Upgrading from 1700X to 5800X on B450 MSI Tomahawk (non-MAX)

Hi all,

I am upgrading my processor from 1700X to 5800X on a B450 MSI Tomahawk motherboard and created this post mainly for myself to edit as I go along and also perhaps to share some information for those with similar hardware. B450/5000 -compatibitily is at this point a new feature and I found little information/confirmation on compatibility and other issues as of march 2021.

First, my original system specs:

Motherboard: B450 Tomahawk (MS-7C02), BIOS 7C02v1H3 (see below)

Memory: 4x G.Skill Ripjaws V 8GB (F4-3200C16-8GVKB) (Two Samsung B/C die and two Hynix C-die as reported by Thaiphoon163) at 3200CL18.

Processor: Ryzen 1700X with stock clocks, virtualization on. Thermalright ARO-M140 for cooling

PSU: Corsair RM650. GPU: MSI Gaming X 5700 (modified ROM, clocks 1900/1750, 1060mV) Storage: Intel 660p m.2 ssd, 2x samsung 860 SSD (1TB and 2TB), Seagate 2TB HDD. Operating system: Windows10 on the m.2. Soundcard + a whole bunch of USB devices, multiple keyboards and mice, game controllers, guitar amplifiers etc.

The memory would not run stable at higher speeds or lower latencies. Virtualization is on for WSL2.

CPU-Z benchmark (version 17.01.64) reported 370 points for single-thread and 4330 points for multi-thread benchmarks (400/4340 with virtualization off)

Unigine Superposition benchmark 1080p Medium reports around 15200 points and is at some stages clearly CPU-limited (GPU utilization significantly less than 100%)

The system was tuned for stability in favour of performance.

To begin, installing the latest BIOS. The MSI website was down for most part of the day, but when it was operational again I downloaded the latest AGESA 1.2.0.0 BIOS 7C02v1H3.ROM with support for 5000-series, copied it to a USB stick (FAT32) and renamed it to MSI.ROM. Power off, insert USB to BIOS FLASHBACK+ port in the back, press the update button. This went smoothly and was compatible with the 1700X.

The hardware installation is what a hardware installation is, luckily there are many excellent videos and other information available.

[Insert lots of coffee and swearing here]

After installation the system booted (rather) normally, Windows spent some time installing new hardware, and after that was running without hiccups. I set the memory timings to XMP first option 3200CL16 and virtualization on from BIOS and was good to go.

CPU-Z reports around 670+ for single thread and 6820+ for multi, so the improvement was rather substantial. Superposition score was a few points shy of 16000. Flight Simulator runs at 60fps most of the time at 1080p.

The processor was running rather hot (80+C) at times for my taste, so I changed PBO from BIOS to 95W TDP. Benchmarks or game performance did not change noticeably as a result.

Running power tests with OCCT resulted in the processor flatlining at around 80C and motherboard VRM around 76C. Clocks around 4.8 GHz with all cores.

All in all, upgrading an old Ryzen B450 system with a ZEN3 processor is definitely worthwhile and hassle-free, and I don't think there is an immediate need to switch to faster memory/new motherboard.

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TL;DR: Latest MSI B450 Tomahawk BIOS 7C02v1H3 supports both first-gen Zen and Zen3 processors. MSI Tomahawk B450 can handle 5800X just fine.

I have a B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC, so thanks for doing this!

i was also thinking of buying 1st get ryzen and 400 series motherboard, so i could uppgrade to zen3 in couple of years (all used)...

curently on 8320e

80 degrees is perfectly normal/fine for a 5800x

Thank you for your work and time!

I just bought a cheap 1600AF and MSI B450 Tomahawk Max last week. Hoping it'll boot 😀

Yeah also running a 5900x on a b450 and it's been Amazing. Zero problems

I have a B450 Tomahawk non Max and running the beta, though not the latest iteration of the beta.

I started on a 2700x, then 3800x and now 5800x.

I am using 3600mhz CL15 RAM, with the CPU PBO enabled and -20 offset.

Cores hit 4.85ghz all core with Aida64 stress test

My gripe with updating non-Max b450 tomahawk was having to set fan curves using Dragon Center for zen2 support.

Did they change that with the zen3 bios?

Fans will have 3 presets, non adjustable for rpm and temp pts.

I've switched from 2600 to 5800x also and have a x570 aorus elite with 2x 240mm radiator setup here.

I suggest you use use stock settings with curve optimizer ON, with -15, as it will apply less voltage. You can afterwards enable the overboost option from +200mhz. It will be a bit cooler AND reach 5.025ghz on all cores in my machine.

Nevertheless, my R20 best multicore score (~6150) was obtained with -20 and 0mhz overboost, since boosting to 5.025ghz(+200mhz) with -20 was to much of a voltage cut for me.

Still needs tweaking, because this is straight out of the box and applied to all cores. I'm sure tweaking the cores individually will provide higher clock speed and better thermals.

I got 5800X and ASUS TUF B450 Plus last week. Had to undervolt the CPU. In normal conditions, CPU stays under 45 degress Celsius. Extremely happy with this as those two extra cores (over 5600 that I initially though of buying) are helping me in creating more containers/VMs.

I have a b450 gaming plus and my journey hasn't been as smooth as yours. Upon flashing the new bios, my windows install became corrupt and I had to reinstall, not too big of a deal. The biggest hassle has been the heat though and not the sustained heat. Most games will stay around 60 to low 70s with it only getting higher if I'm recording as well. Rendering videos does get pretty toasty and gets up to about 88c on an hour long render. Other than that my biggest issue has honestly been playing rocket league weirdly enough. Temps spike pretty high when opening most games but it's usually no higher than 80c. Whereas with rocket league the cpu will shoot up to 90 briefly when i open the game and whenever I get into the match. Mind you this is with settings the voltage go 1.287, running it anything else and the system shuts off in rocket league.