[SOLVED] Ryzen 5 3600 boost dropping to 3600mhz while under load

[Wombatfrog]

Hi, is it normal for this cpu to drop to 3600mhz under load?

I've seen countless benchmarks showing cpu clock speeds and they all seem to hold their boost speeds. Mine however will drop down to 3600mhz and back up again, randomly. It doesn't drop for long but it shows up in Afterburner. With pbo enabled I see around 4.350 to 4.4ghz under light load and around 4.100 under heavy load but it will always drop to 3.6ghz randomly, even tho cpu usage is at 20% and above..

For example 3dmark timespy will show cpu frequency after the bench has finished and will have dips to 3.6 on the purple line..

Is this normal? Like I say online benchmarks from other users are usually around 4.1 and higher without drops to 3.6.

 

[drea.drechsler]

3600Mhz is base clock for Ryzen 3600X. It's normal to drop as low as that in maximum workloads, without PBO enabled. Enabling PBO doesn't (usually) overclock the boost clocks, if anything it overclocks the base clocks by keeping it from dropping that low, or for so long if it does.

What you describe is normal boosting even under PBO. Even in the midst of heavy processing the algorithm tries to use the lowest performance state allowed by the software to save energy. So when the software isn't placing demands it will lower core clocks, even putting some into C6 deep sleep for a few milliseconds.

Ryzen CPU's are also very thermally dependent. Start a heavy all core benchmark, like Cinebench23, and monitor core clocks in a graph like you can get from HWInfo and you'll see it start high and each core drop as the CPU heats up. PBO coupled with really good cooling will keep it boosting much higher than base clocks but it will still drop somewhat during the BM run. It can be hard to track though as the boost algorithm dithers each core's clocks quite a bit in an effort to distribute heat buildup across the die(s) and use more of the limited surface area for cooling.