[SOLVED] Ryzen 7 3700X underclocking itself for no apparent reason

[happy1992]

Morning,



Around 2-3d ago I had this weird issue where I started a round of Valorant and for whatever reason my PC was only ditching out 20-30fps and the experience was very laggy. After a quick look into HW Monitor I realized that 4 of my cores were heavily underclocked to around 500MHz. After a quick PC restart the issue fixed itself and the cores were back to their usual 3900-4200 MHz. Fastforward to today, I am just doing home office and suddenly notice my PC being extremly slow. After checking that no windows update or anything was running I again checked HW Monitor and saw the same thing, just this time all my cores where clocked at 552MHz (see Screenshot

https://imgur.com/a/sjRFiaw

View: https://imgur.com/a/sjRFiaw
). My first thought was that the CPU was underclocking itself due to overheating, but a quick look at the CPU Temp showed that it was at a reasonable 43° (sadly dont have a screenshot of it). Again, I did a quick PC restart and now everythign seems to be back to normal.



I do, however, worry that this will not be the last time I see this. Looking into my HWMonitor while doing basic home office work, I do also notice that the Core clock speed is fluctiating extremly hard, something the CPU was not doing a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago the clock speed was usually always running at its highest 4300MHz which I first thought was actually some sort of issue but found out was considered "normal". Now the clock speeds are going up and down constantly, hiting as low as 2874MHz and as high as 4366MHz. The temps while idle also fluctuate a lot, ranging from 51° to peeks at 65°.

If I run something like Cinebench, the Clock speed lowers itself to around 3800MHz and my Temps stay stable at 65°, with a score of 4297.



Can anyone explain to me what exactly is going on here?



System Specs:

Motherboard: X570 Aorus Elite

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X

RAM: 16GB

GPU: RTX 2070 Super

Case: Fractal Design Define R6

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 SE-AM4

Fan Setup: 3 Noctua intake fans at the front (2x NF-S12A PWM, 1x Noctua NF-P12), 1x Exhaust Fan in the back (1x NF-S12A PWM) and still have 2 Coolers available that I could add, in case anyone thinks I need it (pls let me know where).





Would appreciate any sort of help.

 

[CountMike]

Morning,



Around 2-3d ago I had this weird issue where I started a round of Valorant and for whatever reason my PC was only ditching out 20-30fps and the experience was very laggy. After a quick look into HW Monitor I realized that 4 of my cores were heavily underclocked to around 500MHz. After a quick PC restart the issue fixed itself and the cores were back to their usual 3900-4200 MHz. Fastforward to today, I am just doing home office and suddenly notice my PC being extremly slow. After checking that no windows update or anything was running I again checked HW Monitor and saw the same thing, just this time all my cores where clocked at 552MHz (see Screenshot

https://imgur.com/a/sjRFiaw

View: https://imgur.com/a/sjRFiaw
). My first thought was that the CPU was underclocking itself due to overheating, but a quick look at the CPU Temp showed that it was at a reasonable 43° (sadly dont have a screenshot of it). Again, I did a quick PC restart and now everythign seems to be back to normal.



I do, however, worry that this will not be the last time I see this. Looking into my HWMonitor while doing basic home office work, I do also notice that the Core clock speed is fluctiating extremly hard, something the CPU was not doing a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago the clock speed was usually always running at its highest 4300MHz which I first thought was actually some sort of issue but found out was considered "normal". Now the clock speeds are going up and down constantly, hiting as low as 2874MHz and as high as 4366MHz. The temps while idle also fluctuate a lot, ranging from 51° to peeks at 65°.

If I run something like Cinebench, the Clock speed lowers itself to around 3800MHz and my Temps stay stable at 65°, with a score of 4297.



Can anyone explain to me what exactly is going on here?



System Specs:

Motherboard: X570 Aorus Elite

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X

RAM: 16GB

GPU: RTX 2070 Super

Case: Fractal Design Define R6

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 SE-AM4

Fan Setup: 3 Noctua intake fans at the front (2x NF-S12A PWM, 1x Noctua NF-P12), 1x Exhaust Fan in the back (1x NF-S12A PWM) and still have 2 Coolers available that I could add, in case anyone thinks I need it (pls let me know where).





Would appreciate any sort of help.

What about Power saving plan in Windows ?

 

[thekillerx10]

Try to manually set the frequency and voltage set the frequency to 43 and the voltage to something like 1.3v

 

[happy1992]

What about Power saving plan in Windows ?

Power Saving Plan is set to AMD Performance.

Try to manually set the frequency and voltage set the frequency to 43 and the voltage to something like 1.3v

Since a restart fixes this I dont need to do this. I am trying to figure out what exactly causes the issue to begin with.

 

[drea.drechsler]

In BIOS make sure you have the following settings enabled: Cool n Quiet, Advanced C States, Processor CPPC and CPPC Preferred Cores. ENABLED not AUTO, because AUTO can be interpreted as DISABLED in some BIOS'.

Also, do not set frequency or voltage to fixed values, leave them in AUTO. In the case of VCore, a VERY SLIGHT negative offset can sometimes help the processor maintain boost clocks in heavy loads.

Lastly: what temperature is your processor running at under a heavy load? The BEST way to read CPU temp is using RyzenMaster or HWInfo64 (HWMonitor's not always accurate for Ryzen or AM4 systems, btw). In HWInfo you want to look for a CPU Average die temperature so as to avoid dealing with the spiking as the processor boosts in light loads; RyzenMaster does the averaging by default.

 

[happy1992]

I will give those settings a try later today, currently still working.

Regarding your temp question: My temp is, under load, usually always at around 60-65°. This is while gaming and while doing things like Cinebench.
To confirm I just did a try with Cinebench at the max Temp it reached (in Ryzen Master) was 67.5°, it was mostly sitting at 65-66° though.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...
To confirm I just did a try with Cinebench at the max Temp it reached (in Ryzen Master) was 67.5°, it was mostly sitting at 65-66° though.

Those are good temps, so cooling at least should not be a contributor to the issue.

One other thing you might could try is a CMOS reset, then make those settings I mentioned earlier. Sometimes BIOS settings get skewed, usually the more arcane ones that you visited once and don't realize it got that way, and a reset helps fix things. If it runs OK after that then you know you're on to something, at least.