I still like my case (Coolermaster CM690 III), but there are a few aspects about it where you can now see that newer ones have made some design improvements. I’ll play around with the push vs pull when I have to work on the system anyway. I think that, considering that I have dust filters on my intakes, cleaning the radiator in a push configuration will also not be too much work. Once in a while I check what cases are on offer, but so far I haven’t found one I’d like to replace my current one.
Unfortunately I can only go from what I can read online, so it is a surprise that it makes such a large difference for you, but I don’t think I have the space in my case anyway to accommodate another layer of fans above the motherboard.
I only started doing minor mods recently, and so far they are all completely reversible, so I don’t want to start cutting holes just yet ;-). Considering we have 3 cats, I think it is safer for me to keep the dust filters. It is surprising how much stuff they catch, and I don’t want to end up having to clean all that from my radiator, even more so if I end up going for a push configuration.
The Aerocool Cylon is an interesting case I’ve only glanced at it but it looks very mod and AIO friendly so might be worth you checking out.
This all depends on your personal level of acceptable temps and the type of fan you use. For me as I pick fans that work really well as your average blower / puller and as rad fans I get much quieter operation and better temps by using fewer fans. All fans have dead zones so by lumping too many fans on one heatsink / rad you actually end up impeding airflow. I get better temps on my rad with two fans than 4 I only use 4 for aesthetic reasons and because by optimising elsewhere I minimised the temp impact to only about 2c.
Due to many people making sacrificial offerings (CPUs, memory kits, the blood of virgins, that kind of thing) to the PC gods in exchange for something, anything, for their AB350N Gaming boards the PC gods have decided to take pity on the people and have conjured up this one off offering; AB350N F23d-M
Thing is my tower 900 case will hold 20 fans, thats right 20! but the case is the size of a fridge and it cools just as good as one too lol, it does depend on case design this is why i rarely go for mid sized towers, i have always found them to be cramped and airflow impedance by silly front glass panels with no vents doesnt help either. having a case with a lot of breathing room works wonders for cooling. thi is why i can overclock with the fans set to silent, also the cpu watercooling in these is separated from the gpu dropping temps even further.
BUHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA… I didn’t like you when I first read the post… I laughed at work loud enough my team looked at me funny… also, I couldn’t log in to say THAAAANNNNKKKKKK YOOUUUUUUU! I am planning on getting a 2nd one of these its so rock solid so this, this is great!
Ya ever come to San Antonio TX, I will buy you a beer, or pour you a shot, choice is yours (as long as your 21+!)
Hello, first of all let me thank you for your excellent work.
I’m currently using the infamous Gigabyte AB350 Gaming (sigh), I saw you discontinuned your support for that board and of course I get your reason.
I’d like to know if the last supported bios you modded (F22b) exposes a LLC menu for my board because i flashed it but i could not find it? (Is it actually supported by my motherboard?)
The AB350 Gaming does not support LLC sadly. Just another reason why GB boards are not recommended by anyone but fanboys. If there had been more choice at launch last year I wouldn’t have gone with the Gaming 5 thats for sure.
BUHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA… I didn’t like you when I first read the post… I laughed at work loud enough my team looked at me funny… also, I couldn’t log in to say THAAAANNNNKKKKKK YOOUUUUUUU! I am planning on getting a 2nd one of these its so rock solid so this, this is great!
Ya ever come to San Antonio TX, I will buy you a beer, or pour you a shot, choice is yours (as long as your 21+!)
F23d downloaded from GB and Aorus sites screw everything up!!! Aida64/HWInfo64 both don’t detect BIOS, Chipset, Fans some temp sensors AND AMD GOP | FastBoot are broken again as in past GB Firmware… @ket 's modded firmware don’t cause these issues… Maybe GB should just put ket on retainer and pay him… I mean he’s already doing their work for them…
A lot of trouble here with the 23d firmware. Same config as 22d and after Windows login I am getting a kernel or driver fail and reboot the system. Three reboot and then the same situation. Sometimes Windows load but after some testing the blue screen come back.
Ket will be nice to get a mini tutorial with a basic config to get stable the system.
F23d downloaded from GB and Aorus sites screw everything up!!! Aida64/HWInfo64 both don’t detect BIOS, Chipset, Fans some temp sensors AND AMD GOP | FastBoot are broken again as in past GB Firmware… @ket 's modded firmware don’t cause these issues… Maybe GB should just put ket on retainer and pay him… I mean he’s already doing their work for them…
Hah that would be nice but I have it on good authority that theres lots of people at GB that sulk when people (testers) point out flaws that need addressing. Considering I’ve been objective and fair which has lead to a less than kind overall final impression of the work GB are doing on their firmware I’m pretty certain they won’t be contacting me
Firstly: Thank you for your efforts in helping those of us unfortunate enough to have purchased a (trash) Gigabyte AM4 motherboard.
Second: Last night I decided to flash your F23d bios for the X370-Gaming-K7.
To start, I flashed your version of F7a over the gigabyte F23d. Next, I flashed your F23 modded bios over the Gigabyte version. This posted and booted into windows.
Then, I loaded up bios, and “loaded optimized defaults”. After this point, the PC began boot looping with post code 54.
