Question Ryzen 3700x REALLY low temps - a fluke?

[codhead-v2]

Hi,

I know this is a strange question to ask, as it's not so much a problem as a huge success.

I have a Ryzen 3700x, cooled with the CoolerMaster ML240R. I've got it at a constant overclock of 4GHz. Idle it hovers around the low 40s to mid 30s, but when I'm gaming it never goes above 55 degrees. It commonly sits at 53 while gaming. This is playing games like Warzone and R6 Siege.

This means my PC is super quiet and everything is running like clockwork.

When I first setup my PC, the fans would ramp up a lot, but since I've...

• Changed the fan curve, noticed AIO pump wasn't at 100% 12vs so fixed this
• Found the fact that these CPUs would decide they want to turbo boost a lot, which meant that the fans would wind up and down a lot, and the temps would fluctuate a lot.
• Created a fixed overclock which has fixed most of the tempreture ramps (I think, anyways. But please prove me wrong otherwise!)

I guess what I'm saying; has anyone else had such great success with thermals and fan noise with Ryzen chips? Seems like most people struggle with the temps fluctuating and fans ramping a lot. Seems like I've manage to fix this and I'm completely taken back by how well this system performs.

Link to comp for reference/vanity

Josh

 

[johnsoner13]

I've got it at a constant overclock of 4GHz

More like underclock, your “overclock” is making your CPU run slower

 

[drivinfast247]

It's under underclocked and more than likely undervolted. Temps seem just right.

 

[codhead-v2]

Right, so maybe I’m being silly.

This is a 3.6GHz chip with a 4.4Ghz boost. As I’ve disabled the turbo boost this is an underclock? Obviously it won’t turbo boost constantly?

I think someone needs to educate me on how all this actually works haha! This was the solution to my thermal and noise problems so need someone to explain all this boost stuff to me.

Thanks

 

[drea.drechsler]

Right, so maybe I’m being silly.

This is a 3.6GHz chip with a 4.4Ghz boost. As I’ve disabled the turbo boost this is an underclock? Obviously it won’t turbo boost constantly?

I think someone needs to educate me on how all this actually works haha! This was the solution to my thermal and noise problems so need someone to explain all this boost stuff to me.

Thanks

I can't be sure what you mean by it, but it seems to me if you've disabled turbo boost it will never 'turbo boost'.

When left to it's own devices Ryzen aggressively, and briefly, boosts from idle up to the rated boost clock on a single core. That will result in short temperature spikes but in one small area of the CPU so they're low energy without a lot of heat output (like a match in a room...the match is hot, the room isn't). So you want to keep the fans from pulsing with the boosting with a custom profile. I set mine to a low, barely audible, fixed speed up to a temperature of about 65 or 70C, then a slow ramp up to about 85C before they get obvious. I've also got a CM 240mm AIO.

Most people forget the physics of liquid cooling and treat it like an air cooler. Liquid coolers use water, with a huge capacity to absorb heat. With a 240mm AIO you can actually turn off the fans (the pump should be 12V, 100% all the time though) and the liquid can take upwards of 2 hours before it thermally saturates to the point it stops effectively cooling (steady temps below Tjmax) the CPU during a max-performance stress test. I know, I've done it with my unremarkable low-end 240mm AIO. CCL's with their much larger liquid volume will take far, far longer. The point is: don't be afraid to run with low, fixed, quiet fan speeds.

And also be aware of 3700 temperatures. It's 'safe' up to a temperature of 95C, it's Tjmax. It's desireable to keep it in the mid 70's for heavy processing loads because it holds higher clock speeds but it's not common to stay that low in heavy processing. As it gets into the 80's it will start pulling back on clocks even further. This is perfectly normal for extremely heavy processing and it will almost certainly get that hot (and hotter when you enable PBO) running something crazy extreme like Prime95 small FFT stress tests. It might pull clocks back to as far as the base clock speed (unless you've enabled PBO) but it's not likely to if you have really good cooling.

