[SOLVED] AMD Ryzen 5950X Idle Clocks and Temperature

noldor

Distinguished
Jan 27, 2010
9
1
18,515
This is the first time I'm using an AMD system. I'm using ASUS Corsshair VIII Dark Hero motherboard with AMD Ryzen 5950X CPU.. Using an AIO Cooling COUGAR HELOR 360 3x120mm which is supposed to be a decent level cooler. I even added extra 3 fans in front of it, using a push-pull design with 6 fans..

My question is; the idle clocks and temperatures look weird to me. On Windows, I'm having 45-50C degrees on idle with no background services are working. Disabled all hardware related background software such as RGB and OC tweaking stuff.. And CPU clock doesn't go any lower than base 3.6Ghz frequency on Balanced Power mode. On my previous Intel system, I would see lower clocks like even 800Mhz when the PC was idle and it would boost up to 5Ghz on use... Now it's 3.6Ghz on idle, and boosts up to 4.9Ghz.. Very rarely the minimum is 2.8Ghz if I wait for long.. And I am assuming that's probably the main reason why idle temperatures are so high, is it? When I check HWMonitor, min core voltage looks 0.744V and max is 1.506V.. On multicore boost I see max 62C degrees. On single core boost I see max 75C degrees..

Do these values make any sense? Especially the idle temprature? Is there any way I can make it work on even lower core voltages on Idle without giving away any boost speed advantages?
 
Solution
I have 5900X which should behave similar to 5950X in this regard. As I use air cooler, I'm just sharing my thoughts about your "issue".
HWinfo shows a lot of info and one can misinterpret some values easily. For example, there are "Core n Clock" and there are "Core n Effective Clock" values. What we usually look at, is the first one, which is above 3000MHz most of the time and doesn't change much (unless we start some application). Much more is going on for Effective Clock values, even if system is idling. In short, your CPU seems to behave normal in this regard -I assume no overclocking (PBO) in BIOS.
Intel and AMD have different architecture, so they can't behave the same way. There's no better and worse, in this regard. As we all...
This is the first time I'm using an AMD system. I'm using ASUS Corsshair VIII Dark Hero motherboard with AMD Ryzen 5950X CPU.. Using an AIO Cooling COUGAR HELOR 360 3x120mm which is supposed to be a decent level cooler. I even added extra 3 fans in front of it, using a push-pull design with 6 fans..

My question is; the idle clocks and temperatures look weird to me. On Windows, I'm having 45-50C degrees on idle with no background services are working. Disabled all hardware related background software such as RGB and OC tweaking stuff.. And CPU clock doesn't go any lower than base 3.6Ghz frequency on Balanced Power mode. On my previous Intel system, I would see lower clocks like even 800Mhz when the PC was idle and it would boost up to 5Ghz on use... Now it's 3.6Ghz on idle, and boosts up to 4.9Ghz.. Very rarely the minimum is 2.8Ghz if I wait for long.. And I am assuming that's probably the main reason why idle temperatures are so high, is it? When I check HWMonitor, min core voltage looks 0.744V and max is 1.506V.. On multicore boost I see max 62C degrees. On single core boost I see max 75C degrees..

Do these values make any sense? Especially the idle temprature? Is there any way I can make it work on even lower core voltages on Idle without giving away any boost speed advantages?
Did you try to adjust Minimum processor state to about 5% in the power plan you are using ? Power saving features in BIOS should also be enabled. You also may want to use Ryzen Master for accurate measurements.
 
