Question How to lower idle spikes, high temperature, fan ramping on a ryzen 5 3600?

steedsofwar

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This isn't really a question, but a solution to a common question for a problem I had a couple days ago. TLDR: skip to the part tagged SOLUTION below.

So I recently upgraded my i7 4790k (lasted me 7 years and still has a few years left in it), mobo and RAM to accommodate a Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB Ballistix 3600mhz RAM on a AsRock B550M Pro mobo.

I encountered several minor issues but the main infuriating thing was that at idle, ny temps would be bouncing everywhere between 35C to 71C! ALL THE TIME! For no reason, too. I had a powerful cooler on it (Cryorig A80 AIO, as the stock cooler went up to 90C in games. I blamed my case as it is the classic Phanteks Enthoo Evolv, which is bad for airflow but good for acoustics.). The cryorig cooler kept the CPU cool under lengthy times of load just fine (~70c max). But the idle spikes were still there with this cooler, hitting that same max 71c or average 65C, for just 2 seconds and then cooling back to 40C. This was driving my fans nuts and making horrible interruptions every minute of use. Opening a browser, closing a browser, moving the mouse, doing nothing, you name it.

Of course, I looked this up and it turns out this is normal behaviour for this gen Ryzen chip (my second AMD chip, the former one 2400G went into my HTPC, and didn't depict this behaviour. I installed and forgot it.) Apparently, the 7nm architecture is doing the AMD version of what we are used to on Intel called turbo boost. However, due to the smaller 7nm process, the heat generated in such a quick instant isn't preventable by our cooling solutions as it is just for a few seconds and 71C is still perfectly safe, even if hot for idle operations.

Solutions online ranged from

1. It's Ryzen, it's a feature, deal with it
to
  1. Switch to windows balanced (this didn't work for me)
  2. Turn off AMD's Precision Boost and or PBO (some say they are two different things. I have no clue.)
  3. Enable AMD's 'Cool & Quiet' in BIOS (I couldn't find this in mine. AsRock's BIOS is not as good as others I've used in the past or it's just me being a noob).
  4. Set a fan curve that doesn't react to these spikes. But that meant I would either have to run a constant speed up until it get to 65C-71C before it responded. This meant you either ran the fans loud all the time, or quiet most of the time until such high temps at which point it's already too high for my tolerances. So this solution also failed.
SOLUTION (temp):
For my hardware (yours may use different terminology) I had to go into bios and find an option called 'core performance boost' and disable it. This is under a tab called cpu configuration or 'common CPU something' (I forgot the exact phrase that AsRock used). It was not called PBO or precision boost. Those were under other headings in the BIOS. Now...I had no more spikes and crazy fans! Yay! Success?

Well sort of. It unfortunately MAY* have introduced lower frames in my Heaven Benchmark results, using my 1080Ti, dropping from 139fps score to 122FPS (at 1080p setting), which is an acceptable solution for me. But it didn't need to be mutually exclusive. I don't want crazy spikes in idle, but boost high when I game or export video.
* I am not certain that this is definitely the reason for my lower frames on Heaven but that's my theory right now. Will have to test with Core Performance Boost enabled again and report back, to confirm.

**ADMINS. I am not familiar with how to post this type of solution other than in the form of a question, as I have only come to TH for trouble shooting (benefiting myself immensely). So please don't delete this. Kindly move it to the relevant section or advise me as to where to repost this.

Hope this helps someone in my position.
 
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When i was running my 3600x with a wraith prism,i was having the same problems with the constant ramping up and down and the fan noise was driving me crazy. As a temporary measure I dropped the max cpu power from 100% to 99% but this caps the cpu at it's base speed of 3.8ghz,(so it couldnt boost to 4.4ghz) which worked for the fan ramping but obviously I lost performance. Now ive changed my cooler to a be quiet dark rock slim, no more problems and can run the cpu at max with no more crazy ramping up and down!.
 
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But it didn't need to be mutually exclusive. I don't want crazy spikes in idle, but boost high when I game or export video.
The problem is that you are never truly at idle, windows is running a whole bunch of things all the time and if something single threaded runs it will rev up your CPU to a very high degree, you can see here that boosting one single core takes more than half the power than what the whole CPU uses 72W to 135W.
So hitting high temps occasionally is how the CPU works.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-5-3600/18.html
 
This isn't really a question, but a solution to a common question for a problem I had a couple days ago. TLDR: skip to the part tagged SOLUTION below.

