Motherboard manufacturers have been lying about VRM phase counts for years.

[@NotThatGuyJD]

BZ: 20:28 "That's it for the video." Me: looks at 29:44 run time, not surprised at all.

[@Hajdew]

0:02

[@bookworm8415]

Pretty par for the course, honestly. I think id have felt disappointed otherwise.

[@Manysdugjohn]

This is classic zoid.

[@antagonist99]

Listening to Buildzoid rage at mainboard manufacturers really never gets old.

[@georgiedagreek2734]

Right

[@AaronShenghao]

The “six gear power shifting” thing is a software feature on these boards. Where you can manually control and/or see how many phases the board uses to deliver the power to CPU. It mainly is a power saving feature, by default it uses all phases.

[@tudalex]

So does it say that it is using 6 phases in software?

[@gordong11]

Post codes are another frustration with motherboard makers. The post codes are already built into the BIOS so it's dirt cheap to implement yet only the highest and motherboards get it. You'd figure every motherboard by now would have it because it makes troubleshooting so much easier. Yet they pretend it's a premium option.

[@tourmaline07]

Couldn't agree more. Two segment LED displays can't cost more than a penny or two?

[@-eMpTy-]

Market segmentation. It's worse now than it was back then. I remember boards like the ASRock P67 Pro3. 8+2 phase VRM, postcode/debug LED, power and reset switch onboard and it was $99.

[@AngelicHunk]

@@-eMpTy- My decade-old, entry Biostar board has a 2-digit display. Ever since I started looking to build my own PC again a couple years ago, I can't believe that almost no manufacturer puts decent debugging tools on their mobos anymore.

[@TheRoetker]

Because we (who want post codes) are are tiny minority compared to the masses who don't care. They, those masses, just want all the RGB in the world.

[@tourmaline07]

Furthermore I'm surprised OEM motherboards (HP, Dell, acer) don't already have them for their business motherboards so their techs can fault diagnose quicker

[@josuad6890]

BZ: "that's it for the video" also BZ: Continues to ramble for another 9 minutes.

[@nathangamble125]

"the board is a 12-phase design" "you'd have like 11 or 12" *ACCIDENTALLY CORRECT PHASE COUNT FTW!*

[@bookworm8415]

This made me laugh. Headline *BZ accidentally proves incorrect reviewer correct*

[@mamuf]

And then it says the board has additional phases, sooo... Still incorrect.

[@OriginEnjoyer]

just patiently waiting for the day a buildzoid edition board comes out

[@MoraFermi]

It'll be 50% VRM, 50% memory channels. The CPU socket will be left as an implementation exercise for the buyer.

[@OriginEnjoyer]

@@MoraFermi 😂😭 swappable controllers so you can do AMD OR intel imagine 😭

[@emperorSbraz]

mem training at first boot takes 1 literal day to post BUT it's already maxed on all timings. :D

[@OriginEnjoyer]

@@emperorSbraz okay that's funny 😂

[@namibjDerEchte]

@@emperorSbraz The POST-code display is used as a countdown timer for how much more training it needs. But for real, I'd buy that for Zen4 or Zen5, if it works for ECC DIMMs.

[@badhusband1902]

the more useful version of the rant can be: how do we come up with an actually good, quantitative measurement that can describe how good a vrm design is. That could really benefit the consumers.

[@WhenDoesTheVideoActuallyStart]

Energy wasted (W) when powering the flagship CPU at a standardized CPU stress test benchmark.

[@BrosBrothersLP]

The way all voltage supplies are quantatively tested. Outout ripple. Output spike. Dynamics. Regulating accuracy, efficiency

[@mamuf]

This is similar to how can we objectively measure a quality of a PSU? All the manufacturers brag about is the 80+ spec, but that only covers your efficiency, not quality in other regards. See the recent GN PSU disaster videos as an example... And that's where reviewers like BZ or GN come in to tell you a product is a garbage even if it claims to have more of a thing in its design.

[@clintcolombin]

“& I took that personally” - Buildzoid, 2021

[@GimpyChinaman]

Motherboard manufacturers have only been lying about phase counts for as long as they've been advertising phase counts on the box

[@wudi911]

Thanks for reviewing my motherboard from 12 years ago! Got some quality time pairing this board with i7 920 and GTX 295. Interesting to see back in the day high-end enthusiast set up only coast me around $2k and now.... cant even afford a video card sigh...

