[SOLVED] Overclocking: Transferring changes from Ryzen Master to BIOS

[rohtua]

Hello,

I'm looking into doing a slight overclock on my Ryzen 5 3600. I'm currently running it on a Asus Prime X570 Pro with a Noctua NH-U9S cooler.

When I first installed the CPU I was seeing quite high temps at idle and under load (around 50C at idle upto 85C using handbrake). Looking online I was pointed in the direction of PBO, turning that off helped somewhat but I was still seeing similar temps (they only came down by 5C or so under load).

So to sort this at the time I set my core multiplier to 38.00 (3.8Ghz) in the BIOS. Doing this brought my idle temps to around 30C and load temps to 60C which I was happy with. Since then there's been some BIOS updates which have fixed a lot of the temp issues I was having. I'm now seeing 75C under load with everything set to auto (although PBO is still turned off).

The R5 3600 out of of the box has potential to turbo up to 4.2Ghz from 3.6. Leaving everything bar PBO on auto I only saw it boost to 4.0Ghz, the same when I tried with PBO turned on. Again doing some research online I found that while the boost speeds will vary a bit from CPU to CPU most seem to expect at least 4.2Ghz from the 3600.

I started playing around with adjusting some of the setting in the BIOS (first just the core multiplier). Setting the core multiplier to anything over 4.0Ghz resulted in the system not booting (all other setting were left on auto and I tried with PBO on and PBO off.). So I looked into changing the CPU voltage and I've been experimenting with Ryzen Master. Using RM I was able to get it running at 4.2Ghz with a core voltage (supposedly) of 1.2V. Running the RM profile with these settings worked, it passes the RM stress test and multiple Cinebench R20 runs and handbrake encoding (it all looked good thermals were around 75-77C under load).

So I tried to set the same settings in the BIOS setting the core multiplier to 42.00 and the VDDR CPU Voltage to 1.2V. However my system wouldn't boot. I've been unable to get the system to boot with the clock set to 4.2Ghz without setting the voltage to 1.3V which does seem more inline with what I've read online but than gives me a spike in the temperature (going up to 80-87C under load) which I want to avoid and keep it around the 75C mark that I was seeing with RM.

My question is what setting is RM changing that it can take a voltage of 1.2V, keeping the temperature down and work at 4.2Ghz but setting it in the BIOS or even with Asus' AI Suite causes the system to fail?

 

[TechyInAZ]

So here's why nothing is working out for you.

1. Ryzen's default voltage peaks at 1.45v. This is normal and safe operation, due to Ryzen's silicon monitoring software that makes sure these voltages don't degrade the CPU below it's specified lifetime.
2. Manual voltage DISABLES this silicon monitoring software, which is why people are now believing 1.2 to 1.25v is the max safe voltage for 3rd gen ryzen, but even that could be too high due to the 7nm architecture.
3. Getting to 4.2 ghz on a 3600 on ALL cores is very hard, i've tried it myself and failed. The best you can do is use an offset voltage and run PBO and use AutoOC to increase the frequency.

Basically overclocking 3rd Gen Ryzen is useless and will not benefit you at all. The performance difference is usually a negative one or equal to stock operations. I've looked at tons of 3rd gen OC material, and have failed to find one that can reliability equal or hit a 3rd Gen Ryzen's Boost clock at SAFE voltages.

 

[rohtua]

So here's why nothing is working out for you.

1. Ryzen's default voltage peaks at 1.45v. This is normal and safe operation, due to Ryzen's silicon monitoring software that makes sure these voltages don't degrade the CPU below it's specified lifetime.
2. Manual voltage DISABLES this silicon monitoring software, which is why people are now believing 1.2 to 1.25v is the max safe voltage for 3rd gen ryzen, but even that could be too high due to the 7nm architecture.
3. Getting to 4.2 ghz on a 3600 on ALL cores is very hard, i've tried it myself and failed. The best you can do is use an offset voltage and run PBO and use AutoOC to increase the frequency.

Basically overclocking 3rd Gen Ryzen is useless and will not benefit you at all. The performance difference is usually a negative one or equal to stock operations. I've looked at tons of 3rd gen OC material, and have failed to find one that can reliability equal or hit a 3rd Gen Ryzen's Boost clock at SAFE voltages.

Hi, thanks for the response. Can I just ask when you say 1.2V would be too high do you definately mean high or is it too low? Only because you initially say the default peak voltage is 1.45V.

You don't know what settings Ryzen Master actually alters do you? If I set 4.2Ghz clock speed and peak voltage to 1.2V then it works in as much as the computer will run cinebench and handbrake encodes without issue at 4.2Ghz but if I try to set those same settings in the BIOS or using the Asus overclocking software the system immediately crashes so either RM isn't reporting the correct voltages (or setting them) which I doubt as it seems to be quite highly rated as a monitoring tool or what it's calling peak voltage is actually some other setting in the BIOS

 

[TechyInAZ]

Hi, thanks for the response. Can I just ask when you say 1.2V would be too high do you definately mean high or is it too low? Only because you initially say the default peak voltage is 1.45V.

You don't know what settings Ryzen Master actually alters do you? If I set 4.2Ghz clock speed and peak voltage to 1.2V then it works in as much as the computer will run cinebench and handbrake encodes without issue at 4.2Ghz but if I try to set those same settings in the BIOS or using the Asus overclocking software the system immediately crashes so either RM isn't reporting the correct voltages (or setting them) which I doubt as it seems to be quite highly rated as a monitoring tool or what it's calling peak voltage is actually some other setting in the BIOS

Yeah 1.2v could be too high, i mean't high not low. I mean, personally, I think it's fine, however i've looked everywhere for a solid max manual voltage for 3rd gen ryzen and there isn't one found yet.

I see so only in RM will 4.2ghz at 1.2v work, huh interesting. I have no idea why that is the case, but if that is rock solid stable with things like OCCT, i'd just use Ryzen Master for your OC.

 

[rohtua]

Yeah 1.2v could be too high, i mean't high not low. I mean, personally, I think it's fine, however i've looked everywhere for a solid max manual voltage for 3rd gen ryzen and there isn't one found yet.

I see so only in RM will 4.2ghz at 1.2v work, huh interesting. I have no idea why that is the case, but if that is rock solid stable with things like OCCT, i'd just use Ryzen Master for your OC.

Hi, thanks for that. Just a bit of an update really. I've been playing around and think I've worked out whats been going on. I think that changing the clock and voltages wasn't working because I had PBO turned off. I was reading about how the BIOS will call for higher voltages, amps on boot than the system will when running. So I think without PBO it was hitting the 100% amp limit and shutting off. I've turned PBO on and set my clock to 4.2GHz, VDDR voltage to 1.37V, the Core VID voltage to 1.2V, LLC to Level 3.

It needs more tweaking to make it stable but I've seen some good results so far. I originally started with a core voltage of 1.35 which seemed stable (I could boot and run multiple cinebench tests without issue. I then tried running handbrake which would crash. I upped the voltage to 1.36 which seemed better but handbrake would still crash if I added extra load. i.e. ran cinebench at the same time. I did also test this with the VID voltage set to auto as using auto it sets to a voltage of 1.1V but it wasn't stable at all if I put any load on the system. So keeping the VID at 1.2V I upped the core voltage to 1.37 which seemed almost perfect, handbrake ran without crashing, I completed multiple cinebench runs whilst handbrake was running no issues and even managed to load and play Watchdogs at the same time and this is where it fell down. I was playing the game, with handbrake and cinebench running in the background and everything seemed to be working.... until I quit watchdogs. As soon as the game exited and uplay reloaded the system crashed.