Question ryzen 5 5600x overclocking by itself? fresh install and its at 4649mhz?

Feb 28, 2021
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I did a fresh install of windows, hoping to get rid of any past settings. is this right?

say

stock ; 3701

current ; 4649 while idling ...
 
Ryzen CPU's boosts individual cores to max clocks from idle so it's perfectly normal. AMD calls it a 'rush to idle' to get transient processing loads done as soon as possible and put the core back to a deep sleep state for energy conservation.

The thing is, Windows is never truly 'idle'. There are over 100 background processes on my system...almost 3000 threads. Most aren't doing anything but one or two are always 'waking up' to do something. That's what you are seeing.

Both how high and how long it holds the boosts depend on thermal and power margin. Your motherboard must be set up to tell the processor there's good VRM power margin, and cooling must be good enough to keep the processor fairly cool. That's why you're getting 50Mhz over the rated max boost clock.

And lastly: yes. Left on stock settings Ryzen processors effectively overclock themselves when they boost the way they do. But it's by design and it monitors itself with sensors all over the CPU. As it gets warm it will lower both clock and voltage to keep itself safe.
 
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4649 is not idle...the cpu is doing work, but that speed is completely normal.

My current 5600x idle speed according to Ryzen Master is 180mhz.

I'd recommend disabling everything you can do without in Windows Settings "privacy" as a starting place to reduce idle processes and then look at any software you've loaded that runs in the background even when not in use.
 
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I'd recommend disabling everything you can do without in Windows Settings "privacy" as a starting place to reduce idle processes and then look at any software you've loaded that runs in the background even when not in use.
There will always be background tasks to work on. You can only do so much but you cannot get rid of everything, which will cause the periodic spikes that @drea.drechsler mentioned.
 
Imgur: The magic of the Internet The clocks do run pretty low but seriously ramp up when needed, this was taken with 3 tabs open on windows.
Wow...I have to wonder if that's 'real' as in an actual, measured clock speed. Or, as I'm thinking, an 'effective' clock speed...something like HWInfo's "Core / Thread Effective Clock". To quote what HWInfo says about it: "Average clock calculated across the polling period with respect to sleep states. This value much better reflects the dynamic state of the core/thread. Very low values are normal when the core is idle." (emphasis added)

That's one thing I like about HWInfo; at least you can find an explanation what their readings actually mean. Can't do that with most any other including RyzenMaster.
 
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