[@HJM9x]

"6 gear" sounds like they knew it wasnt a true 12 phase but didnt have a clue how it worked. (16:06)

[@vtipnygooglac5163]

Actually it's something what's stated on gigabyte website. It's on sixth line(huh) in marketing material. So unfortunately they just copied it :(

[@gagarin777]

This is just "enhanced" Dynamic Energy Saver feature which was present on even older Gigabyte's motherboards. Dynamic 6-Gear Switching is mentioned on some LGA775 motherboards they manufactured.

[@kovacspis]

Hey Buildzoid, this is guys here!

[@tomstech4390]

22:20 Buildzoids 2nd amendment "A well regulated VRM, being necessary to the stability of a system, the right of the boards to keep and bear Amps, shall not be infringed"

[@bluekirby3]

We literally didn't know how VRM worked at the time. I used to maintain a database on AMD board VRMs on OCN because so many were absolute garbage. Im not an EE or anything of the sort, so our method to quickly evaluate a board was basically to count inductors. Naturally we know now this is not accurate, but at the time it gave a bit of guidance on to which boards would burn themselves to the ground (i.e. MSI 790/890FXA-GD70). Especially because as BZ notes reviewers were similarly clueless and often worse. I apologize for perpetuating the issue, but it was born out of necessity after we put holes in 10+ 790/890FXA-GD70s

[@darkbreed]

there are double step-down two-phase buck converters, today there are some tripple step-down three-phase buck converters available. by looking at a component you will not know how it works.

[@Sid-Cannon]

"I'm still convinced that the only person who actually cares is me" - hahaha :)

[@bookworm8415]

The rest of his thousands of subs... are we a joke to you?!

[@Sid-Cannon]

@@bookworm8415 If you watch the video you'll see that I just quoted what Buildzoid said because it made me laugh ...

[@neko9042]

"Hopefully I keep it kinda short" 30 minutes later.

[@th3unmaker]

30 minutes is kind of short for buildzoid, but I, too, was amused by this.

[@bookworm8415]

When he says short he means 30-40 minutes. "Normal" is 45-60 maybe. Never paid much attention before to notice trends

[@phillipmarnik]

The Gigabyte marketing team are preparing to take it to the next level. Triple digit VRM's.

[@bgdwiepp]

18:50 that's not what diode emulation does; at light loads if you leave the low side MOSFET on like you normally would, due to low inductance and current(so low stored energy) the current flow can reverse, flowing from the output, through the inductor, through the lowside MOSFET to ground killing efficiency. Diode emulation mode senses the voltage across the MOSFET changes from negative to positive (indicating the change in current direction) and turns the MOSFET off so the output current doesn't flow to ground.

[@SiRedCat]

That it is for the video. Video continues for another 10 minutes...gotta love this guy.

[@f3rns]

That’s why we have you, we need your guidance, VRM, phases and all the things we need to understand.

[@CyberMew]

Appreciate your effort to keep pointing them out to hopefully keep them honest

[@mesterak]

Your rants are epic and I love how many times you wrap up but then restart the rant again. Thanks for sharing.

[@Testbug000]

Intel’s 14nm process is extremely new. I learn new things every day!

[@singular9]

I finally beat buildzoid at something. I knew what a motherboard was before he did.

[@Stashmyash]

Some motherboard reviewers still take (fake) phase counts from the manufacturer at face value. Nothing has changed since 2008.

[@sophiethemasochisticninja7655]

Example of something new. Source?

[@Stashmyash]

@@sophiethemasochisticninja7655 There are several on youtube and the web, it shouldn't be difficult to find one.

[@sophiethemasochisticninja7655]

@@Stashmyash Well im not the one trying to prove something or claim something. So source on your claim is something you will have to give.

[@Stashmyash]

@@sophiethemasochisticninja7655 In case my links get filtered out. Look for Vortez's review of the Asus Z590-E where they call it a 14 phase, when it isn't.

[@sophiethemasochisticninja7655]

@@Stashmyash Specification says 14+2. Looked at a picture of the motherboard without vrm cooling. it has 14 + 2 power stages. so not sure why you say it is false marketing.

[@mailong.botega3040]

> "hopefully I manage to keep it kinda short" > looks at 29:44 duration Perfection

[@andersjjensen]

It do be like that. A proper rant for an isolated topic takes half an hour at the very least. There's the context of the rant, the theory crash course to understand the rant, the rant itself, the humours roasting as to why the rant exists in the first place, the rant itself episode 2, the first attempt at rounding off the rant, the rant itself episode 3, the second attempt at rounding off the rand, the first, second and third random semi related anecdote to the rant, and finally the somewhat staccato/abrupt ending which includes something about subscribing and merch.... It just doesn't feel right if it doesn't go like that.