So I recently upgraded my i7 4790k (lasted me 7 years and still has a few years left in it), mobo and RAM to accommodate a Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB Ballistix 3600mhz RAM on a AsRock B550M Pro mobo.

I encountered several minor issues but the main infuriating thing was that at idle, ny temps would be bouncing everywhere between 35C to 71C! ALL THE TIME! For no reason, too. I had a powerful cooler on it (Cryorig A80 AIO, as the stock cooler went up to 90C in games. I blamed my case as it is the classic Phanteks Enthoo Evolv, which is bad for airflow but good for acoustics.). The cryorig cooler kept the CPU cool under lengthy times of load just fine (~70c max). But the idle spikes were still there with this cooler, hitting that same max 71c or average 65C, for just 2 seconds and then cooling back to 40C. This was driving my fans nuts and making horrible interruptions every minute of use. Opening a browser, closing a browser, moving the mouse, doing nothing, you name it.

Of course, I looked this up and it turns out this is normal behaviour for this gen Ryzen chip (my second AMD chip, the former one 2400G went into my HTPC, and didn't depict this behaviour. I installed and forgot it.) Apparently, the 7nm architecture is doing the AMD version of what we are used to on Intel called turbo boost. However, due to the smaller 7nm process, the heat generated in such a quick instant isn't preventable by our cooling solutions as it is just for a few seconds and 71C is still perfectly safe, even if hot for idle operations.

Solutions online ranged from

1. It's Ryzen, it's a feature, deal with it
to
  1. Switch to windows balanced (this didn't work for me)
  2. Turn off AMD's Precision Boost and or PBO (some say they are two different things. I have no clue.)
  3. Enable AMD's 'Cool & Quiet' in BIOS (I couldn't find this in mine. AsRock's BIOS is not as good as others I've used in the past or it's just me being a noob).
  4. Set a fan curve that doesn't react to these spikes. But that meant I would either have to run a constant speed up until it get to 65C-71C before it responded. This meant you either ran the fans loud all the time, or quiet most of the time until such high temps at which point it's already too high for my tolerances. So this solution also failed.
SOLUTION (temp):
For my hardware (yours may use different terminology) I had to go into bios and find an option called 'core performance boost' and disable it. This is under a tab called cpu configuration or 'common CPU something' (I forgot the exact phrase that AsRock used). It was not called PBO or precision boost. Those were under other headings in the BIOS. Now...I had no more spikes and crazy fans! Yay! Success?

Well sort of. It unfortunately MAY* have introduced lower frames in my Heaven Benchmark results, using my 1080Ti, dropping from 139fps score to 122FPS (at 1080p setting), which is an acceptable solution for me. But it didn't need to be mutually exclusive. I don't want crazy spikes in idle, but boost high when I game or export video.
* I am not certain that this is definitely the reason for my lower frames on Heaven but that's my theory right now. Will have to test with Core Performance Boost enabled again and report back, to confirm.

**ADMINS. I am not familiar with how to post this type of solution other than in the form of a question, as I have only come to TH for trouble shooting (benefiting myself immensely). So please don't delete this. Kindly move it to the relevant section or advise me as to where to repost this.

Hope this helps someone in my position.
Fan speed depends on CPU temperature which is a function of CPU load and it's voltage at that time. Ryzen is made for and known for fast reaction to load but it can't do anything by itself, OS is the one that commands it's behavior. Ryzen relays on temperature to regulate boost clocks so one of the ways to tame it is to overcool the heck out of it. quiet fans surely help too.
All of those temporary solutions lead to loss of performance comparing to true CPU abilities.
Idle temps variations are a bit easier to tame, First you have to ensure OS is as close to true idle as possible by paring down number of background processes and review Startups, less is better, not only for idle but also for overall performance. AIO pump running at high or full speed even at (near)idle also reduces idle temps and jumps.
Setting "Minimum processor state" to 5% in Ryzen or other power plan also lets cores "Sleep" or reduce usage at idle while "Maximum" at at 99% reduces CPU frequency to maximum of it's base speed.
Ryzen's (specially 3rd gen) best performance is up to 62-65c (although with not much loss at under 70c) after which performance starts to drop dramatically.
 
This isn't really a question, but a solution to a common question for a problem I had a couple days ago. TLDR: skip to the part tagged SOLUTION below.

So I recently upgraded my i7 4790k (lasted me 7 years and still has a few years left in it), mobo and RAM to accommodate a Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB Ballistix 3600mhz RAM on a AsRock B550M Pro mobo.

