Zackptg5

Asrock x570 Taichi Motherboard

This is a great motherboard but not without it's issues

• South Bridge Chipset Mod

  Like almost all x570 motherboards, the south bridge chipset gets really hot and so has an awful chipset fan on it. This stupid thing is loud and high pitched but there are a couple ways to fix this:

  1. Adjust the chipset fan curve so it doesn't turn on until it hits 70C or so (easiest but least effective)
  2. Replace the fan with a better one or passive heatsink (difficult due to the chipset being where the graphics card will be). Ultimately no need for this because option 3 is better
  3. Replace the thermal pads between the chipset and heatsink/fan assembly with a better thermal solution

  Option 1 is an easy first step but 3 is the real solution. The original idea and some help/advice was from this reddit thread
  The main point of this mod is to replace the existing thermal pads with a more thermally conductive solution. The tricky part is that at least part of this has to be non-electrically conductive so you don't fry your board. Parts you will need:

  1. Fujipoly XR-m Thermal Pad - this is the part that will be electrically insulative and as a result, the least thermally conductive. This is the most thermally conductive pad I could find though. You don't want to go thinner than this (0.5mm)
  2. 20x20x0.8mm Copper Shims - this is obviously very electrically conductive and so also very thermally conductive
  3. Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Thermal Paste - this is the most thermally conductive, non-electically conductive thermal paste I could find. 1 gram is more than enough
  Installation is easy:
  1. Unscrew/take off the large bottom heatsink
  2. Unscrew/take off the heatsink/fan assembly (screws on back of motherboard)
  3. Remove the 2 thermal pads on each heatsink that are for the chipset (don't touch the ones for the ssds- they're fine)
  4. Clean off everything the thermal pads were touching with Ethanol on a cutip or something (be careful with this - higher ethanol the better since water can obviously short your board)
  5. Cut the thermal pad sheet 2 match the size of the copper shim - you'll need 2 pieces
  6. Place one of the thermal pad pieces on the chipset - flatten it on and around the chipset, you don't want any air bubbles
  7. Place a copper shim centered on the thermal pad that's on the chipset
  8. Apply a thin layer of thermal paste to the top of the copper shim
  9. Put the heatsink/fan assembly back on and screw into place - screw until reasonable tight - don't overtighten it
  10. Place another thin layer of thermal paste on another copper shim
  11. Place a copper shim on the headsink/fan assembly where the old thermal pad was (thermal paste side down onto the assembly)
  12. Place another piece of thermal pad on top of the copper shim - flatten to work out air bubbles
  13. Place the top heatsink back on and screw into place

  I found that (with chipset fan off) with the original stock setup, SB chipset temps would sit in the low 60s when idle but quickly climb to 70C under load where the fans would kick on.
  With this mod, idle temps were in the mid 50's (idle temps really mean nothing though) but the load temp was around 63C. No need for annoying chipset fan anymore! :D

AMD Radeon 5700 XT Optimization

I found that the default settings were not optimal for my card (Gigabyte Gaming OC). The max fan speed was too low and so it frequently throttled. The good news is that this is fixable

• Optimzation Instructions - I use Adrenaline. Note that it has issues loading profiles sometimes (may have to load a profile twice)
  • Overclock/Undervolt - there's no real point in overclocking these cards any further. You get very minimal gain with much more noise and heat
    1. First thing to do is up the power limit to max (+50). This dictates the amount of power the card can use (acts as a ceiling)
    2. Core Clock Speeds were factory OC'd to 2079mhz already (reference is 1905). You can underclock this if you want and get significantly more undervolting because of it but I was happy with the performance/temps here
    3. These cards are overvolted by default due to QC issues. The first step to do is undervolt your card - this will yield lower temperatures and thus, less throttling. I undervolted my card from stock 1200mv to 1090mv (just try stuff and stress test it to test stability)
    4. I also overclocked the VRAM memory clock from 1750mhz to 1900
    5. I found no need for a custom fan curve here (using one would get rid of zero rpm which I like). I just changed the max fan speed to 55

  I found that with these settings, under load (stress test), gpu temps were reduced to the upper 70's, junction temps stayed around 90C, and memory temps in the upper 80's. This was much better than before and eliminated any throttling.
  For reference, Max junction temp is 110C and max memory temp is 105C (although you don't want to be near those if you can help it obviously)
  Note that the actual clock speed will be around 50mhz less than what you set though. So if you set it to 2000mhz, it'll typically max at around 1950mhz

  You can underclock the GPU and as a result, undervolt even more. I found that if I underclocked to 1955mhz, I could undervolt to 990mv and keep the stock fan settings. The gpu was practically silent under load but you will take a small performance hit

Ryzen Master Hyper-V Hack

Ryzen Master won't open if any kind of windows vm stuff is enabled (like Hyper-V). This can be fixed with a simple hex edit as outlined here