[SOLVED] CPU Ryzen 5 3600 voltage (and core speed) high even when idling

[AWindowsUser]

Hi,
I just found out that having high voltages is not good, at least not when idling.
I'm worried that this isn't good for the CPU.
Main specifications:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor
• PSU: BE QUIET! STRAIGHT POWER 11 550W (BN281) 80Plus Gold modular ATX
• MOBO: MSI B450 Tomahawk Max

i've already tried enabling (were set to auto or disabled before):
global C-state control: enabled
power supply idle control: low current idle
CPPC: enabled
CPPC Preferred cores: enabled

My voltages and core speed are still high.
At time of writing, my Core Voltage is 1.336V (CPU-Z) and sometimes goes to 1.4V but I'm not playing any games.
About CPU core speed, I havent seen it going below 3.80GHz ever even when not playing anything...

CPU-Z:

CPUID HWMonitor

Thank you for your help!

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Hey there,

This is actually pretty normal behaviour for modern multi core CPU's and certainly Ryzen. The fluctuation you are talking about, is only in short bursts. It goes up to 1.4v+ for a split second at a time. It's not a sustained voltage in anyway. So you don't need to be worried.

You can of course, if you wish, set the vcore manually in the bios, which will stop that high fluctuation, and mostly keep your CPU voltage static, apart from vdroop.

My R1600x ticks along at 1.3v with a 3,9ghz OC (a relatively small OC - but close to limit for 1st Gen). When you set voltage manually, you will see vdroop, which is a small change in voltage when the CPU is at load, versus what you set. But you can combat this effect by changing LLC up one notch. This will reduce vdroop, and keep the vcore very close to what you set. Don't set LLC too aggressively, as it can overvolt your CPU if you set it on the higher levels.

 

[AWindowsUser]

Hey there,

This is actually pretty normal behaviour for modern multi core CPU's and certainly Ryzen. The fluctuation you are talking about, is only in short bursts. It goes up to 1.4v+ for a split second at a time. It's not a sustained voltage in anyway. So you don't need to be worried.

You can of course, if you wish, set the vcore manually in the bios, which will stop that high fluctuation, and mostly keep your CPU voltage static, apart from vdroop.

My R1600x ticks along at 1.3v with a 3,9ghz OC (a relatively small OC - but close to limit for 1st Gen). When you set voltage manually, you will see vdroop, which is a small change in voltage when the CPU is at load, versus what you set. But you can combat this effect by changing LLC up one notch. This will reduce vdroop, and keep the vcore very close to what you set. Don't set LLC too aggressively, as it can overvolt your CPU if you set it on the higher levels.

Thanks for the reply!
Well, I'm honsetly not into that OC-ing stuff.

Should I keep the settings I enabled above still enabled?
and also, is it fine if I don't manually change VCore because i'm not in that stuff either ....
The CPU never really goes below 1.1V :/

I've had this PC for a year now and no issues, but I've randomly found this stuff about voltages and core speed when searcing for a CPU cooler...
Some people say that it's really bad to have all cores at 1.4V+ and it apparently can "fry/cook" your CPU but I don't even know how I can see this (I don't know if the above from HWMonitor is that)...

My main concern is that I don't want my CPU to die quickly ...

EDIT: and also, what does "idle" exactly mean? Like, do you need to have all apps (including stuff such as Chrome, Discord, OneDrive, GeForce Experience in background, Ryzer Synapse in background...) closed?

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Some people say that it's really bad to have all cores at 1.4V+ and it apparently can "fry/cook" your CPU but I don't even know how I can see this (I don't know if the above from HWMonitor is that)...

This is primarily when people are OC'ing their CPU. The idea being, that for a long-term 24/7 OC, going above 1.4v will reduce the lifespan of the CPU.

For normal non-OC use, the fluctuations, as I mentioned are absolutely normal. No need to worry at all.

Leave your CPU as it is, and unless you have an issue with it, enjoy it as much as you can. In it's current state, it will work perfectly.

So idle, is the 'resting' state of your PC. So lets say you turn on the PC, for the first few minutes, it's loading up start up programs, drivers etc, so it's active. After about 5 mins your PC will settle down to an idle state, where nothing is being used, no apps are open, and Windows is just sitting nicely at your desktop.

Idle is typically when your CPU and system temps are at their lowest, just 'resting'. I hope that helps explain a little.