I encountered several minor issues but the main infuriating thing was that at idle, ny temps would be bouncing everywhere between 35C to 71C! ALL THE TIME! For no reason, too. I had a powerful cooler on it (Cryorig A80 AIO, as the stock cooler went up to 90C in games. I blamed my case as it is the classic Phanteks Enthoo Evolv, which is bad for airflow but good for acoustics.). The cryorig cooler kept the CPU cool under lengthy times of load just fine (~70c max). But the idle spikes were still there with this cooler, hitting that same max 71c or average 65C, for just 2 seconds and then cooling back to 40C. This was driving my fans nuts and making horrible interruptions every minute of use. Opening a browser, closing a browser, moving the mouse, doing nothing, you name it.

Of course, I looked this up and it turns out this is normal behaviour for this gen Ryzen chip (my second AMD chip, the former one 2400G went into my HTPC, and didn't depict this behaviour. I installed and forgot it.) Apparently, the 7nm architecture is doing the AMD version of what we are used to on Intel called turbo boost. However, due to the smaller 7nm process, the heat generated in such a quick instant isn't preventable by our cooling solutions as it is just for a few seconds and 71C is still perfectly safe, even if hot for idle operations.

Solutions online ranged from

1. It's Ryzen, it's a feature, deal with it
to
  1. Switch to windows balanced (this didn't work for me)
  2. Turn off AMD's Precision Boost and or PBO (some say they are two different things. I have no clue.)
  3. Enable AMD's 'Cool & Quiet' in BIOS (I couldn't find this in mine. AsRock's BIOS is not as good as others I've used in the past or it's just me being a noob).
  4. Set a fan curve that doesn't react to these spikes. But that meant I would either have to run a constant speed up until it get to 65C-71C before it responded. This meant you either ran the fans loud all the time, or quiet most of the time until such high temps at which point it's already too high for my tolerances. So this solution also failed.
SOLUTION (temp):
For my hardware (yours may use different terminology) I had to go into bios and find an option called 'core performance boost' and disable it. This is under a tab called cpu configuration or 'common CPU something' (I forgot the exact phrase that AsRock used). It was not called PBO or precision boost. Those were under other headings in the BIOS. Now...I had no more spikes and crazy fans! Yay! Success?

Well sort of. It unfortunately MAY* have introduced lower frames in my Heaven Benchmark results, using my 1080Ti, dropping from 139fps score to 122FPS (at 1080p setting), which is an acceptable solution for me. But it didn't need to be mutually exclusive. I don't want crazy spikes in idle, but boost high when I game or export video.
* I am not certain that this is definitely the reason for my lower frames on Heaven but that's my theory right now. Will have to test with Core Performance Boost enabled again and report back, to confirm.

**ADMINS. I am not familiar with how to post this type of solution other than in the form of a question, as I have only come to TH for trouble shooting (benefiting myself immensely). So please don't delete this. Kindly move it to the relevant section or advise me as to where to repost this.

Hope this helps someone in my position.
As you've discovered, you've found a 'solution' that actually breaks the system, making it perform sub-optimally. There's a lot of well intended advice that helps you do that, but they all fail to take into account what's really happening. AMD's explained a lot of it (go look for Robert Halleck's posts in the AMD sub-Reddit if you're interested) but an overclocker called Buildzoid (go look for his YouTube channel) has run several on-line experiments with instrumented motherboards that illustrate what's happening too. Another overclocker - TheStilt - has also provided a lot of good information on Ryzen internals, both from his experiments and (possibly) contacts at AMD.

While this somewhat applies to all Ryzen generations, it's very much the case with 2nd gen. Ryzen boosts from idle to maximum boost clocks as often as it finds thermal and power (voltage) margins. Those boosts are on ONE SINGLE core at a time and it moves boosting to other cores frequently to spread it around.

Ryzen processors have multiple thermal sensors scattered all over the CPU so the temperature reading you see is hottest one at that moment. It's also highly localized as it is one extremely tiny area of the die and therefore NOT a true representation of the thermal state of the CPU as a whole. You can imagine how this works by lighting a match in your room; the match is very hot, but the room temperature is unaffected. Just as you can not cool off that match by turning up the AC in your room, setting a super high fan speed on a big radiator will not cool down a temp spike as the processor boosts.

