rsaeon
Patron
The Why:
The Ryzen 5 4500 is currently the most inexpensive way to get more than 4 cores/8 threads with 6 cores/12 threads in a new/current product which is supported by the currently available budget B550 AM4 motherboards. Performance-wise, it's somewhere between the Ryzen 7 1700 and 2700 but without the limitations of the aging X370/B350 platform while having better power consumption — all of which sounds great for virtualization since I've never crossed 50% utilization on a 2700 configured with enough VM's to max out 128GB of memory.
The Experience:
The package MDComputers shipped the processor in was the size of a football, with all of it being mostly padding. The processor itself was put inside a small plastic enclosure after being wrapped in a strip of antistatic foam. This sounds great but it was poorly executed. The foam didn't reach the edges of the processor and so pins were bent on all four corners of the chip. I didn't take an unboxing video and I didn't want to deal with MDComputers since they explicitly say this processor has no warranty whatsoever, so I went on to carefully straighten a couple dozen pins using the tip of a mechanical pencil and a blade. Some photos:
That's about it when it comes to feedback with MDComputers. I've purchased from them many times before and I will continue to purchase but in the future I would probably avoid purchasing OEM processors from them.
The Experience:
It was not an easy journey for me to find out if this processor still actually worked and I have three other AM4 systems at hand plus two unused AM4 B550 motherboards. Both of the two different Asrock B550 motherboards shipped with AGESA 1.0.8.0 which is from 2020. This processor requires AGESA 1.2.0.6. Some B550 motherboards have support for Ryzen 1000 and 2000 series but these two motherboards from ASRock, the B550 Pro4 and the B550 Phantom Gaming 4 do not have support. I was optimistic they might since ASRock was the one of the first manufacturer to add in non Z overclocking to their H series of motherboards but things have changed. These motherboards also do not have USB BIOS Flashback (the ability to update a bios without a processor). They both do have post status leds, which I consider essential on AM4 and will not purchase a board without it.
I have a MSI B350 Gaming motherboard which does say it supports the Ryzen 4500 with the latest BIOS, so I took it offline to test the processor but it didn't post. I rechecked the bios support page and saw that I needed the latest beta bios. I wasn't ready to put on a beta bios on a production system.
I next tried an Asus Crosshair Hero VI with the X370 chipset. This motherboard was on a beta bios but that decision was made after reading up on weeks of testing by other users on Overclock.net where the consensus was that it was pretty much a stable bios. But again, no post. This motherboard does have AGESA 1.2.0.6 in its latest beta bios but no support for Ryzen 4500. And there's no planned update to AGESA 1.2.0.7 which was announced for other Asus X370 motherboards, the Crosshair Hero VI was excluded from that list. It's a sad day when a threadbare MSI B350 has better long term support than a flagship-level Asus X370 motherboard.
The next motherboard I had to try was the MSI B450 Tomahawk Max II which probably should have worked without issues but it was such a pain to get 128GB at 2933MHz working with the Ryzen 2700 that I did not consider trying this motherboard at all.
So back to the MSI B350 motherboard, it was not easy to get 128GB of DDR4 working on this motherboard with the Ryzen 1700 at 2666MHz either so thats I didn't try the beta bios before and went to the X370 motherboard. But now I've been at this for several hours now and getting a little frustrated since I didn't even know if the Ryzen 4500 was working. But after flashing the beta bios, it worked. That was such a relief. Except now with the latest beta bios, the MSI B350 Gaming cannot be downgraded back to a stable bios. This wasn't the case with the previous beta bios for this motherboard.
As for getting the other B550 motherboards to work with this processor, I ended up purchasing a Ryzen 5 3600 which arrives in a few days. I probably should have done that from the beginning but I didn't because I thought the 3k difference was significant. But on EMI, it's less than Rs 500 per month over six months which is not even worth any of this hassle.
The Conclusion:
I consider my time working as an emergency room doctor in a high crime rate area in the west was less stressful than purchasing an oem Ryzen 5 4500.
