[SOLVED] Is there an option to overclock the Ryzen 5 3600 with the ASRock B450M Pro4?

[ligonsker]

I saw in many older posts that the B450M-Pro4 does not support PBO any type of easy OCing, is that true?

Do I even need to OC the 3600? (I have a very good cooler so that's not an issue)

Ty

 

[drea.drechsler]

Any B450 board will allow overclocking Ryzen CPU's. Only A320 or A520 won't.

Before doing anything update to the latest BIOS and install the AMD chipset drivers from the AMD web site to ensure you get the latest. Set the following settings to ENABLED in BIOS: CPPC, CPPC Preferred Cores, and Global C-States. They should be enabled by default, this just ensures they are.

The best 'overclock' is usually using PBO since it's also safest as it leaves the algorithm functioning to reduce core clocks and voltage as temps rise. For an initial trial I'd suggest enabling it in Manual, put PPT to 330, TDC and EDC both to 230 with a scalar of 5x. Leave VCore and Frequency settings on AUTO.

This will help it boost more aggressively in light, bursty workloads. But it will also make the CPU run much hotter in heavy workloads so you do need much better (than stock) cooling or the algorithm will simply throttle it back down to protect it. But if you can keep it cool (average temps in the 70's) it will hold a higher average clock for better CB 20 mulit-thread scores.

It often helps to undervolt VCore slightly... do it only with negative offset, never a fixed voltage. If you go too low it will either lose light threaded performance or go unstable in heavy multi-thread. So testing with CB20 is adviseable.

Results may never be as good as a 3600X, but it's still better than a full-stock 3600.

Of course the other way is to do an all-core overclock and try to find the lowest stable voltage. A B450m Pro-4 hasn't all that great of a VRM so it probably won't hold an extremely stable voltage at heavy load but you can try. So you might end up running a fairly high voltage to keep it stable at a fixed clock to get the same multi-thread performance PBO gives you. But you may never get the same single-thread performance without running with a crazy high voltage.

The advantage of PBO is it's able to lower voltage as needed to keep the CPU safe while give it the high voltage it needs to hit high clocks for single threaded gaming workloads. Basically, a fixed overclock hates VDroop and unsteady voltages but PBO can deal with that and actually 'likes' it to a degree.