[@noxious89123]

Hey look, that board has QPI that does 6.4 GT/s. What a neat unit to measure by.

[@rynz_2893]

I have a Question! How come some traces on the circuit board do a bunch of S turns and squiggles instead of going in the shortest possible path? hope that makes sense

[@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking]

legth matching for signals that get sent in parallel.

[@rynz_2893]

@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking thanks

[@Vegemeister1]

If you care about efficiency at low load, as in laptops, it's also important that the VRM have low stored energy. When the CPU transitions from boost to idle state, that Δ(CV^2) is wasted..

[@WrathchildVU]

low rds is low resistance between the drain and source.

[@andersjjensen]

Thanks!

Im getting old, still remember. And yes people knew about the phase scams. I still remember the 24 phases boards XD Usually they just had two choke per phase. I did remember looking at just how the choke where hooked up on boards when people wanted high phase boards to try and figure out what boards where scames because that was really a thing in early i5/i7 era boards.

[@The_Man_In_Red]

Yup and it still goes on everywhere. Just look at Nvidia with Ampere architecture. "Double the CUDA cores!" Except it's not double, they just have double the FP32 throughput compared to previous SM design. Seems the PC market has been riddled with false advertising for decades. I guess the motto is "well nobody caught us so we did nothing wrong."

@@The_Man_In_Red if you ask some people an ALU is a core XD There are fundamental parts you need to be able to call it a CPU or a Core or well a phase a phase in a vrm design. If I recall Ampere they just added an extra FPU so making the core wider but calling it two cores or cuda cores. I suppose a Pentium 54C is a tripple core then with two pipelines with two alus and a fpu XD it was just simpler back when engineers decided the marketing and not the marketing people.

[@The_Man_In_Red]

@ Yep. "CUDA cores" definitely don't fetch & decode. Yet another marketing gimmick haha.

[@n0rie9a]

you mean 3, cause at "24 phases"...god damn

[@joelatkins5433]

"They've all been lying about them, for YEARS. Nobody cared until I came along, and actually, I'm still convinced that the only person who actually cares is me!" I had a good laugh with you over that. I love the rambling, as that's where the depth comes from. It's a shame that I haven't been availably online during another one of your live streams, I caught one maybe a year ago, and somehow the conversation ended up going into places we've lived, where you studied, the origin of your accent(even though I can hardly tell there's an accent). It was good fun.

[@greg_f298]

whats a "solid capacitor"? It looks like a smt electrolytic.

[@TheRoetker]

A simplified expression to indicate a capacitor with a solid conductive polymer electrolyte. Also, saying "It looks like a smt electrolytic" is kind of broad. For your information: - smt just indicates the mount type, ergo smt/smd = surface mount, - all capacitors have some sort of electrolyte.

[@SebastienFontaine-bu3ze]

how is it supposed to be interconnected at the same time? Is there maybe a diode to allow the electricity to go only one way?

[@Critirus]

When buildzoid says short, I expect at least an hour

[@stevenmay4563]

Please go to one of these companies and make your own mobo with them. Imagine the quality of it 😍

[@hsharma3933]

Imagine the cost lol

[@ThePhoneix999]

Kingpin card exists

[@sunnohh]

Imagine the bankruptcy

[@DevilbyMoonlight]

I feel totally schooled! lol nice job and explanation, I remember the early VRM's that came out for the 3.3v versions of '486 which appeared in their twilight, back then they were a plug in module that went into a slot next to the cpu, they were required if not running a 5v part. thanks again I learned a lot .subbed!

[@DClaville]

@20:00 "There is not much more for me to say" . Total length 29min 44sec. But we love it every minute of it

[@Woot-Zee]

No...you weren't the first person. The forums were full. Not even close. :) But I think you were one of the first on Yt. And a lot more exposure than everybody else. :)

[@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking]

so why didn't any of the reviewers ever point this out?

[@Squilliam-Fancyson]

At least german reviewers never mentioned such things. Most of them do not even know how to count phases.

[@leaf4664]

Hello there. thanks for clearing and bringing this topic up. Its been a long while, rare.

