Question Ryzen 7 3700x Underperforming

[hypernovae555]

I've recently built a gaming pc (for the first time) for a friend, and I'm running several benchmarks. My R7 3700X is doing poorly, but not so poorly as to be unusable, and I want to figure out if it's just poor silicon or something else. In Cinebench R20, it's about ~25 points 1T and ~250 points 16T short of what cgdirector reported a normal R7 3700x bench to be. Userbenchmark puts it at 12th percentile of all 3700x's.

During these tests it peaks at about 85C (set limit to 90), with an all-core boost of 4.05 GHz. Base clock is still 3.6.
I've enabled PBO, I used Ryzen Master to wipe all settings MSI Dragon Center or anything else might have set (then deleted it) and changed all settings either in Master or in the BIOS. I set core voltage to 1.35V--which it holds, and I'm using the Ryzen Balanced power plan.

Specs here:
CoolerMaster MasterAir MA410M
MSI MPG X570 Gaming Pro Carbon Wifi
G.Skill Trident Z Neo 3600MHz 16-19-19-39
Seagate 3TB HDD
Crucial 1TB M.2 drive (OS)
MSI RTX 2070 Super Gaming X (which gets great thermals, no more than 70C)
Win10 1909 (I assume, I installed it two weeks ago)

If it's thermals: the cooler is seated right, and the thermal paste is only about a year old, properly sealed. I have the fan curve in the BIOS set to 100% at ~72C.
Any other info I can provide may take some time, as I don't have immediate access to the computer itself. Thank you.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Many ppl have come to the same conclusion, that PBO may not be all its cracked up to be. It's a good idea, just needs some tweaks and some more user friendly adjustable settings, because it's curves can be quite aggressive, and while that's good for performance, it's not necessarily so good if just looking for more than base, but still decent.

I'm not exactly sure what PBO's 'cracked up to be' , maybe what it did for 2700x's. People would report steady boosting up to 4.3G, even under load, with PBO on those processors. It doesn't do that with my 3700X, but it does offer some help.

I can get about 75-100 pts higher in CB20 MT (up from from ~ 4985 to 5080, sometimes 5103), about 10 pts higher ST (from ~501 to 511), with PBO set on, limits set to max for my motherboard and scalar set at 7X. I also have to put in a slight (+0.0125V) VCore offset to keep volts up for ST boosting though. Not much, and may not be what they got with 2700x's, but that's a positive effect and I'll take it.

In many ways, I have to think this is good since it really shows all consumers are getting pretty close to absolute maximum the (binned) silicon can put out. We can be pretty certain AMD's not holding something back with artificial limits that you have to pay extra to get removed. And getting top performance also isn't just something for elite overclockers that comes with a risk of stability and constant worry about 'degradation'.

Those are all plusses in my opinion.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Hi dorsai - could you please elaborate 'a simple case fan blowing on the vrm remedies the situation': do you mean, such a fan sitting inside the case, blowing air directly onto the vrms...

It could be either, but I rigged up a 70mm fan off of an old CPU heatsink blowing onto the VRM of my Gigabyte B350m Gaming 3. Some people use zip ties, I moded an I/O blanking plate to mount the fan to, then mounted that to the case exhaust fan. With an appropriate speed it worked OK, kept the VRM cool when HB encoding videos clips for a few hours. I was Running a 1700 OC'd to 3.9G at the time. Gaming 3's were terrible motherboard and completely unsuited to an 8 core, much less OC'd.

 

[Karadjgne]

@drea.drechsler
Exactly what I meant by 'that PBO may not be all that it's cracked up to be'. There's a lot of give and take with differences in mobo's, VRM's, cooling, cpus etc and some ppl are finding better results by doing things manually, like in the 'old days' when we all were quite vocal that manual oc was good, vendor autoware OC was bad.

Overall, yes, I'd agree that it's bonus's far outweigh any negatives or detractions and for many its a really decent performance boost, but like you say about your 3700x, it's only some help, and not really anything you couldn't have accomplished by yourself manually, which your sorta did with further tweaking.

 

[dorsai]

Hi dorsai - could you please elaborate 'a simple case fan blowing on the vrm remedies the situation': do you mean, such a fan sitting inside the case, blowing air directly onto the vrms? Or a case fan in a standard position (e.g. bottom of the case, intake directed towards the VRMs)? Sorry for jumping in on the OP.

Any fan pointed towards the vrm will help control and reduce temps. I've found the ideal setup is a fan placed in the side panel that blows air directly on the vrm works best...if your side panel wont accept a fan then one blowing down from the top work wells as long as you've got proper airflow front to back through the case.

 

[dorsai]

I'm not exactly sure what PBO's 'cracked up to be' , maybe what it did for 2700x's. People would report steady boosting up to 4.3G, even under load, with PBO on those processors. It doesn't do that with my 3700X, but it does offer some help.

I can get about 75-100 pts higher in CB20 MT (up from from ~ 4985 to 5080, sometimes 5103), about 10 pts higher ST (from ~501 to 511), with PBO set on, limits set to max for my motherboard and scalar set at 7X. I also have to put in a slight (+0.0125V) VCore offset to keep volts up for ST boosting though. Not much, and may not be what they got with 2700x's, but that's a positive effect and I'll take it.

In many ways, I have to think this is good since it really shows all consumers are getting pretty close to absolute maximum the (binned) silicon can put out. We can be pretty certain AMD's not holding something back with artificial limits that you have to pay extra to get removed. And getting top performance also isn't just something for elite overclockers that comes with a risk of stability and constant worry about 'degradation'.

Those are all plusses in my opinion.

Same here...PBO just plain works and provided a decent boost on my 2700x while proving a small gain on my 3600...especially helpful on an AIO...not so much if someones running the stock fan. AMD has always said temps are an integral part of their algorithms for CPU performance.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Any fan pointed towards the vrm will help control and reduce temps. ....

When talking about the VRM fan, I think it's a good thing to take a look at the design of AMD's stock coolers. They are all 'down blowing' and so provide a draft across the VRM heatsinks. It may not be a lot, but often all you need is a small draft to move stagnant air out of an eddy spot.

When you put on after-market, you need to consider you're possibly losing that designed-in effect. Especially true of AIO's that take away all CPU cooling fan-induced air movement from that area of the case.

 

[jon96789]

As some of you may know, I was one of the unfortunate few that bought the MSi Gaming Pro Carbon board as well with a 3900x. The board cannot handle any 105-watt AMD CPU (the VRMs exceeded 95 degrees and throttled the 3900x) so I replaced it with an ASUS X570 ROG Crosshair VIII Hero which I do not regret.

What I did was built another PC with the MSi board using a 65-watt AMD Ryzen 7 3700x with its stock OEM AMD Wraith Prism cooler. With the 3700x, the idle temps remained about 35 degrees, but the CPU topped off at 70-75 degrees and the VRMs barely broke a sweat at 45-50 degrees, a far cry from the 3900x's 95+ degrees.

Userbenchmark puts my build at 87% percentile. So the MSi is fine with any 65-watt CPU...