[SOLVED] Ryzen 3500X on 1.43 Volts by default

[BritishRifleman]

I have a Ryzen 3500x on a B550 Mo-Bo, the Bios is up to date,
However, i go to ryzen master and i get readings of over 1.4 volts on idle,
I check other applications like HW monitor and it says the same.
I've manually overclocked from 4.1ghz @1.4+v to 4.2ghz at 1.325 and the temperatures are a lot better now.
I'm not sure if the system thinks it's not putting enough voltage in because i have a high airflow system as the cpu on stock settings where 1.43 volts is going through it, never gets above 65 celcius.
With the overclock/undervolt, it never goes above 60 Celsius and on idle stays in the low-mid 30's

One other question, a lot of people say that anything above 1.4V is bad, why does the system do it by default then?
Would it be ok to put the overclock at 1.4V to get 4.4GHZ etc, as i have the thermal headroom

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

The higher the voltage the higher the temps, the shorter the life of your cpu. From 4.2 to 4.4 the thermal trade off for the little performance increase is not worth it. IMHO. You are better off overclocking your gpu to the max. It is built for that and has better fail safes in place.

 

[BritishRifleman]

I know that, if you read my question properly you can see that my cpu is doing it automatically

 

[Phaaze88]

The key point that's missing is whether it is sitting at that voltage. The cpu manages its own current draw better than you can.
It bouncing up to that and back down, is actually safer than you fixing it at 1.325v.

 

[BritishRifleman]

It seems to be staying above 1.4V all the time, even on idle, it skips between 1.4-1.43

 

[Phaaze88]

And this is on every core with Ryzen Master? Don't use HWMonitor for this.
If you have anything running in the background besides Windows, the cores will be 'rushing to sleep' and waking up more often.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I have a Ryzen 3500x on a B550 Mo-Bo, the Bios is up to date,
However, i go to ryzen master and i get readings of over 1.4 volts on idle,
I check other applications like HW monitor and it says the same.
I've manually overclocked from 4.1ghz @1.4+v to 4.2ghz at 1.325 and the temperatures are a lot better now.
I'm not sure if the system thinks it's not putting enough voltage in because i have a high airflow system as the cpu on stock settings where 1.43 volts is going through it, never gets above 65 celcius.
With the overclock/undervolt, it never goes above 60 Celsius and on idle stays in the low-mid 30's

One other question, a lot of people say that anything above 1.4V is bad, why does the system do it by default then?
Would it be ok to put the overclock at 1.4V to get 4.4GHZ etc, as i have the thermal headroom

It's normal for Ryzen to raise voltage to as high as 1.5V when it boosts a core...and it boosts cores quite frequently. 1.43V is only to be expected. Also use HWInfo64 (not HWMonitor) and do not look at VID, look at the CPU Core Voltage(SVI2/TFN) to see what voltage it's actually using.

Just make sure you have VCore voltage set to AUTO and it will take care of itself.

 

[hotaru.hino]

One other question, a lot of people say that anything above 1.4V is bad, why does the system do it by default then?

If I'm going to be honest, it's likely those people are sticking to old wives' tales or other people going "don't do X!" without actually verifying it themselves and/or lack a basic understanding of how MOSFETs work.

Would it be ok to put the overclock at 1.4V to get 4.4GHZ etc, as i have the thermal headroom

You could, but keep in mind that power dissipation, and thus heat generated, is summed up by the equation P = C * f * V^2, where:

• P = power dissipation in watts
• C = capacitance
• f = Frequency
• V = voltage

C is assumed to be constant. When you adjust frequency, you're increasing the power dissipation linearly. So a 10% bump in clock speeds is expected to increase power dissipation by 10%. Increasing voltage is exponential by a factor of 2, so increasing voltage by 10% increases power dissipation by 21%.

You'll also probably not see much of an improvement since this is a <5% increase in clock speed and not everything actually responds positively with higher clock speed.

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

I know that, if you read my question properly you can see that my cpu is doing it automatically

If you read your own question,Would it be ok to put the overclock at 1.4V to get 4.4GHZ etc, as i have the thermal headroom, that is what I was answering.

 

[drea.drechsler]

It seems to be staying above 1.4V all the time, even on idle, it skips between 1.4-1.43

To add a bit...

Yes, it's normal for it to do that. What most people are reacting a fixed high voltage, like 1.4 or up, which can be very dangerous. But if left in AUTO Ryzen uses a very fast acting algorithm to lower voltage as the core temp increases to keep the CPU safe.

To understand what's happening: CPU degradation due to electromigration occurs when core temp is very high AND core currents are very high simultaneously. There's not much you can do to lower core current EXCEPT to lower the voltage which drives the current.

The Ryzen boost algorithm only drives high voltages, to keep the CPU stable for high clock boosts, when the CPU core is cool enough to not degrade. When it lowers voltage it will, obviously, lower boost clocks too in order to keep it stable. But lower frequency along with lower voltage also keeps temperature controlled.

 

[hotaru.hino]

To understand what's happening: CPU degradation due to electromigration occurs when core temp is very high AND core currents are very high simultaneously. There's not much you can do to lower core current EXCEPT to lower the voltage which drives the current.

I'm taking a hugely simplistic approach to this since I'm sure the power delivery systems in a processor are complicated as heck, but assuming the PPT is the same and changing Vcore is essentially changing how much voltage is supplied to the CPU, then raising the voltage would actually result in lower current consumption due to P = V * I.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...then raising the voltage would actually result in lower current consumption due to P = V * I.

Essentially that's right, but manually lowering voltage can mean taking away the algorithm's ability to compensate according the processors fuzed in FIT parameters.

As I've read it described, FIT works like a set of relationships of current, temp and frequency that forms an envelope of safe operation. The boost algorithm adjusts requested voltage and sets multipliers to keep the processor operating within that envelope. I've probably over simplified it, but thinking of it like that makes very good sense to me.