[@gagarin777]

At that time it was a phase count race between manufacturers. The marketing was doing it's job because bigger number obviously "is better than lower". Check the X58A-UD9 the "top" from that era with "Smart 24 power phase design with mutual back-up to each 12 phase"

[@cookiehead2]

I remember seeing an interview with an Intel employee several years ago who said 4-phases was enough and double digit VRM setups weren’t needed unless they were using poor quality components. I guess this is the answer to why.

[@Saabjock]

Truth in advertising is something we should all demand.

[@josebonilla101]

"Have a 16 phase using garbage MOSFETS from AliExpress" sounds like the AsRock strategy for VRM.

[@andersjjensen]

Especially on their entry level B560 boards... holy shit Steve from Hardware Unboxed did not like those....

[@mini-pouce]

Mine also has trouble with its RAM slots, wonder if it is a particular desease of the board ? Also she (yeah it is alive) refuse to boot for days some time until the deamon goes away.

[@darkbreed]

the CPU connection pins are still bent, the knowledge of this person is simply underground for what he is presenting here. He doesn't even know that there are double step-down two-phase buck converters and so the specification of 12 phase count is probably correct.

[@mini-pouce]

Yes you are right, forgot his bent pins. May he have missed them then, I think he has enougth knowledge to cover that (think it is its field). I don't. But even with doblers wich where used a lot back in these days, a true 12 independant phase wich lead to a better ajustement of the load. Maybe it is more relevent now with all CPU states ans boost.

[@darkbreed]

@@mini-pouce i'm a trained microelectronics technician and nothing of what he tells in the video comes from a corresponding education. Not only are there double step-down two-phase buck converters (in one housing and visually indistinguishable from single step-down single phase), today there are even triple step-down three-phase buck converters in use and the next 4-phase design is under development (Die stacking comes from this industry, by the way). He has no idea which firmware is running in the Buck converter controller or how a single phase buck converter can switch two phases without a time difference at the input of the CPU. VRMs are not so expensive components for nothing. The mainboard manufacturers have their "secrets" and only trained microelectronics are able to really understand the circuitry of a mainboard. There are a number of physical tricks that have been used on mainboards since the 90s to create the same functionality with fewer components. Without weeks of measurements and precise knowledge of the tracelength, it is not possible to make statements on highly integrated technology as he makes it about this board, after all it is a 7-layer mainboard and he has no idea how the traces are laid within the PCB, he sees only the external power connections and this leads to pure nonsense from an electrical engineering point of view. he can neither show nor name the name on the converters, so it is not possible to understand what kind of component it is. I do not believe that a manufacturer made false information about his product in 2008, but simply that it is a two-phase buck converter and the guy has no idea about it. Here in europe, incorrectly specifying product properties would lead to gigantic lawsuits and in the 90s there were some through which hardware manufacturers dug their own grave with a lie. The fact is, I have a mainboard here where 12 phases are mentioned in the manual and there are only 4 converters on the board and the reason is that there are three-phase components.

[@darkbreed]

@@mini-pouce if you want to learn something about phase regulators and how it is possible to put more than one in one housing look at this video.(there are still 8 possible in one housing but not used by computer electronics because there are other problems with more than 3 or 4 at the moment) kzbin.info/www/bejne/mqLZY4iliKqgebs also the maximum current you can put at the output pin at one housing is limited to 40 amps (breakdown current, some use 44 amps but this converters/regulators are the ones that dying on Graphiscards at overload) that's why you have more than one housing and some more DCR Sense circuits behind the converters.

[@mini-pouce]

@@darkbreed Will watch thanks. Big topic but as you said amazing physic trics.

[@Rafael-rn6hn]

The correct way to advertise imo is: how many amps the board can delivery while run non-stop without shortening the lifespan of the components, throttling or critically failing (i.e. by not overheating). If they wanted to go above and beyond, they'd publish an entire curve profile of how it behaves temperature-wise as the amperage increases

[@johnny_rook]

I did get one of these UD5 boards at launch, flashing it to Extreme after I waterblocked it. I liked Gigabyte's skt.1366 boards so much, I got an X58A-UD7 later and at the time, I remember quite distinctly people already knew the phases were "doubled" in the boards. The UD5 and Extreme having 6 real phases (and the UD7 having 12 real phases), was well know among the PC DIY enthusiast community as soon as 2009. Say whatever you want about these boards' phases, the truth is those were the real deal. My UD7 was retired last year, after powering an i7-920 D0 @4.5Ghz for 8 years straight! And was retired not because it died but, because it was time to move on. My UD5 later flashed to Extreme, is still working 24/7 with an i7-920 C0 @4.0Ghz since November 2008.