The Ryzen 5 4500 is currently the most inexpensive way to get more than 4 cores/8 threads with 6 cores/12 threads in a new/current product which is supported by the currently available budget B550 AM4 motherboards. Performance-wise, it's somewhere between the Ryzen 7 1700 and 2700 but without the limitations of the aging X370/B350 platform while having better power consumption — all of which sounds great for virtualization since I've never crossed 50% utilization on a 2700 configured with enough VM's to max out 128GB of memory.
The Experience:
The package MDComputers shipped the processor in was the size of a football, with all of it being mostly padding. The processor itself was put inside a small plastic enclosure after being wrapped in a strip of antistatic foam. This sounds great but it was poorly executed. The foam didn't reach the edges of the processor and so pins were bent on all four corners of the chip. I didn't take an unboxing video and I didn't want to deal with MDComputers since they explicitly say this processor has no warranty whatsoever, so I went on to carefully straighten a couple dozen pins using the tip of a mechanical pencil and a blade. Some photos:
That's about it when it comes to feedback with MDComputers. I've purchased from them many times before and I will continue to purchase but in the future I would probably avoid purchasing OEM processors from them.
The Experience:
It was not an easy journey for me to find out if this processor still actually worked and I have three other AM4 systems at hand plus two unused AM4 B550 motherboards. Both of the two different Asrock B550 motherboards shipped with AGESA 1.0.8.0 which is from 2020. This processor requires AGESA 1.2.0.6. Some B550 motherboards have support for Ryzen 1000 and 2000 series but these two motherboards from ASRock, the B550 Pro4 and the B550 Phantom Gaming 4 do not have support. I was optimistic they might since ASRock was the one of the first manufacturer to add in non Z overclocking to their H series of motherboards but things have changed. These motherboards also do not have USB BIOS Flashback (the ability to update a bios without a processor). They both do have post status leds, which I consider essential on AM4 and will not purchase a board without it.
I have a MSI B350 Gaming motherboard which does say it supports the Ryzen 4500 with the latest BIOS, so I took it offline to test the processor but it didn't post. I rechecked the bios support page and saw that I needed the latest beta bios. I wasn't ready to put on a beta bios on a production system.
I next tried an Asus Crosshair Hero VI with the X370 chipset. This motherboard was on a beta bios but that decision was made after reading up on weeks of testing by other users on Overclock.net where the consensus was that it was pretty much a stable bios. But again, no post. This motherboard does have AGESA 1.2.0.6 in its latest beta bios but no support for Ryzen 4500. And there's no planned update to AGESA 1.2.0.7 which was announced for other Asus X370 motherboards, the Crosshair Hero VI was excluded from that list. It's a sad day when a threadbare MSI B350 has better long term support than a flagship-level Asus X370 motherboard.
The next motherboard I had to try was the MSI B450 Tomahawk Max II which probably should have worked without issues but it was such a pain to get 128GB at 2933MHz working with the Ryzen 2700 that I did not consider trying this motherboard at all.
So back to the MSI B350 motherboard, it was not easy to get 128GB of DDR4 working on this motherboard with the Ryzen 1700 at 2666MHz either so thats I didn't try the beta bios before and went to the X370 motherboard. But now I've been at this for several hours now and getting a little frustrated since I didn't even know if the Ryzen 4500 was working. But after flashing the beta bios, it worked. That was such a relief. Except now with the latest beta bios, the MSI B350 Gaming cannot be downgraded back to a stable bios. This wasn't the case with the previous beta bios for this motherboard.
As for getting the other B550 motherboards to work with this processor, I ended up purchasing a Ryzen 5 3600 which arrives in a few days. I probably should have done that from the beginning but I didn't because I thought the 3k difference was significant. But on EMI, it's less than Rs 500 per month over six months which is not even worth any of this hassle.
The Conclusion:
I consider my time working as an emergency room doctor in a high crime rate area in the west was less stressful than purchasing an oem Ryzen 5 4500.
