Question Undervolting ryzen 5 3600

[Fede83]

Hey there ,i have a couple of questions :

For voltage on and motherboard can i use amd overclocking voice or should i go offset ?
Also Is global c-state and and cool and quiet Need to be turned on ?
Any tips on how to optimally undervolt It Will be amazing !
Thanks in Advance

 

[CountMike]

Hey there ,i have a couple of questions :

For voltage on and motherboard can i use amd overclocking voice or should i go offset ?
Also Is global c-state and and cool and quiet Need to be turned on ?
Any tips on how to optimally undervolt It Will be amazing !
Thanks in Advance

Offset (if negative) is dynamical. voltage changes by that much at any stage at any load. If set manually voltage stays same even when CPU is at idle which is unnecessary but may be to little under load. Usual offset on tha generation of Ryzen ranges from -0.02 or 3 to -0.10v, you'll just have to experiment and check stability.
Since it's a power saving feature it makes sense to also enable other ones like global c-state and C and C which will handle idle voltages and power.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...
Any tips on how to optimally undervolt It Will be amazing !
...

It won't be amazing although you might think so. It's a phenomenon called clock stretching, where you think the CPU's holding a high clock speed with a serious undervolt and much lower temperature. In reality, it's stretching out the clock pulses in an effort to maintain stability with too low of a voltage. Performance definitely suffers and you'll see it in all- core benchmarks like Cinebench when compared against a baseline run.

You're generally better off just enabling PBO and pushing the power (PPT) and current (TDC, EDC) envelopes a little bit, then enabling some additional boost. But be judicious with the boost as it will heat up the cores and pull back on boosting instead of helping. You also need much better than stock cooling for this to work for you.

A very slight undervolt can help with this, but I do mean very slight. Just one or two straps lower is all it takes.

And definitely leave Global C states and CPPC enabled (the generally are by default). They help the cores cool off between boosting so it's ready to hit maximum clocks for the next boost. Cool-n-Quiet is deprecated in updated BIOS's, replaced in total by Global C States.

 

[Fede83]

It won't be amazing although you might think so. It's a phenomenon called clock stretching, where you think the CPU's holding a high clock speed with a serious undervolt and much lower temperature. In reality, it's stretching out the clock pulses in an effort to maintain stability with too low of a voltage. Performance definitely suffers and you'll see it in all- core benchmarks like Cinebench when compared against a baseline run.

You're generally better off just enabling PBO and pushing the power (PPT) and current (TDC, EDC) envelopes a little bit, then enabling some additional boost. But be judicious with the boost as it will heat up the cores and pull back on boosting instead of helping. You also need much better than stock cooling for this to work for you.

A very slight undervolt can help with this, but I do mean very slight. Just one or two straps lower is all it takes.

And definitely leave Global C states and CPPC enabled (the generally are by default). They help the cores cool off between boosting so it's ready to hit maximum clocks for the next boost. Cool-n-Quiet is deprecated in updated BIOS's, replaced in total by Global C States.

Oh i see , but i still have cool n quiet option in BIOS , i Just leave in auto or disabled ?

 

[Fede83]

Offset (if negative) is dynamical. voltage changes by that much at any stage at any load. If set manually voltage stays same even when CPU is at idle which is unnecessary but may be to little under load. Usual offset on tha generation of Ryzen ranges from -0.02 or 3 to -0.10v, you'll just have to experiment and check stability.
Since it's a power saving feature it makes sense to also enable other ones like global c-state and C and C which will handle idle voltages and power.

Ok i go with the offset than , what Is the voltage i should start ?

 

[CountMike]

Ok i go with the offset than , thing Is i have to go on positive because the voltage start Is like 1.1 which Is super low and if i go negative i Will be 1.050 and Will not be stable..Is normal or ?

Voltage starts low at idle and should go up under load. with those Ryzen typically up to 1.4v+ under full load. When at true idle (all but one or 2 cores in sleep mode) voltage can drop substantially under 1v.
When you set offset voltage it's in auto voltage mode with corrections for that offset.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Oh i see , but i still have cool n quiet option in BIOS , i Just leave in auto or disabled ?

Leave it in Auto should be fine.

But that you still have a C-n-Q setting in your BIOS suggests it's not the latest where it's been deprecated. It's a good idea to be on the latest for several compatibility/security/performance/stability reasons.