[@EliteRock]

Encouraging to know that MB's can have such durability - I notice part of the blurb for this Gigabyte X58 is that it uses "50,000 hour lifespan Japanese solid capacitors", which is 5.7 years. Gulp. According to CrystalDiskInfo my Asus P8Z77-V has been powered on for just shy of 47,500 hours (5.42 years) since I built it in Nov. 2012. The P8Z77-V does actually seem to have the 8 CPU VRM phases advertised BTW.

[@johnny_rook]

Yeah. There's a theory going arround amongst seasoned PC builders that leaving the PC turned ON keeps the hardware free of problems for longer. From my personal experience, I certainly agree with that theory. I know it's not the most politically correct thing to say in current year but, if I can leave my PC turned ON 24/7, I just do it.

[@EliteRock]

@@johnny_rook I'm well over being PC(!) and in recent years it's been left on 24/7. I discovered after buying a UPS about 2 years back that it's idling at only 52w at the wall (kudos to Asus), which sealed it for me. But yep, in electronics and engineering generally, power/thermal cycling is reckoned to account for a big chunk of the life of components.

[@arbiterodie7685]

A i7-920 doing 4.5 Ghz for 8 years? Nice OC, my man

[@johnny_rook]

@@arbiterodie7685 :D Had to adjust voltage from time to time but, yeah, it hold. It was a D0 step, though. MY 920 C0 only did 4.2Ghz max but not sustainable for 24/7

[@budiisnadi]

I remember reading about that fake power phase count back in 2010. I don't fully understand it back then and still don't fully understand it even now.

[@eukariootti1]

Chevrolet Chevelle - 6 cylinders - 4 doors Yugo - 4 cylinders - 3 doors Koenigsegg Gemera - 3 cylinders - 2 doors Which one has the best performance?

[@maxnietzsche4843]

I think the reason for that came from that the media (computer magazine, online reviewer) always educate the DIY fans how to count the number of „phases“ on the motherboard by counting the number of solid capacitors around the CPU socket. Which is not always true but however historically always useful because no one used more than one solid capacitor for each phase. However the manufacturer got that in mind and pushing the number of solid capacitors to the limit, so they can confuse buyers and be fancy on the advertisement. Either the marketing department is doing this willingly or they were as uneducated as the casual audience as well.

[@dsouza8015]

I have this exact motherboard in my daily rig, paired with a 6C/12T Xeon clocked at 4GHz & 24GB of triple channel RAM. Happy to loan it to you if you can pay for shipping from Australia!

[@andersjjensen]

Do you want it fried? Because that's how you get it fried! :P

[@junkerzn7312]

One additional point is, just like when you put two resistors in parallel, putting two MOSFETs in parallel also lowers the resistance. So even though its a 6-phase, its actually appears to be a pretty good 6-phase. -Matt

[@KunalVaidya]

Buildzoid should make a tutorial on what the benefits are of such many phase power delivery in motherboards. would be great to watch

[@emperorSbraz]

ferrite core is a cost and size effective way to build an inductor with the downside of having more distortion. the other way would be air core, a normal thing to see in 90s and early 2000s boards.

[@BrosBrothersLP]

yes. but also you cannot get anywhere close the inductance on any comparable size. theres a factor of 1000-10000 between air and ferrite inductance

[@emperorSbraz]

@@BrosBrothersLP I know. not my point.

[@BrosBrothersLP]

@@emperorSbraz what is your point?

[@jonathanharry475]

@@BrosBrothersLP The video acts as if nothing has ever been used before. PC building did not burst out full formed in 2010 or whenever. It is painful obvious at the start of the rant and at that point about chokes the author functions as if it did. That is fine, but for some of us, 2008 isn't the long long ago.

[@GbpsGbps-vn3jy]

I like this video. It proves my point done ~20 years ago - at each CPU generation the corresponding motherboards are just cheap spare elements except 2 or 3 models in high-end/workstation class.

[@alistairblaire6001]

I do miss real heat sink fins on old boards

[@wargamingrefugee9065]

Yes, they have. Maddening, in an 8=16 kind of a way, isn't it?

[@-eMpTy-]

Gigabytes marketing was always kinda weird with the VRM. I remember the "Quad Triple Phase" bs from their X38/X48 Boards.