That's why setting a fixed fan speed up to about 65-70C works, not to cool the spikes but to calm fan pulsing. Just make sure it's a LOW or barely audible speed so it's not annoying most of the time. As temperature gets above 70C it will stop boosting as high, but it still boosts. It stays well above base clock speed on my 3700X all the way to 90C (at which point I stop any stress test I'm running on principle) with the biggest drop off only occuring at about 80C. The point is: although it may not be as high it's still boosting as that's the way Ryzen is meant to work.

But you should also set up the processor to work exactly as it's meant to work. Run the AMD Ryzen Balanced Power plan and DO NOT lower the minimum CPU power state from it's 99% setting. That basically tells Ryzen to stop managing itself, which it does up to 100 times a second, and let Windows' much slower power management routines take over. It can't perform optimally if you're disabling the features that make it work.

Along with that, set up BIOS: enable AMD Cool n quiet, enable Advanced C States, enable Processor CPPC and CPPC Preferred Cores.

Also be sure to run both CPU clock and Vcore in AUTO settings; you might lower VCore some but use OFFSET adjustment NEVER fixed adjustment. For Ryzen's boosting to work right, and protect itself in high-load situations, it has to be able to raise and lower voltage as needed.

Also: stop using old utilities to monitor Ryzen temperatures, most (like HWMonitor) report only the instantaneous, spikey temps directly from the sensors. Get Ryzenmaster and look at it's temperature reading which shows the true thermal state by integrating and averaging all the sensors together. HWInfo64 also has a Tdie Average readout that does something similar. They will be much more reflective of the true thermal state of the processor.

While it's always great to run at lower temperature, don't be afraid of it. Ryzen's Tjmax is 95C and it will go there, if you let it, under extreme processing loads, i.e., Prime95. We don't want it to though, I even set a platform thermal limit at 85C. I'm also running with PBO tweaked as far as my motherboard will allow (I think). My 3700X is under a 240mm AIO and in no rendering workload has ever gotten it even to 80C; in FAH it stays around 75C constantly. I feel those are 'safe' temperatures since voltage is also dropping way down which also lowers core current.

It will get to 85C (my platform limit) in the right Prime95 factoring but that's extreme and un-real; even then it's still boosting to 4.125Ghz. Base clock on 3700x is 3.6Ghz, so that's quite a nice overclock IMO (using PBO) since voltage is running around 1.25-1.275V at the time.

By the way: if I do not run PBO, but keep all the other settings as above, it will drop to base clock, 3.6Ghz, in a heavy Prime95 workload, with lower clocks at all intermediate workloads too. So benchmarks go down... it makes a real performance impact to not use PBO.
 
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steedsofwar

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As you've discovered, you've found a 'solution' that actually breaks the system, making it perform sub-optimally. There's a lot of well intended advice that helps you do that, but they all fail to take into account what's really happening. AMD's explained a lot of it (go look for Robert Halleck's posts in the AMD sub-Reddit if you're interested) but an overclocker called Buildzoid (go look for his YouTube channel) has run several on-line experiments with instrumented motherboards that illustrate what's happening too. Another overclocker - TheStilt - has also provided a lot of good information on Ryzen internals, both from his experiments and (possibly) contacts at AMD.

While this somewhat applies to all Ryzen generations, it's very much the case with 2nd gen. Ryzen boosts from idle to maximum boost clocks as often as it finds thermal and power (voltage) margins. Those boosts are on ONE SINGLE core at a time and it moves boosting to other cores frequently to spread it around.

Ryzen processors have multiple thermal sensors scattered all over the CPU so the temperature reading you see is hottest one at that moment. It's also highly localized as it is one extremely tiny area of the die and therefore NOT a true representation of the thermal state of the CPU as a whole. You can imagine how this works by lighting a match in your room; the match is very hot, but the room temperature is unaffected. Just as you can not cool off that match by turning up the AC in your room, setting a super high fan speed on a big radiator will not cool down a temp spike as the processor boosts.

That's why setting a fixed fan speed up to about 65-70C works, not to cool the spikes but to calm fan pulsing. Just make sure it's a LOW or barely audible speed so it's not annoying most of the time. As temperature gets above 70C it will stop boosting as high, but it still boosts. It stays well above base clock speed on my 3700X all the way to 90C (at which point I stop any stress test I'm running on principle) with the biggest drop off only occuring at about 80C. The point is: although it may not be as high it's still boosting as that's the way Ryzen is meant to work.