 

[Fede83]

Leave it in Auto should be fine.

But that you still have a C-n-Q setting in your BIOS suggests it's not the latest where it's been deprecated. It's a good idea to be on the latest for several compatibility/security/performance/stability reasons.

I see , i was skeptical because in the past when i switch to a new BIOS i also lose clock stability . Can this be an option or Is Always Good to update It ?

 

[drea.drechsler]

I see , i was skeptical because in the past when i switch to a new BIOS i also lose clock stability . Can this be an option or Is Always Good to update It ?

The 'stability' concern might have been valid with fixed clock and voltage, borderline unstable, overclocking techniques on older CPU architectures. But Ryzen CPU's are very happy and work best with dynamic voltage and frequency. It knows how to stay stable and makes every effort to, even compromising performance if you undervolt too far.

One reason to lose stability after a BIOS update is if you don't reset CMOS, with a battery pull. That forces the CPU to retrain memory with new DDR4 parameters that may have come in a new BIOS.

Previously, the rule of thumb was "if it ain't broke...don't fix it". But with Ryzen CPU's it's proven very beneficial to stay current with BIOS's. Not only because of fixes and compatibility improvements AMD rolls out with AGESA (CPU microcode) updates but also compatibility with recent Windows changes. And as well, some security exploits that have gotten fixed.

 

[Fede83]

The 'stability' concern might have been valid with fixed clock and voltage, borderline unstable, overclocking techniques on older CPU architectures. But Ryzen CPU's are very happy and work best with dynamic voltage and frequency. It knows how to stay stable and makes every effort to, even compromising performance if you undervolt too far.

One reason to lose stability after a BIOS update is if you don't reset CMOS, with a battery pull. That forces the CPU to retrain memory with new DDR4 parameters that may have come in a new BIOS.

Previously, the rule of thumb was "if it ain't broke...don't fix it". But with Ryzen CPU's it's proven very beneficial to stay current with BIOS's. Not only because of fixes and compatibility improvements AMD rolls out with AGESA (CPU microcode) updates but also compatibility with recent Windows changes. And as well, some security exploits that have gotten fixed.

I see , brillant explanation thank u so much

 

[Fede83]

Voltage starts low at idle and should go up under load. with those Ryzen typically up to 1.4v+ under full load. When at true idle (all but one or 2 cores in sleep mode) voltage can drop substantially under 1v.
When you set offset voltage it's in auto voltage mode with corrections for that offset.

And thank u too , Amazing knowledge here

 

[CountMike]

And thank u too , Amazing knowledge here

I've been using then since first model and vent thru several models of every generation, They are quite different from previous AMD processors and so required a lot of experimentation.

 

[mamasan2000]

The 'stability' concern might have been valid with fixed clock and voltage, borderline unstable, overclocking techniques on older CPU architectures. But Ryzen CPU's are very happy and work best with dynamic voltage and frequency. It knows how to stay stable and makes every effort to, even compromising performance if you undervolt too far.

One reason to lose stability after a BIOS update is if you don't reset CMOS, with a battery pull. That forces the CPU to retrain memory with new DDR4 parameters that may have come in a new BIOS.

Previously, the rule of thumb was "if it ain't broke...don't fix it". But with Ryzen CPU's it's proven very beneficial to stay current with BIOS's. Not only because of fixes and compatibility improvements AMD rolls out with AGESA (CPU microcode) updates but also compatibility with recent Windows changes. And as well, some security exploits that have gotten fixed.

Pretty sure mobo manufacturers recommend you to "Load Optimized Defaults" before any BIOS flashing. And rebooting. Well, Asus doesn't seem to on their site. To be continued below¤. When you are done with the flashing, everything should be in default state and you can go into BIOS and enable XMP/EXPO and any other settings. No need to take batteries out.

¤This is what the manual for updating BIOS says on my X470 Asus board: "Ensure that you load BIOS default settings to ensure system compatibility and stability. Select the Load Optimized Defaults..." Reboot after that.

If someone is overclocking or use custom settings for something else, like power (Power on when electricity is back, for example. Easy to turn on your PC with an electric outlet remote). Write those settings down or get a screenshot. I OC my RAM and CPU. CPU is quite easy to remember for me, just like 4 settings and values (static old skool OC) but RAM is like 30. So I take a screenshot with Zentimings. Sometimes it doesn't show your DRAM voltage so write that down in the filename.

