Need tips on undervolting/underclocking Zen 2 (R5 3600)

[ShadowChaser]

Working on the xbox build in my siggy and due to the cramped space, limited airflow, and tiny cooler the 3600 runs really dang hot stock even with PBO disabled, so much so that I just set it to Eco-mode after getting it and just forgetting about it. Today I started really squeezing as much performance out of it as possible while still keeping thermal output low, and I got to 3.9Ghz all core at 1.075v, which results in 32C/65C idle/load temps and a package power draw of ~50-55W in both Cinebench and Prime95.

 

All I did was punch in a manual voltage and bumped up the clocks until it started crashing, which is great for a quick and dirty underclock, but I lost a lot of single threaded performance. Is there anyway for me to remedy the now terrible single threaded performance of my CPU? It doesn't make sense for it to be locked at 3.9Ghz while only 1 or 2 cores are loaded.

 

Motherboard is a MSI B450I Gaming Plus AC, if that matters.

[Guest]

Well.... you can just run it at it's defaults. 

Why??

 

Because it will self regulate as the processor is well aware of it's surroundings. 

 

Throttle temp is 95c - It will continue to boost and then throttle when needed automatically giving you the best performance in accordance to thermal and power regulations. 

 

Run it stock. You'll be better off that way.

 

Concentrate on gaining memory performance instead

 

 

[icase81]

I can’t speak for the 3600x specifically but my 3900x was way hot on the same board. Like idling with 1.4v and not clocking down Below 4.0ghz even at 0 load and still being like 58-65c, causing the stock cooler to spin up and down and up and down. If I set it to max over savings plan it would drop to .9 but the cores wouldn’t ever ramp up over 2.14ghz but stay cool at a max of 55c on the stock cooler. I googled and lots of people with Specifically MSI b450, x470 and x570 boards saying the same thing. Seems there’s a bios bug that’s ignoring temps or not properly clocking down. 
 

I have an asus board coming Monday so we’ll see if that kisses it but that might be your issue. Too high voltage.

[ShadowChaser]

Just now, ShrimpBrime said:

Well.... you can just run it at it's defaults. 

Why??

 

Because it will self regulate as the processor is well aware of it's surroundings. 

 

Throttle temp is 95c - It will continue to boost and then throttle when needed automatically giving you the best performance in accordance to thermal and power regulations. 

 

Run it stock. You'll be better off that way.

 

Concentrate on gaining memory performance instead

 

 

unfortunately I did consider that already - I can't have my CPU running amok and drawing too much power given that I only have 200W to work with!

65W is a hard limit, anything under that would be nice in my case, and I just wanted to see if there was anything I can do to get some single threaded speed back  

The temperature I have now is with it running with a proper fan on the heatsink I've got while open air, and you can bet that once I stuff it into the chassis it'll start skyrocketing, (in fact, I do know that and it throttles to about 3-3.1Ghz, far lower than base while drawing more power than necessary)

[ShadowChaser]

1 minute ago, icase81 said:

I can’t speak for the 3600x specifically but my 3900x was way hot on the same board. Like idling with 1.4v and not clocking down Below 4.0ghz even at 0 load and still being like 58-65c, causing the stock cooler to spin up and down and up and down. If I set it to max over savings plan it would drop to .9 but the cores wouldn’t ever ramp up over 2.14ghz but stay cool at a max of 55c on the stock cooler. I googled and lots of people with Specifically MSI b450, x470 and x570 boards saying the same thing. Seems there’s a bios bug that’s ignoring temps or not properly clocking down. 
 

I have an asus board coming Monday so we’ll see if that kisses it but that might be your issue. Too high voltage.

I'm not experiencing any issues of that sort since I've manually tuned my chip at the moment. 1.1v is what it's holding at according to hwinfo and ryzen master so I'd believe it.

I just want to know how to better underclock and undervolt than just punching in numbers into the voltage and clock speed inputs  

[Guest]

Just now, ShadowChaser said:

unfortunately I did consider that already - I can't have my CPU running amok and drawing too much power given that I only have 200W to work with!