But you should also set up the processor to work exactly as it's meant to work. Run the AMD Ryzen Balanced Power plan and DO NOT lower the minimum CPU power state from it's 99% setting. That basically tells Ryzen to stop managing itself, which it does up to 100 times a second, and let Windows' much slower power management routines take over. It can't perform optimally if you're disabling the features that make it work.

Along with that, set up BIOS: enable AMD Cool n quiet, enable Advanced C States, enable Processor CPPC and CPPC Preferred Cores.

Also be sure to run both CPU clock and Vcore in AUTO settings; you might lower VCore some but use OFFSET adjustment NEVER fixed adjustment. For Ryzen's boosting to work right, and protect itself in high-load situations, it has to be able to raise and lower voltage as needed.

Also: stop using old utilities to monitor Ryzen temperatures, most (like HWMonitor) report only the instantaneous, spikey temps directly from the sensors. Get Ryzenmaster and look at it's temperature reading which shows the true thermal state by integrating and averaging all the sensors together. HWInfo64 also has a Tdie Average readout that does something similar. They will be much more reflective of the true thermal state of the processor.

While it's always great to run at lower temperature, don't be afraid of it. Ryzen's Tjmax is 95C and it will go there, if you let it, under extreme processing loads, i.e., Prime95. We don't want it to though, I even set a platform thermal limit at 85C. I'm also running with PBO tweaked as far as my motherboard will allow (I think). My 3700X is under a 240mm AIO and in no rendering workload has ever gotten it even to 80C; in FAH it stays around 75C constantly. I feel those are 'safe' temperatures since voltage is also dropping way down which also lowers core current.

It will get to 85C (my platform limit) in the right Prime95 factoring but that's extreme and un-real; even then it's still boosting to 4.125Ghz. Base clock on 3700x is 3.6Ghz, so that's quite a nice overclock IMO (using PBO) since voltage is running around 1.25-1.275V at the time.

By the way: if I do not run PBO, but keep all the other settings as above, it will drop to base clock, 3.6Ghz, in a heavy Prime95 workload, with lower clocks at all intermediate workloads too. So benchmarks go down... it makes a real performance impact to not use PBO.
That last paragraph is what I'm seeing. While my system is dead silent and cool at the same time, my prime test just showed my peak speed locked at 3600mhz. Temps were also locked at 65C under my cryorig 280 aio. I dunno what else looked wrong. 74% of 60A in TDC? 44W under CPU power? My knowledge on this is not even at the beginner level because I never intend to overclock. But the fan ramping was driving me insane.

Is disabling core performance boost the same thing as disabling PBO?

I couldn't even find the AMD cool and quiet option in my bios. I just think this bios is too basic. I have looked online at some tutorials and this bios doesn't appear to offer some of the options that others are tweaking online.
 

Karadjgne

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At idle, Intel lowers voltages and speeds on all cores, but all cores remain active. This means all background process and service startup spikes get spread across multiple threads, which you only see the hottest of.

With Ryzen, all cores except a preferred core get disabled, inactive, so the entire load of idle gets dumped on a single core. This also means that every process and service startup is also on that single core, so it sees a total cumulative temp spike temp, instead of Intels spread temp spikes.

Ryzen at idle will run hotter than Intel generally and will have larger spikes, no amount of cooling will change that in comparison to the same cooling on an intel
 

steedsofwar

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Disabling core performance boost will disable the processor from boosting; so it will lock the processor at 3600.

I thought as much. Thanks.

1. Is there no way to get the system to be quiet at idle and powerful when I need it to be under full load, even if noisy at this point? (Since enabling core performance boost will creat noisy fan ramping or demand noisy fans fixed at idle).

2. Is CPB the same as PBO? They seem to be in separate places in my AsRock BIOS. (I didn't mess with PBO. SMT is on, also. XMP profile rated for my RAM is 3600mhz, so I enabled that. Didn't play with volts.)

3. I couldn't find AMD cool and quiet anywhere on my BIOS. Would that give me no boosting at idle but allow it to achieve full 4.2ghz under load?

Sorry I have so many questions.
 
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I thought as much. Thanks.

1. Is there no way to get the system to be quiet at idle and powerful when I need it to be under full load, even if noisy at this point? (Since enabling core performance boost will creat noisy fan ramping or demand noisy fans fixed at idle).

2. Is CPB the same as PBO? They seem to be in separate places in my AsRock BIOS. (I didn't mess with PBO. SMT is on, also. XMP profile rated for my RAM is 3600mhz, so I enabled that. Didn't play with volts.)

