[SOLVED] Ryzen5 3600 higher voltage in lower cpu-usage games

[gabi222]

Using HWinfo64 I noticed that I was getting readings for CPU Core Voltage(SV12 TFN) in the range 1.35-1.41 (in CS / Rocket League )

In COD Warzone the reading is lower 1.31-1.35

The difference is that the CPU is used more in the second case with lower fps 100 fps and 30-50 % usage (lower voltage) vs 200-240 fps with 2-20% usage (higher voltage)

Is this expected, seems a bit weird no?

 

[Newtonius]

This is normal, when the voltage is higher it's usually because there is little work being done on the CPU. High voltage does not equal high wattage, the higher voltage is mainly to keep single core performance as high performance as possible since the amperage on the entire CPU is low (watts = volt * amp), the higher the volt at idle/low-usage the more power (watt) a single core can get and since this still creates little heat (since it's only 1 core getting that juice) it can crank the volts pretty high without issue. This won't cause damage to the CPU, the chip pulls up to 1.4-1.5v at stock when idle.

 

[hotaru.hino]

The reason why it has to crank up the voltages is to maintain stability while turbo boosting. Turbo boosting frequencies are higher the fewer cores are being used.

 

[dorsai]

The Ryzen 3600 processor will pull up to 1.45-1.5v in lite workloads, depending on motherboard, usually when running 1 core but possibly 2 cores for very short duration.

At idle your 3600 should be putting cores to sleep and core voltage should be dropping well below 1v.

The above actions are completely normal but may not happen if you've made changes to the Windows power plan to keep the cores active or if you're running a manual overclock and have disabled the power saving features.

I would use Ryzen Master to monitor the 3600.