[SOLVED] OC confusion

[Halfazzed1]

Ryzen 7 3700x i had the typical fan reving issue so i noticed adding a OC snuffed this issue, i got tired of setting it up in Gigabyts easy tune so i added it in bios to 40.25 now whenever i start the pc its running perfect no reving. So in Task Mngr it says my cpu speed is 3.58 on my base speed it says 4.02 but the 3.58 are the only #s fluctuating like its still running at that speed?? i have heard not to rely on T/M to much but Core temp says the same thing (although i was toggling between 2 apps the other day and it would refresh to my OC then back to my stock, like i had an option to choose what to run at) also afterburner says the same on my OSD 3600mhz in game. Iam not to much into OCing my stuff i think its cool and once i got a back up machine i will play around with some heavier settings but the reving was driving me nuts. my understanding (fairly new to this stuff) is my cpu runs at 3.6 and can have bursts upto 4.4 in time of need and if you add an OC mine for instance 40.025 my pc would now be running constantly at the 40.025 setting, correct? Also everything runs cooler with the OC, than on stock settings ...gaming or not my cpu temps are always high running without the OC nothing crazy just probably normal temps but with the OC iam always like 10 deg lower. So iam just looking for some thoughts on this iam fine with how its running right now but just wanna educate myself about this, as long as the dang fans arent having an asthma attack every split second. Heres what iam working with, i play at 4k Ultra/High
R7 3700
Aorus X570 Elite
Evga 2080
32gb Vengeance pro
4.0 M.2 500gb
1tb WD ssd
1tb WD hdd
Corsair H100

 

[drea.drechsler]

In normal operation Ryzen boosts single cores frequently to max clocks to process light loads and put the core back to sleep. When that happens there's a brief temperature spike that ramps down pretty quickly. It's not really significant as it's on one core only and goes away. The light load that comes along next is moved to another core and it repeats.

All-core overclocking stops the boosting so it stops the temp spikes too. But the problem is, no boosting to max clock means it hurts performance for light single thread loads, which is what gaming happens to rely on. And doing it to far can degrade processor life quickly when running heavy multi-thread loads.

So the thing to do is set a custom profile that ignores the temperature spikes as you can't cool them. I set fixed but not to loud fan speed up to about 65C then ramp up from there, only letting it get annoyingly loud around 80-85C. Better cooling also helps a lot, especially with a 3700X.

 

[Halfazzed1]

Yeah i understand all that but my real question is about the OC, isnt the point of OC to have your cpu already running at a high speed so as to process stuff quicker, so when i applied the OC (40.025) to my 3.6 base clock i should now be running consistantly at 40.025 (all core) at least thats my understanding of it. But any program i run that allows me to see what the cpu speed is they all say iam at 3.58+- as it moves but task mngr says my speed is 3.58 and base speed is 4.02. So my confusion is "what am i actually running at" the pc runs like i have the OC applied but nothing actually states that iam at that speed.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Yeah i understand all that but my real question is about the OC, isnt the point of OC to have your cpu already running at a high speed so as to process stuff quicker, so when i applied the OC (40.025) to my 3.6 base clock i should now be running consistantly at 40.025 (all core) at least thats my understanding of it. But any program i run that allows me to see what the cpu speed is they all say iam at 3.58+- as it moves but task mngr says my speed is 3.58 and base speed is 4.02. So my confusion is "what am i actually running at" the pc runs like i have the OC applied but nothing actually states that iam at that speed.

Use HWInfo64 as many other programs don't work properly with Ryzen.

How are you overclocking?

 

[Halfazzed1]

i had been just appying it in Gigabytes Easy tune app but got tired of the process everytime i wanted to game, i set it to 40.025 in bios since i have ran it like that for 2 months in easy tune and its worked no issues, i felt it would be safe to manually apply it now.

 

[drea.drechsler]

i had been just appying it in Gigabytes Easy tune app but got tired of the process everytime i wanted to game, i set it to 40.025 in bios since i have ran it like that for 2 months in easy tune and its worked no issues, i felt it would be safe to manually apply it now.

I'd definitely suggest doing a clean uninstall of easytune. In general, motherboard overclock apps are junk or even potentially dangerous. Use AMD's Ryzenmaster instead.

Curiously, by 'overclocking' to 40.025 you're actually hurting performance of a 3700X for gaming since it can no longer hit single core clocks as high as 4.4Ghz, or sustained clocks all-core of 4.1-4.2Ghz. Set up right with good cooling only in extremely heavy AVX workloads like Prime95 should it be pulling back as far as 40.25Ghz.

It's rarely 'safe' to manually overclock Ryzen 3000. It takes some tweaking and extremely good cooling at a minimum...and realizing what 'safe' fixed voltage is for your processor as every one has a different one. If you don't know yours then the recommended fixed voltage is 1.2-1.225V. Once you've managed to get it stable you're probably just hurting light threaded performance, most important for gaming, as you are now.

My 3700X is breezing along with multiple cores hitting 4.3-4.35Ghz while playing games like Ghost Recon or MSFS2020. Clocking it at 40.25 would introduce stuttering in heavy action.