  • Like
Reactions: noldor and kurdtnz
I have 5900X which should behave similar to 5950X in this regard. As I use air cooler, I'm just sharing my thoughts about your "issue".
HWinfo shows a lot of info and one can misinterpret some values easily. For example, there are "Core n Clock" and there are "Core n Effective Clock" values. What we usually look at, is the first one, which is above 3000MHz most of the time and doesn't change much (unless we start some application). Much more is going on for Effective Clock values, even if system is idling. In short, your CPU seems to behave normal in this regard -I assume no overclocking (PBO) in BIOS.
Intel and AMD have different architecture, so they can't behave the same way. There's no better and worse, in this regard. As we all know, the only thing that matters is, how CPU behaves by doing it's job -and here, AMD is more power efficient.
About temps.. My idle temps are quite lower (about 34-36°C) than yours, but quite higher (78-82°C) on full load. That's the difference between air and water cooling behaviour.
Say, your room temp is 24°C for example. So, water will have 24°C even if PC is not running at all. And when you turn on PC, water temp will start to raise slowly and stabilize at certain (idle) temperature. At idle, temps are relative low, so fans also spin low -just enough to keep water "cold" enough. After a while the whole cooling system ends at 45°C (in your case). Yes, you can get lower idle temps by increasing fans speed, but why increase noise if not needed.
Air cooler behave totally different, because CPU temp is regulated by fan speed directly... the faster it spins, the more cool air CPU gets and opposite. And CPU temp changes occur almost instantly: CPU gets hot quickly, but also cools down quickly.
In short, I think your cooling works as expected.
 
  • Like
Reactions: noldor and kurdtnz
Solution

noldor

Distinguished
Jan 27, 2010
9
1
18,515
Did you try to adjust Minimum processor state to about 5% in the power plan you are using ? Power saving features in BIOS should also be enabled. You also may want to use Ryzen Master for accurate measurements.
Try using Ryzen Master to monitor your cpu behaviour. I dont fully understand why but Hwinfo never really shows the cores going below their base speeds, RM does and even when the cores are 'sleeping.'

I've just installed Ryzen Master. And the case is exactly as you guys have told me here. Clock speeds look a lot less, even down to 120Mhz levels on Idle. And idle temperatures are about 5 degrees less than what HWMonitor and Core Temp apps are showing me. I can see 38-39C degrees on Idle on RM. It's still weird that there is no temperature difference between RM and Core Temp when cpu is on full load, but only when it's idle there is this 5 degrees difference. I just hope this is not some AMD trick to show lower temps to customers :D

I have 5900X which should behave similar to 5950X in this regard. As I use air cooler, I'm just sharing my thoughts about your "issue".
HWinfo shows a lot of info and one can misinterpret some values easily. For example, there are "Core n Clock" and there are "Core n Effective Clock" values. What we usually look at, is the first one, which is above 3000MHz most of the time and doesn't change much (unless we start some application). Much more is going on for Effective Clock values, even if system is idling. In short, your CPU seems to behave normal in this regard -I assume no overclocking (PBO) in BIOS.
Intel and AMD have different architecture, so they can't behave the same way. There's no better and worse, in this regard. As we all know, the only thing that matters is, how CPU behaves by doing it's job -and here, AMD is more power efficient.
About temps.. My idle temps are quite lower (about 34-36°C) than yours, but quite higher (78-82°C) on full load. That's the difference between air and water cooling behaviour.
Say, your room temp is 24°C for example. So, water will have 24°C even if PC is not running at all. And when you turn on PC, water temp will start to raise slowly and stabilize at certain (idle) temperature. At idle, temps are relative low, so fans also spin low -just enough to keep water "cold" enough. After a while the whole cooling system ends at 45°C (in your case). Yes, you can get lower idle temps by increasing fans speed, but why increase noise if not needed.
Air cooler behave totally different, because CPU temp is regulated by fan speed directly... the faster it spins, the more cool air CPU gets and opposite. And CPU temp changes occur almost instantly: CPU gets hot quickly, but also cools down quickly.
In short, I think your cooling works as expected.

Adding BogdanH's explanation about the differences between air cooling and water cooling on Idle temperatures, it now makes more sense. I used only air cooling in the past until this current build. So I'm used to see very low temps on Idle. I assumed water cooling would make cpu even more cooler on Idle, but apparently that's not the case, it's more about cooling the cpu better on load, not on Idle.

So thank you all for your answers. I was worried something was wrong, I'm relieved now.

--
 
  • Like
Reactions: kurdtnz