[SOLVED] New to Ryzen and overclocking. Please advise.

[steedsofwar]

What is a safe voltage to run pegged 24/7? For my Ryzen 5 3600?

B550m Pro4 AsRock mobo.
Cryorig 280mm AIO.
Phanteks enthoo evolv (bad airflow case).
3600mhz Ballistix RAM 2x 16GB.
1080Ti Kraken mod with h80i.

I'm currently just using Ryzen Master to test clock speeds and voltages. I don't know how RM works and what all the options do. BIOS looks even more confusing. I confused my self with things like LLC and vcore and so many other technical terms my brain is hurting. So I kept it simple.

In RM, I set the 6 values under CCX0 and CCX1 to 4200 each. I'm assuming this is setting all cores to boost up to 4200 together? Peak core voltage is set to 1.125v.

Prime95 smallest FFT tested for just 1 hour, locked at 81C. RM showed 4.2Ghz set at 1.125v as set by me, throughout the test.
Cinebench gave a score of 3676 and 478 at lower temps of 64C.

Can someone look at the screenshot below and tell me if I'm doing it right, please?
What is a safe voltage to run pegged 24/7? Is 1.125v harmful?
And how do I get voltage to drop to 0.9v in idle? At stock settings, it idles at 0.9v for me. This is safer for the chip, no?

https://imgur.com/a/ItSrpwO

View: https://imgur.com/a/ItSrpwO

 

[Darkbreeze]

Smallest FFT isn't a test metric we like to use. Small FFT, is. All of your thermal compliance and stability test procedures, which are entirely different things, can be found towards the end of my guide here:

CPU overclocking guide and tutorial for beginners

Covering the basics If you found your way here it's likely you are looking for help with basic overclocking. Either that or you're a long time overclocker interested in seeing whether I had any eye opening insights that you may have been lacking. Rest assured, I don't. This is only intended as...

forums.tomshardware.com

And these two guides tell you just about every COMMON thing you need to know about overclocking on Ryzen. Obviously, as with most things, there are of course advanced concepts and practices that those guides really don't get into, and that I'm not going to get into either, because clearly that's not the point of your inquiry.

If these two guides, plus my guide, don't tell you all you need to know to pretty well figure out the rest with a couple of quick searches, then the process is probably going to be problematic for you. No offense at all. Overclocking isn't for everybody, and to be honest it gets harder and harder to actually see any worthwhile gains for the amount of extra time and money investment required anyhow these days.

AMD RYZEN Overclocking Guide - Overclockers

My intention here is to aid you in leveraging just a bit more out of the AMD Ryzen CPU. One great thing is that all Ryzen CPUs have unlocked multipliers,

www.overclockers.com

This one is specifically for the 3700x, but the procedures in general are going to be very similar.

However, it should be said that while your Pro4 board is a good entry level B550 board, nothing wrong with it for normal usage, it is not a particularly capable board for overclocking, even though you have good cooling. Don't be surprised if you have trouble or are limited in your success due to the VRM configuration on that board.

 

[RodroX]

The big question here is, how much better is this OC of yours (Temp, CB R20 results, voltage, etc.) compared to run the Ryzen 5 3600 with PB enable and PBO and AutoOC disable?

With those settings I wrote up there I get a CB R20 multicore score of 3632 and a single core score of 482, So Im not sure you are getting a lot of extra performance out f it. (I get this results with the system you can see in my Sig)

Heck, in fact you could just try with PBO enable too, after all you have a 280mm aio water cooler

Cheers!

 

[steedsofwar]

The big question here is, how much better is this OC of yours (Temp, CB R20 results, voltage, etc.) compared to run the Ryzen 5 3600 with PB enable and PBO and AutoOC disable?

With those settings I wrote up there I get a CB R20 multicore score of 3632 and a single core score of 482, So Im not sure you are getting a lot of extra performance out f it. (I get this results with the system you can see in my Sig)

Heck, in fact you could just try with PBO enable too, after all you have a 280mm aio water cooler

Cheers!

So in stock settings, Prime95 would not operate at 4.2. It would stay mostly at 3.8ghz and occasionally hit 4.0ghz. Temps would be in the high 70s. Not too dissimilar to now. I wasn't hitting the boost clock of 4.2, and I know that it isn't meant to under prolonged stress. But that's why my 'OC' is only forcing it to the boost speeds and not exceeding 4.2ghz.