Do you have any suggestions as to how to fix it? I tried all possible combinations of the bios_sw and the dual_bios sw but nothing I do can get the board past POST code 54 (memory initialization error).
I’ve tried all my memory slots, I’ve tried different memory KITS, i’ve disconnected everything but GPU , keyboard, and memory, yet it won’t get past POST 54.
Anyways, I’m quite concerned now, because if I can’t fix this myself, I’ll be sending a motherboard for RMA that has modded BIOSes. What are the chances Gigabyte charges me / refuses repairs?
Since I can’t even get into bios, will they even read what’s currently on the chips when they repair them, or just replace them with pre-flashed bioses? Not sure on the procedure for RMA repairs at gigabyte.
ANYWAYS: In the meantime I’m washing my hands of the K7 and I’m looking at buying a Crosshair VI (if any are in stock in my city) or a Strix X370. Opinions?
@Hereric That sounds like you might have a bad memory stick, have you tried one stick at a time? I’d also take the CMOS battery out along with the PSU power cord, hit the power button 3-4 times, leave for a minute or so then try booting again. I have also heard stories where people have suspected their GB AM4 board of killing their memory sticks, just something to bare in mind there. As for replacement boards, the Asrock Fatal1ty Gaming X and Taichi are excellent. The X370-F is good too but its a bit over priced IMO and I definitely do not like the heatsink mounting on the X370-F for the chipset and VRMs its bloody awful. Fixable though if you have a dremel
It’s unlikely to be a damaged memory stick, as I tried to boot with each stick from my 2x16gb hynix kit as well as my 2x8gb team dark pros. I left the system unplugged with the CMOS battery out for over 30 minutes at one point last night, still same 54 code.
The strix seems to be the only (NON GIGABYTE) x370 motherboard available in my city currently, and a whole 2 days without my PC is too much for me, so the strix or POTENTIALLY the crosshair are my only options - it seems like every retailer stopped stocking AM4 boards in anticipation of X4xx series boards which is rather frustrating.
The Asus x370 Prime Pro is also available, waiting on the retailers to open up for me to inquire about crosshairs/taichis/gaming x.
Do you know of any method to flash these bios chips via JTAG or serial?
What’s wrong with the Strix’s heatsinks? Do the VRM’s get hot? What modifications are you suggesting? I have a Noctua D15 cooler.
the problem i have is my keyboard corsair k70 LUX didnt detect at all in BIOS menu ( to press Del, End , f12) and booting take much longer than before(use f22 from GB)
Have you flipped the bottom dip switch so only one ROM chip is active then used the other dip switch to try booting from each firmware image? If you have an official firmware on one ROM chip and a modified image on the other ROM chip and the system refuses to POST on both then it is extremely likely your board has decided to develop a physical fault. Even if you are using modded firmware on both ROM chips as you say initially things were fine its also safe to say its nothing to do with the flash process or firmware your board just developed a physical fault and thats all she wrote, as it were. Theres no DOS method outside of the modified flash utility tham I’m aware of that works on the GB boards. Prime Pro is a decent board, not my taste personally but it’s decent. The heatsinks on the Strixx just make very poor contact with the VRMs and chipset. The standoffs are too tall in the case of the VRM heatsink and the chipset heatsink has standoffs that are too tall and the heatsink itself fouls a tall IC so you would need to cut a small piece out of the heatsink then cut down the standoffs.
Try enabling the USB MSI option or setting it to Auto. I disabled it to work around an issue where every keyboard I tested failed to wake from the sleep state if allowed to enter the sleep state while in the UEFI. As for boot times, theres no reason why they would be slower at all only sleep states have been disabled by default for them which should only make things a bit snappier they definitely won’t slow things down.
Yeah I tried just about every combination of the two bios switches possible. Same error code unfortunately.
Will get started on the RMA process this weekend - If the new mobo won’t work with my 1700 i might have to get a 2700x for troubleshooting (the horror :P), hopefully the shitbox gigabyte board didn’t fry my 1700’s SOC.
If you were OCing while leaving most voltages on "Auto" with that K7… yup, sorry to say if it remained that way for a prolonged period that GB board more than likely fried something. The stupid at GB is strong they "recommend" a high voltage of 1.248v on the SoC and thus that is what the Aorus boards default to when that voltage setting is left on "Auto"… despite everyone in the whole wide world knowning you don’t need more than 1.15v on the SoC even when going for very high memory clocks. GB in their infinite "wisdom" are literally applying LN2 suicide levels of voltage with their "Auto" settings.
Whenever I’d get a new bios flashed I’d set my voltages manually due to the issues you mentioned - I was defaulting to SOC at 1.1 because it seemed to help get my memory running at 3200MT C14. 1.4V on DRAM isn’t particularly high, so hopefully my RAM is okay.
The only times the SOC or any voltage was on auto is right after flashing a BIOS.
If you need 1.1v SoC just for 3200 CL14 I’d be willing to say your CPU has a bum IMC and that could be whats now giving you the POST 54 error. Certainly not a definitive thing, but definitely a possibility.
I’m 33 
Maybe GB should just put ket on retainer and pay him… I mean he’s already doing their work for them…