Question Ryzen 5 2600X hits 1.45v and 4200Mhz clock speed on idle

[AlexandruNeuro]

I built a PC : Ryzen 5 2600X, Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming, RTX 2070, Corsair 3000 MHz 16 GB

Power plan: Windows balanced

CPU is not overclocked , temperatures range from 39 to 52 Celsius on idle (according to HWmonitor) and 76 max in gaming with an avg of 69-70, on a stock cooler (wraith spire 100% fan speed)

On idle, I am getting split second variations between different values of voltages raging anywhere from 0.8 to 1.45v and those values are switching between cores when I look at them in both HWmonitor and HWinfo64.

Also clock frequency does the same thing - switching between different values really fast with a max of 4200 MHz I think.

Is this normal, considering the fact that I did not OC it?

My friend built a new PC today and he's got a Ryzen 2700X yet his HWmonitor reads 0.8v on all cores on idle. He has an MSI motherboard.

Why does his stay on low voltages and clock speed on idle while mine has those values?
https://i.redd.it/hhnp2culutx21.jpg
https://i.redd.it/460lgaulutx21.jpg
https://i.redd.it/pi778mvlutx21.jpg

PS. I asked the same question on reddit and, supposedly, a guy from AMD replied:

Yes. A well-cooled Ryzen will go to 1.5V or 1.55V on its own. It's designed to do this, because low temperatures offset higher voltages. And higher voltages are useful for more clockspeed and more performance.
When I read these posts, I am reminded that people often forget that duration of applied voltage and temperatureare important to silicon health. Here's my bone stock 1800X (work PC) after running for 24 hours, with the average voltage the CPU saw over 24H.

https://imgur.com/7RkZjQl

View: https://i.imgur.com/7RkZjQl.png

What we can see:

1. XFR happened! We see 4099MHz and 1.55V peaks.
2. The average over 24H was an incredibly mild sub-1.1V.
3. (Not shown) CPU never got hotter than 61C.

tl;dr: Everything is fine. This post is unnecessarily alarmist about an intended behavior of the Ryzen processor.

~AMD_Robert

To which I replied:

Thanks for the reply. But why am I seeing the same voltages on high temps as well? I'm playing DOOM on 70+ Celsius , I alt + tab to see voltages are still 1.45
edit: also, i am running a monitoring log in hwinfo64 just like the one you posted. It's been 50 minutes and I'm averaging around 1.376v, 45 Celsius, having Chrome open and listening to music on Youtube.

 

[CountMike]

First, there's no true idle with windows, always something happening in the background, just how much depends on what is starting with windows.
Voltages go hand in hand with temperatures. So you are well within parameters.
Do you have AMD Ryzen Balanced power plan ? Try minimum CPU at 5%.

 

[TechyInAZ]

That's normal Ryzen will do that at idleish loads. My 1700X would jump up to 1.45v aswell at idle.

It is perfectly safe, AMD staff have covered this topic already saying that the way Ryzen does high voltages is perfectly safe because A. It's not at 1.45v for long periods of time. And B. Your at 1.45v under very low loads, which isn't stressing out the transistors.

 

[AlexandruNeuro]

First, there's no true idle with windows, always something happening in the background, just how much depends on what is starting with windows.
Voltages go hand in hand with temperatures. So you are well within parameters.
Do you have AMD Ryzen Balanced power plan ? Try minimum CPU at 5%.

i use windows balanced plan. i heard it was the best for 2600x. cpu minimum is at 5% in that power plan

 

[CountMike]

If you don't have AMD Ryzen Balanced power plan as an option, you probably don't have latest chipset drivers, maybe you should check that as well as latest BIOS version.

 

[RobCrezz]

I would update the motherboard bios and see if its any different.