In Cinebench, my multi score was 3116 but now it is 3676. Time spy has gone up from 8904 to 9086. The biggest improvement is in the boost behaviour that was causing non stop fan ramping (likely auto pushing too much voltage in stock settings with precision boost enabled not PBO) to now not exceeding my fixed voltage of 1.125v. This ramping boosting was despite my fan smoothing and less responsiveness. Reacting only at the highest temperatures, which was counter intuitive for me, leading to very high temps in regular gaming. Now, I don't get the fan ramping and in yet to test gaming.

I appreciate your feedback. It's a constant voltage of 1.125 harmful? Cause more rapid degradation? And is there a way to get this fixed voltage to step down when NOT being put under load?

 

[steedsofwar]

Smallest FFT isn't a test metric we like to use. Small FFT, is. All of your thermal compliance and stability test procedures, which are entirely different things, can be found towards the end of my guide here:

CPU overclocking guide and tutorial for beginners

Covering the basics If you found your way here it's likely you are looking for help with basic overclocking. Either that or you're a long time overclocker interested in seeing whether I had any eye opening insights that you may have been lacking. Rest assured, I don't. This is only intended as...

forums.tomshardware.com

And these two guides tell you just about every COMMON thing you need to know about overclocking on Ryzen. Obviously, as with most things, there are of course advanced concepts and practices that those guides really don't get into, and that I'm not going to get into either, because clearly that's not the point of your inquiry.

If these two guides, plus my guide, don't tell you all you need to know to pretty well figure out the rest with a couple of quick searches, then the process is probably going to be problematic for you. No offense at all. Overclocking isn't for everybody, and to be honest it gets harder and harder to actually see any worthwhile gains for the amount of extra time and money investment required anyhow these days.

AMD RYZEN Overclocking Guide - Overclockers

My intention here is to aid you in leveraging just a bit more out of the AMD Ryzen CPU. One great thing is that all Ryzen CPUs have unlocked multipliers,

www.overclockers.com

This one is specifically for the 3700x, but the procedures in general are going to be very similar.

However, it should be said that while your Pro4 board is a good entry level B550 board, nothing wrong with it for normal usage, it is not a particularly capable board for overclocking, even though you have good cooling. Don't be surprised if you have trouble or are limited in your success due to the VRM configuration on that board.

Thanks for the guides. Will take time out to read at least the Ryzen Master sections of the guides. Cheers.

 

[Darkbreeze]

And is there a way to get this fixed voltage to step down when NOT being put under load?

Yes, there is. In the BIOS, set all of the following as seen here:

Cool N Quiet - Enabled

Core CPPC - Enabled

CPPC preferred cores - Enabled

Advanced/Global C-states - Enabled


And in Windows, navigate to the power options, set the power plan to Ryzen balanced or balanced, then go into the advanced settings for that plan and set the "minimum processor power state) to 5% and the maximum to 100%, if it isn't already like that.

 

[steedsofwar]

Yes, there is. In the BIOS, set all of the following as seen here:

Cool N Quiet - Enabled

Core CPPC - Enabled

CPPC preferred cores - Enabled

Advanced/Global C-states - Enabled


And in Windows, navigate to the power options, set the power plan to Ryzen balanced or balanced, then go into the advanced settings for that plan and set the "minimum processor power state) to 5% and the maximum to 100%, if it isn't already like that.

That's brilliant thanks. I'm gonna look for those settings in BIOS as some sound familiar and others not. AsRock BIOS isn't so detailed. I will try and set the cores and voltages in BIOS too, if anyone knows what verbiage BIOS uses for those as I don't believe they are identical to the terms found in Ryzen Master. I was using RM really to test stability in a quick and dirty way. If Prime95 survives one hour of small FFT tests, then I will set the values in BIOS next and run an overnight test in Prime95.

Power plan in Windows is set to Ryzen balanced and min state is set to 5% whilst max is set to 100%.

Cheers

 

[Darkbreeze]

Nothing I suggested is a setting that will be found in Ryzen master, so not sure why you referenced that?

They are all in the BIOS and in the Windows settings or control panel.

If you use Prime95, you want to be sure to use "Small FFT" and NOT "Smallest FFT". Also, you will want to disable ALL AVX options. Some options may not be available to disable until you have disabled other AVX options. The options to disable AVX are on the main torture test selection pop up window.

