unreal Engine 3 engine and is known for optimised and improved destructible environments, large crowd simulation and soft body dynamics.

Thief on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB

Total War: WARHAMMER

Not only is the Total War franchise one of the most popular real-time tactical strategy titles of all time, but Sega delve into multiple worlds such as the Roman Empire, Napoleonic era and even Attila the Hun, but more recently they nosedived into the world of Games Workshop via the WARHAMMER series. Developers Creative Assembly have used their latest RTS battle title with the much talked about DirectX 12 API so that this title can benefit from all the associated features that comes with it. The game itself is very CPU intensive and is capable of pushing any top end system to their limits.

Total War: WARHAMMER on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB



Conclusions

The MSI B350 Tomahawk is targeted at gamers looking for a cheaper option to supplement their new AMD Ryzen processor, but without making too many sacrifices in key and important areas such as connectivity. The B350 chipset bridges the gap between the ultra-basic A320 and premium X370 chipsets, and the MSI B350 Tomahawk is a good example of why B350 is more than another budget chipset. The B350 Tomahawk sits as the top board of its bottom range, with a slight nod to more aesthetic applications over other options. 

While not widely considered a motherboard with tons of overclocking potential, mainly due to the 'averageness' of the B350 chipset, the B350 Tomahawk easily managed to push our Ryzen 7 1700 ($290) processor as far as any other AM4 motherboard we have tested thus far. The 4+2 power delivery certainly held up its end of the performance bargain. For those worried about VRM temperatures, even with 1.375 V running through our CPU , the heatsinks caused no issues with our test bed.

Feature wise, there are a few options bundled above the B350 chipset that might make the Tomahawk appeal. The PCB separation for the audio coincides with the best ALC892 performing AM4 board we have tested so far, and the PCIe slot protection for discrete graphics is a plus for systems that get moved and heavy GPUs in place. Legacy afficinados might like the PCI slots as well. That being said, in some areas, there isn't anything additional: only four SATA ports, only USB 3.0 support (one Type-C port), and the base Realtek audio/networking combination. Also included is a single M.2 port which allows for use of the latest and fastest consumer focused NVMe (M.2 22110) SSDs; this can be found just underneath the top PCIe 3.0 x16 slot. It is odd that MSI hasn't included any of the USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports that the chipset supports, however.

The decision here could come based on the price difference between the B350 Tomahawk and MSI’s own entry level X370 Gaming Plus motherboard ($110). The differences on the surface look minuscule, and aside from minor aesthetical disparity and NVIDIA SLI support, as well as two extra SATA ports, they could be considered fraternal twins. 

For a user on a budget that wants at least some frills with a Ryzen 3, 5 or 7 processor, the B350 Tomahawk ticks most of the boxes and with a base styling, ample connections, and some ports. For around $95 at Amazon.com, the Tomahawk hits near the mark based on the features and with consistent performance to back it up, and this could be a good $100 option on the entirety of the AM4 chipset. 

AM4 Reviews

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