[@NeoCyrus777]

Hard to believe someone as into this stuff as you didn't know anything about computers in 2008 which was about 5 minutes ago.

[@n0rie9a]

LMAO hardly; then hed be born like 12 minutes ago

[@DirkFedermann]

and that is why, people like you are so important. To educate consumers about these things. It now only needs to get out of this bubble by some bigger YTer and maybe the Manufacturers will change the marketing.

[@Marti77e]

I had a Gigabyte GA-X58-UD7 rev 1.0 board and that was advertised as 24+2+2 phase design but i think that was only 12 phase. I dont have that board anymore so cant check or send pictures.

[@phillipsusi1791]

I always wondered why they started advertising the phase count at all, let alone such a ridiculously high count as 12. You get diminishing returns for each one you add and it's really only so that you can use less capacitance to maintain low ripple. With a big enough capacitor you can get by with just one phase.

[@mamuf]

Well, but your average buyer doesn't know this and simply sees "bigger number = more better". So bigger numbers in marketing sells your shit and that's all the job a marketing department has to do. That's your why.

[@leaf4664]

Can i ask one more thing. I have no knwldge abt electronics. But, is the inductor placed near the cpu power socket important ? For power delivery ? I'm seeing lower end boards having those but comes with "poor"(to my uneducated eye) power phase, while some other boards without inductors near the cpu 12v powersocket but, have some beefy power phase. Any advise ? You can check recent Intel H510 boards(Asus, Msi, Gigabytes).

[@josephkelly4893]

Love piggybacking your knowledge BZ, thank you for your work

[@Vermilicious]

I've got this board from back in the day. I didn't know enough about VRMs to know they lied, but I remember there were many "features" of this board that seemed a bit over the top. Still, it was a good board. Still works.

[@RealNC]

"There's not much more for me to say." Video goes on for another 10 minutes :D

[@richardhead8264]

I'm watching this video on a GA-EX58-UD5. It looks nearly identical to your GA-EX58-Extreme, except for the heatsink on the EX58 chip.

[@TheLukemcdaniel]

I had no clue what a phase count was in 08. At least knew what a mb was.

[@nosafetyswitch9378]

I ALWAYS found it strange that the inductors are in parallel while they claimed it to be a separate phase but never bothered... They do this to reduce the inductor resistance and so improve efficiency. Its a good opportunity to double the phase count for marketing too...

[@darkbreed]

there are double step-down two-phase buck converters, so 6 of them are 12 phases.

[@nosafetyswitch9378]

@@darkbreed how many switches would need for that (without counting parallel FETs)?

[@darkbreed]

@@nosafetyswitch9378 Viewing housings on a mainboard has been useless for more than 20 years. Since you can accommodate several die and additional circuits in one housing and obviously one controller controls all converters (he has shown this), you can't make any visual statements about the circuit. If you could at least find out what the component is called, you could look it up in the data sheet. but tapping a chip and not knowing anything about its internals is like "milking a dead cow". He cannot make any statements about trace lengths and controlled interconnections or how the voltage to the CPU is physically composed, let alone whether it is a real parallelization or a clocked circuit. Obviously, he neither had the knowledge nor the equipment to take appropriate measurements that would cover his statements. Just the fact that he has no idea why there is an oscillating circuit behind the converters or why there are more capacitors than converters (which indicates that this is not a real parallel circuit and that there is a clocked circuit here, since the additional capacitors intercept the switching peaks of the two-phase converters (called smooth switching via resonant circuit feedback)). I did not design the board and do not have it here to carry out the corresponding measurements with an oscilloscope, so any statement on how the circuit works would be pure speculation, but I do not believe that after the waves of complaints in the 90s, someone in 2008 still had incorrect data about an electrical engineering product, especially not if the board is / was available in europe.

[@nosafetyswitch9378]

@@darkbreed that was a decent response. I agree on the bulk about the video creator not having a deep knowledge (neither do I) about advanced topologies like these but I am afraid your argument about being 2008 and companies being truthful especially about such hype/niche products whose buyers like fancy words that don't actually understand, does not hold much water. I am also leaning towards the principle of "dont make it more complex and expensive that it should be". These 2 reason would be enough to justify such marketing misleading. Now if we want to know for sure, an oscilloscope and measurement would be needed as you say.