You don't need to run it for one hour for thermal compliance testing. 15 minutes. If it doesn't overheat in 15 minutes, meaning that it reaches 80°C or higher, then it probably isn't going to regardless of how long you run it. And THAT is really the only useful metric for Small FFT for our purposes.

When you know that your overclock is fully thermally compliant and are ready to test stability, which is entirely different than testing thermal compliance, because thermal compliance should be tested for using a full load steady state utility that get you at or near 100% TDP, while stability testing is usually done using variable load, variable workload utilities that are all over the board. Realbench, on the stress test, using half of your installed memory amount, is the first test I'd run. Initial runs of about 1 hour. Final stability test of 8 hours.

Beyond that, there are other good indicators of stability such as running four passes of Memtest86, running special configurations of Prime95 and running various combinations of the available tests in OCCT.

 

[steedsofwar]

Nothing I suggested is a setting that will be found in Ryzen master, so not sure why you referenced that?

They are all in the BIOS and in the Windows settings or control panel.

If you use Prime95, you want to be sure to use "Small FFT" and NOT "Smallest FFT". Also, you will want to disable ALL AVX options. Some options may not be available to disable until you have disabled other AVX options. The options to disable AVX are on the main torture test selection pop up window.

You don't need to run it for one hour for thermal compliance testing. 15 minutes. If it doesn't overheat in 15 minutes, meaning that it reaches 80°C or higher, then it probably isn't going to regardless of how long you run it. And THAT is really the only useful metric for Small FFT for our purposes.

When you know that your overclock is fully thermally compliant and are ready to test stability, which is entirely different than testing thermal compliance, because thermal compliance should be tested for using a full load steady state utility that get you at or near 100% TDP, while stability testing is usually done using variable load, variable workload utilities that are all over the board. Realbench, on the stress test, using half of your installed memory amount, is the first test I'd run. Initial runs of about 1 hour. Final stability test of 8 hours.

Beyond that, there are other good indicators of stability such as running four passes of Memtest86, running special configurations of Prime95 and running various combinations of the available tests in OCCT.

Yes I was merely making note of how I've not changed anything from default in BIOS, other than fans and enabled XMP 3600 with fclk at 1800. I have tested the memory in this state using memtest86 and all 4 passes showed no errors. I used RM just to experiment with levels until I gained some confidence to go fiddle about in BIOS.

Good advice. Once I've made changes in BIOS, I'll thermal test using Prime95. Then I will check using Realbench. I understand that RAM stability can be affected when 'overclocking' the CPU so I will run another memtest86 once CPU is confirmed stable.

Appreciate your help on this. I will report back in a few hours.

 

[Darkbreeze]

👍

 

[steedsofwar]

👍

Okay I made very slow progress. If any at all.

I read your full guide to the end. I also found everything you listed to look for in BIOS apart from CnQ, but voltage STILL doesn't step down in idle.

1. Only Ryzen Master shows core frequency stepping down. EVERY other monitoring software shows cores locked at 4.2ghz. So not sure what to make of that conflicting data reporting. I have now uninstalled RM and other motherboard utilities from AsRock.
2. I reset to BIOS defaults and monitored readings during Cinebench R20 runs...temps shoot up to 77C, producing LOWER scores than my manual settings, hitting 1.35v, fan ramping in idle or non load tasks.
3. My manual settings work great but a) do NOT undervolt in idle for power efficiency and longevity of chip. b) May even not be downclocking cores, if I am to believe everything except RM readings.

I'm lost. I've tweaked so many settings back and forth related to power saving and still no downvolting. I can live with my own manual settings but I feel I couldn't get my system to be optimised.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes, CNQ is no longer there on many boards. Some boards still call it that, but mostly it's just the global or advanced, or just in general, C-states.

Did you disable PBO/PBO2? (Precision boost overdrive, not to be confused with "precision boost", which is the stock boost behavior. PBO is the optimized "overclock".)

Ryzen master is the ONLY utility you should fully pay attention to. HWinfo, Core Temp, these are good utilities, better by far than most all others out there, for most hardware, but for Ryzen CPU monitoring Ryzen master should be considered the expert above all others.

 

[steedsofwar]

Yes, CNQ is no longer there on many boards. Some boards still call it that, but mostly it's just the global or advanced, or just in general, C-states.

Did you disable PBO/PBO2? (Precision boost overdrive, not to be confused with "precision boost", which is the stock boost behavior. PBO is the optimized "overclock".)