3. I couldn't find AMD cool and quiet anywhere on my BIOS. Would that give me no boosting at idle but allow it to achieve full 4.2ghz under load?

Sorry I have so many questions.
1. Yes there is...
Set a flat fan profile that's barely audible up to about 65C then rises from there. I don't let my fans get very loud until about 80C, only really annoying at 85C and only at 100% around 90C.

2. CPB is NOT the same as PBO. PBO is "performance boost OVERRIDE". It over-rides some of the parameters that limit the boost algorithm and can give in increase in performance in heavy workloads It also increases thermal output, so better cooling is needed to get the most of it since the processor also limits boosting when it's hot.

3. I'm not sure, but some BIOS' may control CoolnQuiet automatically and don't give you input. That may be the case with Asrock.

Ryzen does not boost to max boost clocks (4.2Ghz for a 3600) under full load. It only boosts to the max clock during light bursty type loads, a single core at a time, and only when it sees sufficient thermal headroom and voltage headroom. Under heavy loads it will run at high clocks, maybe 3.9-4.1Ghz for a 3600 but will reduce to as far as the BASE CLOCK (3.6Ghz) if temp gets really high or it's exceeding power parameters set for boosting. Setting up PBO can help with setting higher power parameters, better cooling can help with keeping temperature lower and it will keep boosting in the 4.0-4.1 range even in Prime95-type workload.

Also, you can't just look at clocks with Ryzen as they bounce around way to much. You have to measure performance with a reliable benchmark: Cinebench20 has been the best. If you're changing things you also have to look at both lightly threaded and multithreaded benchmarks because it's easy to get it in a state where it gives good MT benches, but bad ST benches. And light threaded performance is most important for gaming.
 
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steedsofwar

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1. Yes there is...
Set a flat fan profile that's barely audible up to about 65C then rises from there. I don't let my fans get very loud until about 80C, only really annoying at 85C and only at 100% around 90C.

2. CPB is NOT the same as PBO. PBO is "performance boost OVERRIDE". It over-rides some of the parameters that limit the boost algorithm and can give in increase in performance in heavy workloads It also increases thermal output, so better cooling is needed to get the most of it since the processor also limits boosting when it's hot.

3. I'm not sure, but some BIOS' may control CoolnQuiet automatically and don't give you input. That may be the case with Asrock.

Ryzen does not boost to max boost clocks (4.2Ghz for a 3600) under full load. It only boosts to the max clock during light bursty type loads, a single core at a time, and only when it sees sufficient thermal headroom and voltage headroom. Under heavy loads it will run at high clocks, maybe 3.9-4.1Ghz for a 3600 but will reduce to as far as the BASE CLOCK (3.6Ghz) if temp gets really high or it's exceeding power parameters set for boosting. Setting up PBO can help with setting higher power parameters, better cooling can help with keeping temperature lower and it will keep boosting in the 4.0-4.1 range even in Prime95-type workload.

Also, you can't just look at clocks with Ryzen as they bounce around way to much. You have to measure performance with a reliable benchmark: Cinebench20 has been the best. If you're changing things you also have to look at both lightly threaded and multithreaded benchmarks because it's easy to get it in a state where it gives good MT benches, but bad ST benches. And light threaded performance is most important for gaming.
Thanks for the thorough reply. I genuinely appreciate it. Okay, so I wasn't able to update my OP after posting to say that disabling SMT didn't yield any FPS improvements from just my Heaven Benchmarking so I left it enabled.

My main concern then would be in tests like prime 95. I expect my CPU temps to climb up to mid or high 70s with my 280mm AIO (I can easily tolerate 85C as it's Prime95) But as you say, that might not mean much, other than to inform me that it is boosting to 3.9 or 4.1, instead of locked at base 3.6ghz.

So I will take your advice of testing it using Cinebench, since that will give me a score or a 'time' that I can compare against with and without CPB.

Could you recommend one other benchmark that would show me the same? (I'm actually experiencing random reboots during gaming so I need to stress test to eliminate components. Heaven benchmarks don't replicate the reboots. Playing PUBG certainly does. Only my RAM has xmp enabled. Everything else is stock, including GPU.)
 
....