[@darkbreed]

There were marketing lies like this in the 90s, but here in europe it was put to an end. In order to sell an electronic device in Europe, you have to have it approved by the authorities(it is subject to certain rules of the product description and actual properties. In this case, it would be a lack of guaranteed property, which is simply a criminal offense.), if a technician reveals such a lie (with measurements, reverse engineering and circuit diagram reconstructions), the laws in Europe lead to severe penalties, court-ordered repayments and lawsuits from private parties would be the consequence. There is consumer protection here and if there was something to it there would have been criminal charges for a long time. If you want to learn something about the buck converters look at this video kzbin.info/www/bejne/mqLZY4iliKqgebs how it works and why it can be in one housing (This also shows that TI is working on an 8-phase buck regulator in one housing, but it only shows the circuit diagrams for 3-phase circuits in one housing. Those with more steps work in the same way, but the housings are correspondingly larger and are currently not used on mainboards due to the signal propagation times.) I hope you have learned something and are now looking for a channel with well-founded specialist knowledge (I know there aren't many, but my time would be too valuable to waste it on a channel where you always have to ask yourself how much is based on assumptions instead of knowing based)

[@kostasbezaitis2695]

Hello there, since you brought up some older stuff, I think taking a look at some Gigabyte GA-8KNXP would be interesting. Maybe the Ultra-64 would be the best one among them.

[@anasevi9456]

outside of msi or ecs, in the late 2000s enthusiast motherboards were typically overbuilt, but dumb for the cpu's at the time. The problem is they became too efficient with their designs.

[@patrickgoodhart9294]

Back then it was common knowledge that anything over 6+1 was a gimmick... Might have to look in print to see it now.

[@christopher6973]

Being Gigabyte reminded me of this Motherboard with a weird power design GA-8N-SLI Royal ( has a separate add on card for power / and a PCB to switch between SLI / Crossfire ) I had one but RMAed because power card went pop in a month or so

[@Salsuero]

I've been building computers as needed (and mostly as a hobby, but also for my business) since the early 1990s. I don't remember ever hearing anything about VRMs or phase counts or anything of the sort for my first couple decades of doing so. It wasn't until I looked into building a gaming PC a few years ago that I noticed this new terminology. I had to research what it even was because it was entirely foreign to me. I'm not an electrician. I'm not a physicist. It was like they decided to overwhelm us with technospeak in order to sound better than the competition. I guess that sells.

[@mad_mario_]

He is John Oliver of pc industry, exposing all kinda bs on hardwares for years, love you man

[@ItsJustElenore]

Gonna need one of those GA-Z77X-UP7 boards with 32+3+2 phase design!

[@tkpenalty]

Oh man the whole "six gear power shifting" stuff was absolute bs nonetheless fun times I feel like the X58 boards were completely insane and wild with the wacky colours from each manufacturer lol

[@v3listube]

I had this motherboard back in the day. It actually overclocked fairly well from memory I was able to push 4ghz out of my i7 920 with a fairly basic oc.

[@abdallahhanoun807]

More Pcb Breakdowns please.

[@darkSorceror]

Motherboard manufacturers started marketing phase counts because more numbers more bettar. Especially for Intel customers. Used to be "more MHz more bettar". Then when Pentium 4 architecture hit its temperature ceiling, it became "more FSB MHz more bettar". And so forth.

[@6DAMMK9]

comparing to other brands in same era, gigayte does run really hot. turns out most asus boards survived to today (p5q and p6) and only a few gigabyte boards survived.

[@vega1287]

i just realized youtube put this video of a channel i didn't subscribe to in my subscription feed

[@AmbiguityCaptive]

Oh, another short vid from Buildzoid!

[@eizomonitor6003]

Can you do the same with GA890FXA-UD5 rev 2.0? I am running FX 8350@4.8 with beta bios and works fine since i have started to use FX cpu. Max, stable oc is 5.0 for my cpu on watercooling. What we use is an unofficial bios from gigabyte worker. Funny thing is, officially this board doesn't support FX cpu's. :D

[@iLLusiveMan82]

Man, I remeber having a MSI motherboard with a nForce chipset. It was the first motherboard that I bought with my own money, it was for a Athlon XP CPU and that's all that I remember ( it was around 2001 or 2002 ). Back then I didn't even care about power delivery and how it worked, I'm not sure hardware reviews for motherboards even existed lol. It would be interesting to analyze old power delivery systems, if there were any special/insane ones :)

[@simonmcneilly55]

I have a gigabyte board here that has an add in card to add more phases ... it’s like a early 2000’s. Interesting board . It’s wild. Gigabyte something something ultra

[@vega1287]

the highesr RDSon mosfet i know of is the BUZ 74 with a whole 4 ohms

[@남기헌-l8y]

Yeah... they lied long enough to some people to misunderstood definition of phase.