Ryzen master is the ONLY utility you should fully pay attention to. HWinfo, Core Temp, these are good utilities, better by far than most all others out there, for most hardware, but for Ryzen CPU monitoring Ryzen master should be considered the expert above all others.

Yes I disabled PBO and toggled CPB/PB on and off too.

Enabled all the other items in the above list from the helpful moderator and still no drop from my manual OC using 1.125v. Idles at that fixed voltage.

That's what I heard about RM, but seeing as every other monitoring app was reporting the same data that conflicts with RM, I began to suspect it. I will reinstall it. I just didn't want it to override BIOS discreetly. Just eliminating every far fetched possibility.

What do you think it could be? On Intel, I remember having to set voltage to adaptive or something like that. I only found three options for what's called an offset in my my BIOS. But I was afraid to mess around in it and couldn't find any specific information about this.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ok, so as a test, I would try this. Reset the BIOS to the default configuration by loading the default configuration settings. If there is a feature to save the current BIOS configuration first, then do so, so you don't have to start from scratch after testing the default configuration. If not, then you'll just have to reconfigure things afterwards but most motherboards allow saving of BIOS profiles to assist with overclocking.

After you reset to the default settings, go back into Windows and make sure you are on the balanced power plan and then check RM to see if the core voltage fluctuates with the default configuration or not.

 

[steedsofwar]

Ok, so as a test, I would try this. Reset the BIOS to the default configuration by loading the default configuration settings. If there is a feature to save the current BIOS configuration first, then do so, so you don't have to start from scratch after testing the default configuration. If not, then you'll just have to reconfigure things afterwards but most motherboards allow saving of BIOS profiles to assist with overclocking.

After you reset to the default settings, go back into Windows and make sure you are on the balanced power plan and then check RM to see if the core voltage fluctuates with the default configuration or not.

Yes I did exactly these steps earlier today, and voltage definitely fluctuates acc to RM.

 

[Darkbreeze]

So what are you changing that changes that fact? Is it the manual voltage setting? Try making changes one at a time until you can determine exactly what is causing this, because to be honest, it's not normal behavior.

Also, I'd check your LLC settings to make sure you don't have it set to Ultra high or some such nonsense that might not allow it to droop or fluctuate. Try going through all of the BIOS settings to find anything related to vcore or C-states that might be misconfigured or disabled. To be honest, it makes no sense that it's not variable as it should be so long as you have the Global or Advanced C-states enabled and the minimum processor power state set to 5% unless there is something overriding the core voltage behavior.

 

[steedsofwar]

So what are you changing that changes that fact? Is it the manual voltage setting? Try making changes one at a time until you can determine exactly what is causing this, because to be honest, it's not normal behavior.

Also, I'd check your LLC settings to make sure you don't have it set to Ultra high or some such nonsense that might not allow it to droop or fluctuate. Try going through all of the BIOS settings to find anything related to vcore or C-states that might be misconfigured or disabled. To be honest, it makes no sense that it's not variable as it should be so long as you have the Global or Advanced C-states enabled and the minimum processor power state set to 5% unless there is something overriding the core voltage behavior.

Thanks for your patience, bud. Everything you mentioned in the last paragraph is set for you advised before. And yes. The manual voltage is all I change and boom. It doesn't move from there. On Intel chips, I had to set something like adaptive or offset but I couldn't find anyone who did this for my BIOS to follow as a guide or example.

I'm pretty certain my LLC is set as it is from default. And that's level 2, one away from the highest. I'll go step that down a level and see.

 

[Darkbreeze]

On all my Intel systems I use a static/fixed manual voltage setting, along with Intel speed step and a 5% minimum, and get exactly the result we are looking for. There SHOULD be an adaptive/offset voltage setting for Ryzen as well, because there has been on every system I've worked on so far, but this MIGHT be a limitation of your specific board model since the Pro4 IS a budget model. It's a decent board for being a budget offering, but still a budget model nonetheless and often budget boards have greatly reduced settings.

You ARE using the advanced view, not the EZ or basic view, right?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Also, are you sure you're changing the actual CPU voltage, and not the VID setting?

Because under CPU voltage it states, specifically:

CPU Voltage

Specifies a custom CPU core voltage (mV), Should be combined with a custom CPU core frequency. Power saving features for idle cores (e.g. cc6 sleep) remain active.

