Question 3900x overclocking: how far can I go?

Well I don't have any of those, but based on the many reviews and videos I watched, I would guess not a lot.

But the question I would ask is: Is the Corsair H100i Pro enough for a R9 3900 at stock setting?
And the answer is Yes, and since Ryzen 3xxx don't play soo well with OC, I would just buy the CPU, put it on a X570 mobo with a very decent VRM and just use it at stock settings, PB and PBO2 will take care of the rest (boosting and auto-oc if theres enough extra power delivering and temp headroom to go higher).
 

DMAN999

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I agree,
I have a Ryzen 3700 with a Scythe Ninja 5 air cooler on an Asus ROG Strix X470-F and I enabled PBO and it boosts up to 4.4 GHz Max on a few cores and up to around 4.325 GHz on the others.
When doing a Cinebench R20 multicore run it hits 4.1 to 4.15 on all cores.
When Gaming (current AAA Games) I get anywhere from 4.275 GHz to 4.4 GHz according to MSI Afterburner.

I could OC it and could probably get to 4.25 to 4.3 GHz all core BUT from everything I have read that will not help performance and could even lower my overall performance vs using PBO.
 
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Will be fantastic for all of those and most will use 12 cores, just not games.
It's terrific for content creation when it gets to use all the cores to max. But still very good for games... check some of the reviews. It hangs in there with even a 9900K, beating it in some titles at 1080p with a 2080ti that really pumps the frames. If you game at 1440p or up, or a lesser GPU, they'll demonstrate essentially identical performance averaged across a mix of titles.

Thing is, don't focus on clocks. Instead look at benchmark scores. Ryzen fluctuates a lot to conserve power whenever it can, making it hard to gauge performance by looking at clocks. But it puts it out there on the single thread when it has to, which is what games like since even the multi-threaded games only hit one of the threads heavily. That's why you shouldn't gimp it with a multi-core overclock. Instead use PBO to let it overclock itself on single threads when it can.

Even so, I do agree it would be a wasted expense to get one just to game. Instead step down to 3800x, 3700x or even 3600x which will line up just as strong against the 3900k and especially when playing at 1440p / 144hz and over.
 
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jon96789

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I have a AMD Ryzen 9 3900x with an ASUS X570 ROG Crosshair VIII Hero motherboard with a Corsair 115i RGB Platinum 280mm cooler... Using AMD's Ryzen Master software, i can enable PBO with no issues (which only gives me a whopping 50-100 MHz increase in speed). But as soon as I enable AUTO OVERCLOCKING, the system gets unstable. My Corsair RGB fans go all wonky, running at different speeds, the RGB lights do not adhere to there configured settings and some software apps are unstable.

My CPU can hot 4.575 max on a single core but only for a second or so. The most that the other cores can go to is about 4.35 GHz and when stressed, the CPU will run all cores at about 4.05 GHz pretty steadily.

The BIOS has an EZ Overclock mode where you enter the system parameters (amount of RAM, type of cooling, etc) and the board will configure the BIOS settings for optimum performance. It shows that the board estimates a probable 10% boost in performance. When i tested that configuration, the system does not boot past the BIOS screen.

So I honestly think the new AMD CPUs are NOT suited for overclocking.
 
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I have a AMD Ryzen 9 3900x with an ASUS X570 ROG Crosshair VIII Hero motherboard with a Corsair 115i RGB Platinum 280mm cooler... Using AMD's Ryzen Master software, i can enable PBO with no issues (which only gives me a whopping 50-100 MHz increase in speed). But as soon as I enable AUTO OVERCLOCKING, the system gets unstable. My Corsair RGB fans go all wonky, running at different speeds, the RGB lights do not adhere to there configured settings and some software apps are unstable.

My CPU can hot 4.575 max on a single core but only for a second or so. The most that the other cores can go to is about 4.35 GHz and when stressed, the CPU will run all cores at about 4.05 GHz pretty steadily.

The BIOS has an EZ Overclock mode where you enter the system parameters (amount of RAM, type of cooling, etc) and the board will configure the BIOS settings for optimum performance. It shows that the board estimates a probable 10% boost in performance. When i tested that configuration, the system does not boot past the BIOS screen.

So I honestly think the new AMD CPUs are NOT suited for overclocking.
My comment was simply that games wouldn’t use 12 cores, not that it wouldn’t be good for gaming. If I was buying a CPU right now, it would be a 3900x.