First time overclocking Ryzen - need help

[Marty Z]

Ok folks, now that my machine is finally built I am ready to start doing some tweeking. I have to preface this by saying that I have not overclocked anything in the last 6 years and even then it was a Haswell-E that I overclocked. As a matter of fact, the last AMD PC I had was an athelon, which I did not overclock. So here is the build

 

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
MB: ASUS X570S Crosshair VIII Dark Hero

GPU: EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 ULTRA

.         GAMING LHR
RAM: G.SKILL Trident Z Neo Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 3600 16-16-16-16-36 (B-Die)
CASE: Corsair 5000D Airflow
COOLING: Noctua NH-D15S chromax.Black
                   10 x Corsair LL120

PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 850 G3

 

My build post is here is you want to see it 

 

So at this point the rig is running with stock BIOS settings with the exception of DOCP being enabled. Here is what I have so far after a few C23 runs.

 

Ambient temp for the below test was 27C

Single-Core Score - 1570

Averaged 4800mhz with a temp max of 67C

 

Multi-Core Score - 19676

Averaged 4200mhz all-core with a temp max of 70C

 

 

Now, I still have a little CPU fan headroom and a lot of case fan head room.

 

I have watched MANY youtube videos over the last few weeks on overclocking Ryzen, but I'm still confused with the PBO, undervolting, DOS, etc....

 

Here is what I want to do, I want to get the most juice out of my CPU and RAM, without reducing their lifespan. In other words, I want a conservative overclock, on both CPU and RAM, that will give me a good balance between single and multi core performance.

 

Any and all help is appreciated. Also, some suggestions on benchmark and stability testing tools, other then cinabench, for both CPU and RAM.

 

PS: I'm not worried about my GPU since I just got 100+ FPS in DCS World at 3440x1440 at high display settings, and it was clocking just over 1900mhz without any tweeking.

[GuiltySpark_]

I appreciate the gung-ho attitude and you're all ready to jump into the weeds and start tweaking things but the truth is, with modern Ryzen chips, you're going to achieve exactly what you're looking for by enabling PBO and walking away. Make sure DOCP/XMP is enabled for your RAM as well.

[Cyracus]

You can try CTR  it does pretty good at turning the knobs for you

[Gohardgrandpa]

Ctr is the easiest way to do it. Let it undervolt/overclock the CPU for you and call it a day. 

[Marty Z]

Well, I finally found time to install and run CTR v2.1. This tool is amazing. According to C23 I got a 3.3% performance increase in Single Core and 13.3% performance increase in multicore, It was also able to get my multi-core frequency to 4550 on CCX0 and 4450 on CCX1. And my temps are still good.

 

And according to CTR, I got a Golden sample.

 

Single-core - C23 Score 1622 with 50 MHz increase

 

Multi-core - C23 Score 22288 with 300 MHz increase

 

Thanks for the suggestion, it worked out perfectly.

 

Now, how about my RAM? Can I now adjust my RAM frequency, IC, and timings? After enabling CTR? Is there a tool to assist with that as well as a stability testing tool?

 

 

[Marty Z]

Well, CTR was a very short lived solution. It spent over 3 hours tuning, then I ran the stability test, and it said the system was stable. And as you see above, C23 benchmarks showed very good results.

 

I then went ahead and started Fusion 360, opened a complex project, and the PC restarted. When it came back up CTR reset itself and went to baseline defaults.

 

At this point I can't trust CTR. I uninstalled ryzen master, deleted CTR folder. Went to BIOS, reset optimized settings and turned on DOCP. So my BIOS is back to normal now, C23 results are back to what they originally were and I was able to open 4 complex projects in Fusion 360 with no issues.

 

So back to square one. Should I try PBO, Manual overclock, undervolting, DOS? Is it worth it for an extra 300 MHz multi-core?

 

[Marty Z]

anybody? any additional advice?

[jwwagner25]

stick to original advice. turn on PBO, and leave it. you can play with setting negative curve offset between 5 and 30. consensus is still out on whether it really makes much difference. You have plenty of cooling so are not thermally limited. the thing is, as has already been said, these processors are already about as optimized as they can be. your best bet is to supplement with best available hardware i.e. quality ram, and making sure it's running optimally. 

[Marty Z]

Ok, so I spent days trying to find the best combination of PBO and Curve optimizer, and the best I've been able to get is a 3% benchmark increase in R23, and even a minor decrease in Time Spy. I also noticed minor degradation in app load times. So, I finally came to the conclusion that this CPU/MB combination runs better on stock settings then with PBO+CO. Running it in prime 95, at stock with only DOCP enabled with a blended workload, i'm getting 4,562 MHz All Core Effective. And Single Core is hitting 4,925 MHz Effective, and Max temp hitting 81.4c, 61c average, after 1 hour P95 blended workload, with 26c ambient. So I think I will leave well enough alone, run it at stock settings, and maybe prolong the life of the CPU.

 

Thanks everyone for your help.