 

[AWindowsUser]

This is primarily when people are OC'ing their CPU. The idea being, that for a long-term 24/7 OC, going above 1.4v will reduce the lifespan of the CPU.

For normal non-OC use, the fluctuations, as I mentioned are absolutely normal. No need to worry at all.

Leave your CPU as it is, and unless you have an issue with it, enjoy it as much as you can. In it's current state, it will work perfectly.

So idle, is the 'resting' state of your PC. So lets say you turn on the PC, for the first few minutes, it's loading up start up programs, drivers etc, so it's active. After about 5 mins your PC will settle down to an idle state, where nothing is being used, no apps are open, and Windows is just sitting nicely at your desktop.

Idle is typically when your CPU and system temps are at their lowest, just 'resting'. I hope that helps explain a little.

Thank you!
Should I still keep these settings I changed in BIOS?

i've already tried enabling (were set to auto or disabled before):
global C-state control: enabled
power supply idle control: low current idle
CPPC: enabled
CPPC Preferred cores: enabled

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Yes, you can leave those settings as is. It won't do any harm.

You might test a game benchmark with CPPC enabled/disabled. CPPC makes the OS use the fastest cores, in lightly threaded applications. This can be beneficial, even for gaming, as a lot of games don't use that many cores, and will mostly prefer high clockspeeds on one or two cores. Play around with it. See if you get better gaming performance with it on or off.

You might have also seen PBO as an option. This is AMD's version of auto OC. It can really give a boost in FPS if switched on. Again, toggle it on/off and see if there's a benefit. If there isn't, then just disable it.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Thanks for the reply!
Well, I'm honsetly not into that OC-ing stuff.

Should I keep the settings I enabled above still enabled?
and also, is it fine if I don't manually change VCore because i'm not in that stuff either ....
The CPU never really goes below 1.1V :/

I've had this PC for a year now and no issues, but I've randomly found this stuff about voltages and core speed when searcing for a CPU cooler...
Some people say that it's really bad to have all cores at 1.4V+ and it apparently can "fry/cook" your CPU but I don't even know how I can see this (I don't know if the above from HWMonitor is that)...

My main concern is that I don't want my CPU to die quickly ...

EDIT: and also, what does "idle" exactly mean? Like, do you need to have all apps (including stuff such as Chrome, Discord, OneDrive, GeForce Experience in background, Ryzer Synapse in background...) closed?

AMD has told us that it's normal for Ryzen to boost from idle to max clocks, depending on thermal and VRM power margins, and raise voltage as high as 1.5V when doing it. It's the way Ryzen is designed to work.

And Windows is never idle. Just look at the details tab in Task Manager, all the active processes. In the CPU screen of the Performance tab you can see a count the number of threads...around 2000 on my system right now. The vast majority are inactive of course but at any time one can pop up and demand attention from the processor. That's when the scheduler might assign it a CPU core and then watch it boost to max clock to get it done fast and go back to sleep. Great...only a few mS later another one says 'me too!', gets assigned to another core and there you go again.

 

[AWindowsUser]

Yes, you can leave those settings as is. It won't do any harm.

You might test a game benchmark with CPPC enabled/disabled. CPPC makes the OS use the fastest cores, in lightly threaded applications. This can be beneficial, even for gaming, as a lot of games don't use that many cores, and will mostly prefer high clockspeeds on one or two cores. Play around with it. See if you get better gaming performance with it on or off.

You might have also seen PBO as an option. This is AMD's version of auto OC. It can really give a boost in FPS if switched on. Again, toggle it on/off and see if there's a benefit. If there isn't, then just disable it.

Okay, I'll leave them on then.
Do you maybe know where would I find Cool 'n' Quiet. I would really give it a try, but I can't seem to find it. Some people said it's removed and if it is, are there any alternatives that would do similar job?

 

[AWindowsUser]

AMD has told us that it's normal for Ryzen to boost from idle to max clocks, depending on thermal and VRM power margins, and raise voltage as high as 1.5V when doing it. It's the way Ryzen is designed to work.

And windows is never idle. Just look at the details tab in Task Manager, all the active processes. In the CPU screen of the Performance tab you can see a count the number of threads...around 2000 on my system right now. The vast majority are inactive of course but at any time one can pop up and demand attention from the processor. That's when the scheduler might assign it a CPU core and then watch it boost to max clock to get it done fast and go back to sleep. Great...only a few mS later another one says 'me too!' and there you go again.