And if people have saved profiles, yeah, those are usually gone.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Pretty sure mobo manufacturers recommend you to "Load Optimized Defaults" before any BIOS flashing. ...

That may be true...although I've not seen the note in any manuals I've looked at recently.

But even so: an "optimized default" setting for the current BIOS isn't necessarily an "optimized default" for the new BIOS since it can include changes to hard-coded initialization parameters, especially those for training memory. So while it may be unnecessary to reset CMOS after an update for that and other reasons, it's easy to do and a "best practice" meant to avert any possible issues cropping up.

 

[CountMike]

That may be true...although I've not seen the note in any manuals I've looked at recently.

But even so: an "optimized default" setting for the current BIOS isn't necessarily an "optimized default" for the new BIOS since it can include changes to hard-coded initialization parameters, especially those for training memory. So while it may be unnecessary to reset CMOS after an update for that and other reasons, it's easy to do and a "best practice" meant to avert any possible issues cropping up.

New defaults come with new BIOS version.

 

[drea.drechsler]

New defaults come with new BIOS version.

True, and another reason setting to "optimized defaults" BEFORE flashing a new BIOS isn't as effective for assuring proper operation after the update.

 

[CountMike]

True, and another reason setting to "optimized defaults" BEFORE flashing a new BIOS isn't as effective as after.

Yes,some even have "Safe defaults" you definitively don't wont something to go wrong during the flash.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Yes,some even have "Safe defaults" you definitively don't wont something to go wrong during the flash.

I'm pretty sure they are guarding against things going wrong...at least I hope so. When I enter the flash program from within BIOS on every one of my boards the system does a restart. When it's in the flash program the fans are pushed to very annoying fast speeds, definitely safer to prevent overheat scenario during flash. I'd assume it does other things like running in real mode, since it doesn't need a lot of memory or threads for flashing, and running memory in base DDR4 clocks, completely ignoring any CMOS or XMP settings.

When it does that restart I think it's booting into an EFI shell session to run the flash program script. That seems logical.

This may be why I've also never seen any instruction to load "optimized defaults" first in any of my AM4 boards' manuals. But then, as badly prepared as they are any more I can also see it being another of the many errors and omissions they're known for.

 

[CountMike]

I'm pretty sure they are guarding against things going wrong...at least I hope so. When I enter the flash program from within BIOS on every one of my boards the system does a restart. When it's in the flash program the fans are pushed to very annoying fast speeds, definitely safer to prevent overheat scenario during flash. I'd assume it does other things like running in real mode, since it doesn't need a lot of memory or threads for flashing, and running memory in base DDR4 clocks, completely ignoring any CMOS or XMP settings.

When it does that restart I think it's booting into an EFI shell session to run the flash program script. That seems logical.

This may be why I've also never seen any instruction to load "optimized defaults" first in any of my AM4 boards' manuals. But then, as badly prepared as they are any more I can also see it being another of the many errors and omissions they're known for.

Since UEFI, BIOS is different from before even in CS/legacy mode, much more space to run a program in firmware and so have more options and safeguards. Since after MBs with 300 series, space has doubled so firmware was improved too. Some can update BIOS even without CPU and RAM inserted , some have dual BIOS, if one is corrupted, the other one kicks in. Other safeties can include fixing corrupted BIOS other was. Once I saved an Asus x370 prime pro that lost power while during BIOS upgrade by using Asus "Safe BIOS" feature. All I had to do is to insert accompanying CD with original BIOS file in it. BIOS found the file and flashed it. That wasn't even documented in the manual, found it another way. Other option is to update BIOS over internet even without OS installed. All of that means that BIOS contains some elementary OS with applications. memory and some even own CPU.

 

[Fede83]

I know I May Be offtopic, but i switch to a new BIOS everything was fine .i runned ddu unistaller and for some reason It remove also my chipset for motherboard ? I tick all the boxes on amd side especially this One called AMDKMPFD , not sure now to Just reinstall motherboard chipset driver ?

 

[drea.drechsler]

I know I May Be offtopic, but i switch to a new BIOS everything was fine .i runned ddu unistaller and for some reason It remove also my chipset for motherboard ? I tick all the boxes on amd side especially this One called AMDKMPFD , not sure now to Just reinstall motherboard chipset driver ?

Yes...download and install the latest chipset drivers and all will be good. Get them from AMD support website.