Could you recommend one other benchmark that would show me the same? (I'm actually experiencing random reboots during gaming so I need to stress test to eliminate components. Heaven benchmarks don't replicate the reboots. Playing PUBG certainly does. Only my RAM has xmp enabled. Everything else is stock, including GPU.)
The benchmark included in CPU-Z seems repeatable and follows with changes I make. It's also a lot faster, though, so it's not showing the effects of thermal performance that a long bench mark run will.

I set up a benchmark of my own with a timed Handbrake encoding of a couple movies, that helped me with my own tuning but couldn't compare to other systems to say I'm in line with norms. That's the good thing about CB20: there is a lot of data out there and it's fairly repeatable.

Random reboots can be anything: even PSU not providing stable power, as unlikely as it may seem, is possible. Even though your memory is running on an XMP profile I'd suspect that first (3600 IS really high with no tweaking involved).

Try playing a while with memory in 'stock' settings, no XMP. It might run a tad slower at 2400 speed but that's OK to test. If it goes OK then run a thorough memory test at XMP speeds. You can start with Windows Memory Diagnostic. Type it in cortana search, it will reboot and run the test. It takes a LONG TIME if you run through at least twice. It's pretty thorough.

There's also a free memory tester called Memtest. The free version is a bit tricky to get going but it's also very good at finding bad memory. You have to launch multiple instances testing no more than 1gb of memory each, but be sure to not test too much memory or windows will just start swapping out to the swapfile.
 
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steedsofwar

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The benchmark included in CPU-Z seems repeatable and follows with changes I make. It's also a lot faster, though, so it's not showing the effects of thermal performance that a long bench mark run will.

I set up a benchmark of my own with a timed Handbrake encoding of a couple movies, that helped me with my own tuning but couldn't compare to other systems to say I'm in line with norms. That's the good thing about CB20: there is a lot of data out there and it's fairly repeatable.

Random reboots can be anything: even PSU not providing stable power, as unlikely as it may seem, is possible. Even though your memory is running on an XMP profile I'd suspect that first (3600 IS really high with no tweaking involved).

Try playing a while with memory in 'stock' settings, no XMP. It might run a tad slower at 2400 speed but that's OK to test. If it goes OK then run a thorough memory test at XMP speeds. You can start with Windows Memory Diagnostic. Type it in cortana search, it will reboot and run the test. It takes a LONG TIME if you run through at least twice. It's pretty thorough.

There's also a free memory tester called Memtest. The free version is a bit tricky to get going but it's also very good at finding bad memory. You have to launch multiple instances testing no more than 1gb of memory each, but be sure to not test too much memory or windows will just start swapping out to the swapfile.
I ran a memtest86 test but stopped it after 3 or of 4 passes showed no errors... I ran Windows memory diagnostics tool a couple times and it just reboots into the windows login screen after starting it's open tests. It doesn't produce an error log or summary. Just boots into Windows.

The RAM was advertised as 3600mhz but this needed enabling as an XMP. Will try the same above tests but with XMP off and report back.

Then install the HCI memtest for further testing.

I do suspect the PSU as it is now 6.5 years old. Corsair RM650 80+ gold.
 

steedsofwar

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Aug 22, 2015
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I can confirm the best solution for me and likely many others, is

  1. Manually set core speeds to advertised clocks in BIOS. 4.2ghz/4200 in my CPU's case.
  2. Set voltage to a nice stable but low level. 1.125v works perfectly for me under 8 hours of Realbench stress test. (Stock values meant CPU would never hit the advertised 4.2ghz, create far too much heat in idle spikes, gaming and stress tests under a 280mm AIO. Voltages would flatline at 1.3v in Prime95 and other non stress test operations.)
  3. Disable core performance boost (not PBO or some other similar sounding value). Leave everything else on default values, other than these 4 things in this list.
  4. Choose Ryzen balanced power plan in Windows control panel.
Now I get NO fan ramping or crazy temp spikes EVERY minute (yes I used fan smoothing to mitigate this in default settings...and made them unresponsive by adding delayed response but this STILL wouldn't prevent the ramping noise since temps used to spike into 71C at idle operations and push voltage up to 1.3v).

Using my settings above, I hit 4.2ghz on all cores under ANY work operation and voltages never exceed my chosen level of 1.125v. Higher scores in benchmarks and lower temps across the board. And dead silent operation in idle state. Voltages drop as low as 0.3v in idle, for efficiency and to avoid degradation of the chip.

I wish there was some other way to mark this as solved. For the benefit of others. If someone would copy paste my answer above, I would happily mark it best answer.