Hi, thank you for your response.
The issue is that I always have high voltage (and core speed), and I'd like to have them lower when idling at least without having to lock the voltage manually...
I heard about some Cool n Quiet option which I cannot find in my BIOS ...

 

[drea.drechsler]

Hi, thank you for your response.
The issue is that I always have high voltage (and core speed), and I'd like to have them lower when idling at least without having to lock the voltage manually...
I heard about some Cool n Quiet option which I cannot find in my BIOS ...

What are you using to monitor voltage? It may seem 'always', but not really. Both CPUz and HWMonitor aren't very good for Ryzen if you don't understand their quirks. Use HWInfo64 and look at the Vcore (SVI2 TFN) voltage, that's the true core voltage read out by the processor in telemetry.

Look for Cool n Quiet on an Advance CPU or CPU Features screen or something like that. Also make sure VCore is on AUTO and CPU Multiplier is also on AUTO.

 

[AWindowsUser]

What are you using to monitor voltage? It may seem 'always', but not really. Use HWInfo64 and look at the SVI2 TFN voltage, that's the true core voltage read out by the processor in telemetry.

I use HWMonitor, CPU-Z and Ryzen Master.
(Not opened at the same time)

 

[drea.drechsler]

I use HWMonitor, CPU-Z and Ryzen Master.
(Not opened at the same time)

Yep...get HWInfo64. It's really the most reliable for Ryzen. It's also got an averaging temp readout, the only way to meaningfully assess true CPU thermal state as it averages the temp spikes that occur when it boosts at "idle".

RyzenMaster is OK, but even that you have to understand it's quirks. If you're not intent on overclocking with it I'd uninstall it.

 

[AWindowsUser]

Yep...get HWInfo64. It's really the most reliable for Ryzen. It's also got an averaging temp readout, the only way to meaningfully assess true CPU thermal state as it averages the temp spikes that occur when it boosts at "idle".

RyzenMaster is OK, but even that you have to understand it's quirks. If you're not intent on overclocking with it I'd uninstall it.

Is there a way to lower voltage when idling without manually changing the values?
Also, is it normal that Core Speed/Clock never goes below 3600 Mhz and quickly jumps to 4100 Mhz and then back and so on

 

[drea.drechsler]

Is there a way to lower voltage when idling without manually changing the values?
Also, is it normal that Core Speed/Clock never goes below 3600 Mhz and quickly jumps to 4100 Mhz and then back and so on

The boosting to 4.1Ghz is what it does, you don't want to change that or it will hurt performance especially in gaming. In fact, it probably can boost even higher if you set it up right for improved gaming performance.

The 3600Mhz reading isn't exactly correct. When the CPU goes to true idle it puts cores into a C6 deep sleep state. In that state any request to the CPU to report it's status wakes it up so properly behaved utilities (like HWinfo64 and Ryzenmaster) don't do it. Instead they just report the last performance state it was at before dropping into C6. That's usually something like 3600Mhz. HWInfo has an indirect method to determine if it's in C6 and reports it out in a C-States Residency section. It's not perfect but good enough to know what's happening. When a core is in C6, VCore is something like 600mV with all core circuits shut down.

When I'm just web browsing the CPU threads of my 3700x are mostly 80-90% in C6 state, when gaming that drops to about 60-70%. But that's an eyeball average as some cores get a lot more work and they're only in C6 about 10-20%. That's the way even multi-threaded games work: most of the work is performed by just one thread and that's what limits CPU performance.

Never use fixed adjustment as that will hurt performance or possibly even risk early degradation if too high. You can lower voltage a little bit using a negative offset adjustment. However, when you do you need to test performance to make sure you're not hurting performance...especially single or lightly threaded and that's most important for gaming.

 

[AWindowsUser]

The boosting to 4.1Ghz is what it does, you don't want to change that or it will hurt performance especially in gaming. In fact, it probably can boost even higher if you set it up right for improved gaming performance.

The 3600Mhz reading isn't exactly correct. When the CPU goes to true idle it puts cores into a C6 deep sleep state. In that state any request to the CPU to report it's status wakes it up so properly behaved utilities (like HWinfo64 and Ryzenmaster) don't do it. Instead they just report the last performance state it was at before dropping into C6. That's usually something like 3600Mhz. HWInfo has an indirect method to determine if it's in C6 and reports it out in a C-States Residency section. It's not perfect but good enough to know what's happening. When a core is in C6, VCore is something like 600mV with all core circuits shut down.