65W is a hard limit, anything under that would be nice in my case, and I just wanted to see if there was anything I can do to get some single threaded speed back  

The temperature I have now is with it running with a proper fan on the heatsink I've got while open air, and you can bet that once I stuff it into the chassis it'll start skyrocketing, (in fact, I do know that and it throttles to about 3-3.1Ghz, far lower than base while drawing more power than necessary)

OK - I getcha then! (didn't see the 200w PSU, I was just looking at your other thread there!!)

 

Things you can try!

 

Disable 2 cores/ 4 threads. (leaves you with 8 threads, that's plenty for gaming)

Leave all cores on, disable SMT and see if that helps either therms or v-core.

Cpu-z about tab, save report txt. open txt. view "p-states" understand v-core for each. Play with numbers

And also more of your method, lower LLC to lvl 3 maybe. I have run mine at lvl 2, but much lower clocks.

 

happy tweaking!!

 

[ShadowChaser]

Just now, ShrimpBrime said:

OK - I getcha then! (didn't see the 200w PSU, I was just looking at your other thread there!!)

 

Things you can try!

 

Disable 2 cores/ 4 threads. (leaves you with 8 threads, that's plenty for gaming)

Leave all cores on, disable SMT and see if that helps either therms or v-core.

Cpu-z about tab, save report txt. open txt. view "p-states" understand v-core for each. Play with numbers

And also more of your method, lower LLC to lvl 3 maybe. I have run mine at lvl 2, but much lower clocks.

 

happy tweaking!!

 

All great suggestions, but I think they only apply to multi threaded workloads haha
I wish there was just more granular control for clocks when a less than 100% load is put on the CPU. On my 8700K I can set 5.1 as single core turbo, 5.0 as 2-core, 4.9 as 4-core, etc, and I can't find anything like this on this build whatsoever.

I am somewhat disappointed but I guess I'll keep it for now and see what I can make of it  

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, ShadowChaser said:

All great suggestions, but I think they only apply to multi threaded workloads haha
I wish there was just more granular control for clocks when a less than 100% load is put on the CPU. On my 8700K I can set 5.1 as single core turbo, 5.0 as 2-core, 4.9 as 4-core, etc, and I can't find anything like this on this build whatsoever.

I am somewhat disappointed but I guess I'll keep it for now and see what I can make of it  

I don't use the software, but you may be able to answer this question.

 

Can you or can you not adjust per core frequencies in the Ryzen Boss application? (If no one can tell, I'm not fond of the app lol)

[Fatih19]

What about reducing the Power Target from Ryzen Master Software?

This video talked a bit about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ir1Wvcypic

[ShadowChaser]

10 hours ago, ShrimpBrime said:

I don't use the software, but you may be able to answer this question.

 

Can you or can you not adjust per core frequencies in the Ryzen Boss application? (If no one can tell, I'm not fond of the app lol)

Not in any meaningful way - If I bump up the clocks of 2 cores then the others in the ccx will drop when all cores are loaded. I guess I'll see if I can tweak it but I personally wouldn't want to enable a profile every time I reboot

 

10 hours ago, Fatih19 said:

What about reducing the Power Target from Ryzen Master Software?

This video talked a bit about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ir1Wvcypic

This was one of the first things I did - it's currently capped at 55W, 10W above what eco-mode is on the 3600. I'll have too look for more deep dives into ryzen undervolting it seems.

[ShadowChaser]

After following as many tutorials and walkthroughs I ended up just reverting to my original overclock but underclock method and managed a 3.8% multicore improvement over stock (3609 vs 3477) while losing 1.1% singlecore performance (466 vs 471) in Cinebench, and improving Blender BMW benchmark times by 5.3% over stock (3:50 vs 4:03).

 

I dropped my power usage by 24% (57W vs 75W) and load temps by 15-16% (~75C vs ~62C) which is worth it given all the improvement and the almost negligible single core loss given the dinky cooler I'm using. It also gives me the thermal overhead once I stick it into the very confined chassis. If I've learned anything it's that at the extremes of cooler performance PBO just doesn't cut it