And finally this, the hardest part to grasp. Zen 2 and Zen 3 sometimes just run hot and you can't cool it to what you used to think of as 'normal' without sub-ambient cooling. That's because the 7nm process geometry makes for a CPU die that's to small to conduct heat well enough. So the first thing is understand the principles and remember it's unlike anything before it.

 

[CountMike]

As above but would like to ad some more. Boost + PBO should let one core boost to about 4.4GHz but temps should stay under 70c at that time. Other cores should hover around 4.2GHz at same conditions with all core load. For a typical 3700x temps above 71c will gradually drop boost by 50MHz for every 1c of temperature higher.
If you are overclocking manually, in theory you could let temps as high as TjMax without loosing any performance. Not nice but it is as it is.
What you did is to lower temps and fan speeds but you also killed about 20% of performance, even more in single thread applications. If that suits you and you are getting satisfactory performance that's OK but could have saved yourself some money by buying 3600(x) and get exactly same performance in games.
"Secret" to good temps and performance for Ryzen is to have as low voltage as possible because that's voltage that heats up processor. Boost algorithm built into Ryzen and AGESA code takes temperature, voltage and load into account attempting to get most performance by juggling between those values. That's in the auto boost mode and PBO enabled of course. By setting multiplier and voltage manually all boost is disabled and you "sentence" it to always work at that settings, instead of letting it work at much lower frequency and voltage at idle or intermediate loads.
My 3700x, for instance, at idle sleeps most cores except one or two and drops their voltage well under 1v which with my cooler (similar to yours) leaves idle temps to under 30c in about 20c room. Most common "fixes" for high temps is to set negative voltage to hopefully -0.1c or a bit less if that makes it more stable, that should guarantee about 10c in temperature reduction across the board as most BIOS versions keep voltage too high in the name of stability taking into account "silicone lottery", that's why you would have to experiment a little.
Most if not all contemporary CPUs and systems do nowadays except that Ryzen reacts very fast to any load so it may look a bit twitchy and fans rising speed to meet temperature conditions. Those bumps could be ironed to a degree by setting fan curves and if BIOS permits setting a time delay for fan speed. In case of liquid coolers, setting pump to constant full speed not only lowers idle temps but also smooths out fan speed oscillations.

 

[codhead-v2]

Thanks for this, really helpful.

So I've put it back to it's standard setting, and applied the Precision Boost Overdrive setting, and it's working great. The fans don't ramp til it gets to 50 degrees so it's basically whisper quiet.

I also did this here which seems to have made my CPU sit at a very comfortable 30-35 degrees, and I'm seeing no performance loss. When gaming, the CPU maxes at 60 degrees tops. Prime95 tests it goes to around 70-75 at its peak. Cinebench23 I got a score of 12626 with these settings, with the CPU not going over 71 degrees. So overall, I've got a very quiet, very solid system now that absolutely powers through every game and application I throw at it.

Thanks everyone for their help

- Josh

I can't be sure what you mean by it, but it seems to me if you've disabled turbo boost it will never 'turbo boost'.

When left to it's own devices Ryzen aggressively, and briefly, boosts from idle up to the rated boost clock on a single core. That will result in short temperature spikes but in one small area of the CPU so they're low energy without a lot of heat output (like a match in a room...the match is hot, the room isn't). So you want to keep the fans from pulsing with the boosting with a custom profile. I set mine to a low, barely audible, fixed speed up to a temperature of about 65 or 70C, then a slow ramp up to about 85C before they get obvious. I've also got a CM 240mm AIO.

Most people forget the physics of liquid cooling and treat it like an air cooler. Liquid coolers use water, with a huge capacity to absorb heat. With a 240mm AIO you can actually turn off the fans (the pump should be 12V, 100% all the time though) and the liquid can take upwards of 2 hours before it thermally saturates to the point it stops effectively cooling (steady temps below Tjmax) the CPU during a max-performance stress test. I know, I've done it with my unremarkable low-end 240mm AIO. CCL's with their much larger liquid volume will take far, far longer. The point is: don't be afraid to run with low, fixed, quiet fan speeds.