Never use fixed adjustment as that will hurt performance or possibly even risk early degradation if too high. You can lower voltage a little bit using a negative offset adjustment. However, when you do you need to test performance to make sure you're not hurting performance...especially single or lightly threaded and that's most important for gaming.

Thank you.
What do you recommend doing in my case? I see many people having voltages only like 0.4V , while in my case, I've noticed that it never goes below 1.0875V (that's the lowest it goes) which is weird..
And also, are there any Cool n Quiet alternatives as that feature was removed apparently ...

I also have my RAM set to XMP profile 1 if that affects CPU...

 

[drea.drechsler]

Thank you.
What do you recommend doing in my case? I see many people having voltages only like 0.4V , while in my case, I've noticed that it never goes below 1.0875V (that's the lowest it goes) which is weird..
And also, are there any Cool n Quiet alternatives as that feature was removed apparently ...

I also have my RAM set to XMP profile 1 if that affects CPU...

What version BIOS are you running? I have an MSI B450m Mortar, but not the MAX version. The BIOS ver. I'm on definitely has Cool-n-Quiet. It may have been removed if you installed a BIOS intended for Ryzen 5000, I wouldn't do that even though it's supposedly compatible with Ryzen 3000 CPU's.

What I'd recommend is resetting CMOS if you never have. Then, in BIOS, put VCore and CPU clocks on AUTO, enable CPPC, CPPC Preferred Cores and Advanced C States (not just on AUTO as that may be interpreted as DISABLE) . Also enable Cool-n-Quiet, but if it's missing I guess you can't. It should be in the same screen as CPPC and Advanced C States settings; it is in my MSI BIOS.

Also be sure to install the AMD chipset drivers from the AMD home page. It will also install a Ryzen Balanced power plan. Run that and do not make changes.

And of course, enable XMP as it helps get the most out of memory. In my case, when I enable XMP I have to manually set the DRAM voltage or it won't restart.

 

[AWindowsUser]

I already have Ryzen Balanced Power Plan.
I also have XMP Profile 1 (without manually setting anything else) and also tried disabling it now to test, but it seems it doesn't affect CPU voltage...
MSI Game Boost is also off.
I'll try other settings you provided above soon as I can't right now.

This is my BIOS. I'm unsure if I'm using a Ryzen 5000 or Ryzen 3000 version ...

 

[scout_03]

these voltages stay in normal specsfor this cpu but i would repaste and recheck cooler 66 c even at idle is a bit hot what cooler you use and witch kind of air flow in your case .

 

[AWindowsUser]

these voltages stay in normal specsfor this cpu but i would repaste and recheck cooler 66 c even at idle is a bit hot what cooler you use and witch kind of air flow in your case .

Oh yeah, I'm using the stock cooler (I think the cheapest one). I'm looking for a new one that's how I found that voltages stuff...
Well I saw many people saying that these voltages are okay, but I'm unsure because I've seen people with 0.4-0.6V while mine never goes below 1V, and constantly hits 1.4V, sometimes even 1.460V or something like that

 

[scout_03]

this https://www.google.ca/search?source...gEEMjIuOZgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXo&sclient=psy-ab but a repaste wil help on temp .

 

[drea.drechsler]

...
This is my BIOS. I'm unsure if I'm using a Ryzen 5000 or Ryzen 3000 version ...

If that's what I think it uses AMD AGESA ComboAm4v2PI 1.1.0.0 which is optimized for Ryzen 5000. That might be why Cool-n-Quiet is no long available to you in the screens...I just don't know.

 

[AWindowsUser]

this https://www.google.ca/search?source...gEEMjIuOZgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXo&sclient=psy-ab but a repaste wil help on temp .

Well when we brought that temperature theme up....
Some off-topic question ... My CPU fan clearance is 160mm (specified on the Case's website) and the fan I'm looking for (Arctic Freezer 34 eSports DUO) is 157mm. Is this a problem?

 

[scout_03]

this cooler will fit from your specs but before getting a new one i would try the repaste .

 

[AWindowsUser]

this cooler will fit from your specs but before getting a new one i would try the repaste .

well i'll just find a new one as this one apparently has some compatible issues with my motherboard...
i would still find a new cooler like just wanna get lower temps overall and the stock one is also kinda loud

 

[scout_03]

for the stock one check in bios if it on auto and pwm mode and not dc and give a look at this one the h 7 http://www.cryorig.com/product.php