[SOLVED] AMD ryzen 5600x goes maximum clock speed when idle

[kozakis]

When my pc is not running anything at all it starts as temperature around 40C, CPU clock speed under 700MHz and CPU voltage around 1.1. After 10 minutes of not moving the mouse CPU Clock Speed goes 4600, CPU voltage goes 1.4 and temperature goes 55C. According to task manager no new process started. As soon as I move the mouse then everything goes back to starting idle numbers. My power profile is Balanced and I have automatic sleep turned off. PBO is on automatic. Any ideas?

 

[Colif]

Download Process explorer and run it as admin (it comes from Microsoft so its safe)

the default view is tree structure meaning like your task manager screen, it will show what processes are under each service

This page shows what all the colours and headings mean, link at bottom of it shows how to use it to find problems. You can right click headers and run an av scan from within the program.

it might give a better idea than task manager does. i think CPU usage shows by default so just sort by it. And wait till its idle again.

could look in scheduled tasks, it might give you a clue.

Often at idle windows runs a bunch of background tasks it can't do while you using it, like run defrag or indexing. If you let it run them once it won't likely happen everytime.

 

[alceryes]

...As soon as I move the mouse then everything goes back to starting idle numbers...

This soulds like Windows doing maintenance in the background. It may be difficult to pin down exactly what it's doing since it may be called under a process that is already running. What if you leave it for another 15 mins? Does it settle down?
Maybe run HWiNFO64 in the background (sensors only, logging on) during this whole time so you can follow the CPU spikes.

 

[Colif]

Its obviously background tasks.
only signs you see is maybe ram usage, as its likely system process doing most of it.
its not defender as it just keeps going

my 3600xt sits at 3% until i move mouse. Just let it sit for a while and it will eventually run out of things to do and just wait.

 

[drea.drechsler]

When my pc is not running anything at all it starts as temperature around 40C, CPU clock speed under 700MHz and CPU voltage around 1.1. After 10 minutes of not moving the mouse CPU Clock Speed goes 4600, CPU voltage goes 1.4 and temperature goes 55C. According to task manager no new process started. As soon as I move the mouse then everything goes back to starting idle numbers. My power profile is Balanced and I have automatic sleep turned off. PBO is on automatic. Any ideas?

It's normal as there are a lot of background tasks windows runs...just look at task manager you'll see. My system's running 130 processes right now with just Firefox open.

One or more may ask for attention at any time (as when moving the mouse, especially if over an active component in the browser to make a tooltip pop up or similar). When that happens Ryzen boosts a core to max clocks to get it complete and back to idle to save power. With a lot of processes running it's highly likely something's going to happen and there's always a core to boost when it does.

It's just the way Ryzen works, AMD calls it a "rush to idle" strategy to power management. It appears to work well because the processors are impressively efficient even when working at maximum output.

Another thing to be aware of is Ryzen reports a 'hot spot' temperature. It's the hottest spot on the die at any moment and there are several dozen temp sensors. It will 'spike' as a core boosts but it's one tiny spot on the die so not really thermally significant all on its own. Look for the CPU Die(average) temperature reading found in HWInfo64 to get a better idea of the CPU's overall thermal state.

As more cores start boosting and pipelines stay full for sustained processing of heavier loads the average temp will rise. That's when boost clocks will be pulled back and voltage lowered by the algorithm. If cooling is really good it won't lower so much because average temp won't rise so much but there's not much you can do about the temp 'spikes' as it boosts from idle.

 

[kozakis]

Thank you all for your replies. After 20 minutes or so it stopped so probably it was doing something and finished.