[@martynyuu7126]

I had a asus P5Q Deluxe and it advertised 16 phases, It doesn't matter how much it really had because it overclocked like crazy in comparison to my older P5N-D board :D

[@HoveKB]

God I miss X58 chipset. I still have my i7-920. I used to overclock that thing from 2.66ghz all the way up to 4.0ghz on all cores stable. That shit was wild! I had an MSI X58 Platinum SLI. I had 12GB of 1366mhz Runing in triple channel.

[@ruiaz701]

I had an ASUS P6T Deluxe x58 with core i7 940 and 24Gb Ram and oc at 4.1ghz. I miss this time.

[@Zarcondeegrissom]

the ones that keep failing at simple addition, we just poke fun at them not being able to do pre-school math, lol. "this one lego has one peg, this other single lego has two pegs, how many legos is this single lego with two pegs... ", lol.

[@WTP_DAVE]

Hopefully i keep it short...

[@OneCosmic749]

This board looks like it has the same VRM as my fully working UD3R v2.0 that i got from a friend for 100czk with an i7 960 D0 and an original big 1366 box cooler :D

[@OneCosmic749]

@@n0rie9a I have the rev. 2.0 and it has 12 inductors around CPU. It also has 2xUSB3.0 ports on the back and 2xSATA 6G ports from a separate controller on the board+another 2xSATA 3G from another controller on the board-GBT kinda overdid the board with extra controllers besides chipset.

[@GGray.]

Someone tell LMG (linus media group) they have to cover this

[@GbpsGbps-vn3jy]

They are more interested in doing stupid things on boat or his house

[@ClayWheeler]

ENCTEC made Motherboard that has CPU socket on the other side of the board. I love it.

[@mikropower01]

@ Actually Hardcore Overclocking Phases ... this means that there is a phase-shift during the switching for each MosFET-Gate in the high-side-driver and also in the lowside-driver (this MosFET is the replacement of the diode). What benefits do we get from this? The input current is more even. If all Switching-Regulators would pull current to the same time, then the input-capacitors would have a lot to do. This phase-shift makes it possible to reduce the numbers of the input-capacitors and the output-capacitors. There is a lower ripple-current and this is good. 6 phases is very good. In reality people don't care, this things have to work. What people want to know are the Japan-Capacitors, because this Chinese motherboards had the problem in the past, that the capacitors are blowing up. The Motherboard-Producer did buy very often cheap Elkos from unknown source or crate a cheap design. Normally you could decrease the stress on the electrolytic capacitors (heat production because of the internal resistance) if you add some ceramic capacitors, but they did not and save the money.

[@tomstech4390]

Been doing pc since 2000 "Comments are saying.. x brand is bad because they're lying about phase counds" [uploads videos pointing those who lie about phase counts or components] Its not the brands, they all do the same things, they're in the same boat. its also not a new problem, but I dont remember it being so common in the mid range (£170 today is £110 then) Back in the day high end motherboards would say 8+2.. when its 4+1. But if you bought a cheaper board you kinda knew it would be a 4+1 because there's no way the gigabyte 970a-ud3 has the 8+2 phase it claims at £90. Now people see a huge heatsink and it could be a triple teamed 4+1, or double teamed 6+1 or doubled 6+1 or an xdpe132g5c.... The higher phase controllers and doublers and teaming leaves allot more room for (mis)interpretation. Thats why ahoc and HUB is so important for people to learn, Sunlight is the best disinfectant so videos saying what it is and what it isn't, what matters and what doesnt are invaluable. Going parallel for more current handling is fine, the problem is the marketing. I'm wondering how long it is before we see "16+2 stage *BFVRM*" with 4c06n/4c010n parts using a RT8894 or something (turns to look at asrock) atleast it would have surface area. Fun trivia: msi 970 gaming and krait am3+ were both 3+1 with "teamed" niko mosfets, the boards literally cried with tears running over the audio section.

[@danieldemeter6927]

I have GA-P67A-UD5-B3, looks like 7 phase from the other side.

[@Hotrob_J]

I would argue that the recent batch of gigabyte boards with that infineon controller had the design goal of having as many phases as possible :p