Yet it seems the VID can also be changed, and that is not the voltage you actually want to change unless there is something drastically different from the systems I've worked with which were all B450, or Intel platforms, when it comes to recent platform overclocking.

CPU Frequency and Voltage(VID) ChangeIf this item is set to [Manual], the multiplier and voltage will be set based on user selection. Final result is depending on the CPU's capability.

I'm not seeing any other settings in there that should affect that, although, admittedly, they rarely show all the available BIOS settings in the user manuals for any of these boards.

 

[steedsofwar]

On all my Intel systems I use a static/fixed manual voltage setting, along with Intel speed step and a 5% minimum, and get exactly the result we are looking for. There SHOULD be an adaptive/offset voltage setting for Ryzen as well, because there has been on every system I've worked on so far, but this MIGHT be a limitation of your specific board model since the Pro4 IS a budget model. It's a decent board for being a budget offering, but still a budget model nonetheless and often budget boards have greatly reduced settings.

You ARE using the advanced view, not the EZ or basic view, right?

Yes I'm using the advanced view. Core clocks go as low as 5xxmhz in idle even after my manual settings, which is what I want. Under DEFAULT settings, voltage also drops to 0.9v. Setting manual voltages changes this behaviour.

I found the offset option yesterday but enabling that doesn't seem to affect this fixed voltage problem. I even worked out that hitting the minus plus keys on the keyboard offers not a list but values that enter themselves into the in set increments. This still didn't help, although admittedly I only used the first minus increment, which is in red so had me worried when I set it. It affected nothing.

 

[steedsofwar]

Also, are you sure you're changing the actual CPU voltage, and not the VID setting?

Because under CPU voltage it states, specifically:



Yet it seems the VID can also be changed, and that is not the voltage you actually want to change unless there is something drastically different from the systems I've worked with which were all B450, or Intel platforms, when it comes to recent platform overclocking.



I'm not seeing any other settings in there that should affect that, although, admittedly, they rarely show all the available BIOS settings in the user manuals for any of these boards.

I also thought that it must be the wrong value that I was tweaking but it can't be since whatever voltage value I set, is exactly what I see in RM and all other monitoring software. Let me get you a screen shot.

 

[steedsofwar]

I also thought that it must be the wrong value that I was tweaking but it can't be since whatever voltage value I set, is exactly what I see in RM and all other monitoring software. Let me get you a screen shot.

Dunno if this works. I thought there'd be a direct upload function on the forum.
https://postimg.cc/8JwzgmXb

EDIT: Rest assured, I reset everything and went back to defaults just to check and yes old boosting behaviour, excess heat/noise, lower scores...but down stepping voltages! So went back and enabled all the c states and CPPC preferences, the offset option enabled and no XMP. Still no downstepping of voltages.

 

[steedsofwar]

Here are some more settings in my BIOS. You can see that one by one, I've disabled everything that could affect the voltages. Enabled the things you suggested. Dunno what I'm doing wrong. It has to be something stupid and obvious. I know I'm gonna kick myself once we nail it.

https://imgur.com/a/D3fkn1e

View: https://imgur.com/a/D3fkn1e

 

[steedsofwar]

Success at last. And yes...it was something stupid, just as I'd predicted. Spoiler alert: it was Blizzard's Battlenet app!

I spent days trying to figure this out and bothered you guys in the process. SMH.

I have Afterburner and RTSS run on autostart, Steam, Background Switcher, Geforce Experience, ShadowPlay instant capture, Argus fan control, Viper4Windows, Universal Remote, Steelseries Engine ALL on autostart and running in the background. They don't prevent idle voltage drop. Only Blizzard's Battlenet app does. I checked that it isn't downloading anything either.

I tested Chrome with 35 tabs open and YouTube playing minimised to taskbar and voltage still steps down. But not with the Blizzard app in my tray.

This was a helluva ride. I tweaked nearly every possible setting in BIOS to eliminate this issue and it turns out it had nothing to do with it. Insert Facepalm gif here.

Thanks for all the help, fellas. Now onto testing the manual BIOS settings for stability. Thermals pass the no AVX small FFT 20 minute test. Realbench next.

 

[steedsofwar]

Realbench 8 hour test passed, Thank God. Maxed out at 74C but settled on 70C most times. Onto the blend test using Prime95.

https://imgur.com/a/9jMtbay

View: https://imgur.com/a/9jMtbay