My CPU won't stop boosting.

[CreativeName642]

So, as the title, says, my CPU (R5 3600) won't stop boosting. It's not thermal throttling or causing me issues at all, but I'm still curious as to what's causing it. 

So, yesterday I opened task manager to close Chrome because it wasn't responding, and I noticed that my CPU was running at 3.9 GHz (it's never been able to boost up to 4.2 without stability issues), as opposed to it's base 3.6. It's not overclocked, and yet it was still boosting, even after 3 days of uptime. I restarted it, and it was still boosting. I left it over night, guess what? Still boosting. As I said it hasn't caused me any problems and is perfectly stable, but I was wondering what was causing it and if this will affect it's lifespan.

 

Edit: My motherboard is an MSI B450 Tomahawk Max 

[arch0872]

my new 5600X is the same way, no matter what I do it sits at 4.0 or higher.   I have just been assuming its how it is lol.   I also haven't noticed any issues with the system everything runs great, but i've never seen it drop down to its baseclock of 3.7.  

[CreativeName642]

Just now, arch0872 said:

my new 5600X is the same way, no matter what I do it sits at 4.0 or higher.   I have just been assuming its how it is lol.   I also haven't noticed any issues with the system everything runs great, but i've never seen it drop down to its baseclock of 3.7.  

Well the weird thing is it used to drop down to it's base clock, I'm not sure when it stopped. But it's good to know that this may just be how it is with AMD processors.

[D13H4RD]

My 3700X spends a majority of its time above the 3.6GHz base clock. It's just how Precision Boost 2 works.

 

The only time it drops below that is when the system is perfectly idle.

[boggy77]

are you on the performance power plan or on the balanced power plan? the balanced power plan allows the cpu to downlock when idle, the performance power plan keeps it boosted

[Mark Kaine]

my 3600 idles at around 2 ghz (possibly lower due to monitoring software not reading idle states correctly) it also boosts regularly to 4.2 under load. 

 

However - even if this sounds weird to you, try to set processor power state to 85% minimum and 100% maximum. Also use 'windows balanced' power plan. 

 

See if that fixes it. 

[CreativeName642]

1 minute ago, boggy77 said:

are you on the performance power plan or on the balanced power plan? the balanced power plan allows the cpu to downlock when idle, the performance power plan keeps it boosted

I didn't even think about that. It's on performance. Thanks!

[Shoopman]

You can set the minimum processor state to 5% or 1% in advanced power options. This will usually cause the CPU to downclock when it isn't doing anything. How far it will actually downclock varies, but it is usually <2 GHz.

[Mister Woof]

My ryzen 5 1600 stays at 3.9ghz all day long.

 

But that's because I told it to I guess