Is Undervolting CPU without Overclocking Possible?

[TechnicGeek]

Hi,

 

I want to undervolt AMD Ryzen 5 3600X for the sole purpose of reducing it's idle and workload temperatures and keep it running under stock speeds. Is this possible without overclocking?

 

I am using stock cooler and don't want to change it. My motherboard is Gigabyte B450 Aorus Elite, revision 1.0 with latest BIOS. 

 

Thanks. 

[bellabichon]

Of course. Plenty of people undervolt their CPUs in laptops to improve cooling, without touching the overclocking settings. I use ThrottleStop to undervolt my CPU, but there are many other tools to do so as well. 

[Jurrunio]

Ofc, voltage and frequency settings are independent of each other (apart from auto settings)

[TechnicGeek]

@bellabichon I don't want to use tools. I want to undervolt through BIOS only.

 

The problem is clock-stretching in Ryzen CPUs. Normally when there is a quick voltage dip the CPU reduces it's clock speeds for a very brief moment. When you undervolt to the point where CPU no longer gets sufficient voltage on a consistent basis, the clock speeds rapidly fluctuate back and forth due to CPU's 1/10 second polling rate.

 

Because hardware monitoring software cannot catch snapshots at such quick rate, it makes it impossible to detect performance degradation because all you see is boost clock at it's highest and you don't know when you have reached the point of low voltage supply. So you keep decreasing voltage until system becomes unstable.