And also be aware of 3700 temperatures. It's 'safe' up to a temperature of 95C, it's Tjmax. It's desireable to keep it in the mid 70's for heavy processing loads because it holds higher clock speeds but it's not common to stay that low in heavy processing. As it gets into the 80's it will start pulling back on clocks even further. This is perfectly normal for extremely heavy processing and it will almost certainly get that hot (and hotter when you enable PBO) running something crazy extreme like Prime95 small FFT stress tests. It might pull clocks back to as far as the base clock speed (unless you've enabled PBO) but it's not likely to if you have really good cooling.

And finally this, the hardest part to grasp. Zen 2 and Zen 3 sometimes just run hot and you can't cool it to what you used to think of as 'normal' without sub-ambient cooling. That's because the 7nm process geometry makes for a CPU die that's to small to conduct heat well enough. So the first thing is understand the principles and remember it's unlike anything before it.

 

[CountMike]

Thanks for this, really helpful.

So I've put it back to it's standard setting, and applied the Precision Boost Overdrive setting, and it's working great. The fans don't ramp til it gets to 50 degrees so it's basically whisper quiet.

I also did this here which seems to have made my CPU sit at a very comfortable 30-35 degrees, and I'm seeing no performance loss. When gaming, the CPU maxes at 60 degrees tops. Prime95 tests it goes to around 70-75 at its peak. Cinebench23 I got a score of 12626 with these settings, with the CPU not going over 71 degrees. So overall, I've got a very quiet, very solid system now that absolutely powers through every game and application I throw at it.

Thanks everyone for their help

- Josh

If you didn't do it already I suggest in your chosen Power plan you set minimum CPU state to about 5%, thast should drop fastest core at idle to about 2000MHz and voltage under 1v.

 

[John Chesterfield]

Your system sounds like it's set up just like mine, you get very similar temperatures and noise levels.

Those guys in that Reddit thread are possibly barking up the wrong tree though, they don't understand the behaviour of a Ryzen, although in their defence that thread was started a year ago.

As I understand it, 1.4v at idle or load is normal in some circumstances, it's by design because when it's at 1.4v at low load, it's at extremely low current. People freak out at such levels, not understanding this is how the chip was designed and not understanding electricity either. So I probably wouldn't go messing around with power settings using CMD prompt windows, but if you've suffered no ill effects then all good. Instead of that, I'd have set a negative voltage offset in BIOS, that's what got my temperatures to where yours are. You might want to Google that, especially if you have any stability issues with the custom Ryzen power plan. Mine's at - 0.05.

General rule of thumb with Ryzen chips:

Stock cooler = default settings

Good cooling = Whichever PBO setting performs best in terms of clockspeed and temperature, along with a negative voltage offset

I've overclocked my last 4 Intel chips, because I could and it was worth it. No point doing that with Ryzen, just following the above rules of thumb will get you whichever level of performance your cooling will allow.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...
I also did this here which seems to have made my CPU sit at a very comfortable 30-35 degrees,
...

Read down that Reddit thread a bit... u/L3Tum explains those power scheme changes:

"Please keep in mind that"​

PERFAUTONOMOUS 0​

Disables CPPC,​

PERFBOOSTMODE 1​

Makes the performance boost non-aggressive (e.g. short burst loads may react unkindly to it)​

PERFINCPOL 1​

Will slow down the performance increase on high load.​

​

This is like ultra low energy stuff honestly. If you suffer from inadequate cooling then it may be worth it, but any semi-good air-cooler should be enough to be near silent and keep the CPU sub 60°C on normal use."​

​

It's a common fallacy to assume good performance in all-core workloads (like the multithreaded CB 23 test) means good performance in light threaded workloads. Lot's of ways to kill processor performance in lightly threaded, bursty workloads, that's just another one.

I also got terrific CB multithread test results with that custom plan. But when I played a lightly threaded game (Witcher 3) in a CPU bound mode (1080p) while running that power plan I was appalled at performance. The hesitations were extreme and unplayable. Normally it's smooth as butter in all settings and resolutions.

But...if you like running in an ultra-low energy mode in normal use, it's a snap to change power plan and get decent gaming performance (for instance) when you want it.