First Ever AMD Build Advice

[ChrisLoudon]

Hi guys,

 

While I've been building and tinkering with PCs ever since the 286, I have never build at AMD based system until this morning when my PSU finally arrived.

 

I was just wondering if anyone had any BIOS / Windows setup advice?

 

Specs:

 

9800 X3D

MSI X870 Tomahawk Wifi

2 x 16GB Corsair Dominator DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000Mhz

Antec HCG Pro 1200w PSU

GPU - using iGPU until I can get my hands on a 5090

Cooling - Dual Loop Custom Water

Case - Lian-Li o11 Evo XL

 

I've updated the BIOS to latest

Enabled EXPO Profile 1

Installed Win 11 Pro - no bloody ethernet or wireless drivers on install so that was a bit of a faff

Installed AMD chipset drivers

Installed AMD Adrenalin GPU drivers

Windows Updates done as usual

 

Everything seems to be working perfectly but since this is my first AMD I wasn't sure if I've missed anything.

 

I do have one 'unknown device' in device manager which I'm not sure about.

 

Idle temps are 42c and a couple of passes of Cinebench R23 which boosts all cores to about 5300Mhz peak at 72c. Room ambient is 22c.

 

Any other tips and tricks would be welcome.

 

C

 

 

[Hinjima]

27 minutes ago, ChrisLoudon said:

Hi guys,

 

While I've been building and tinkering with PCs ever since the 286, I have never build at AMD based system until this morning when my PSU finally arrived.

 

I was just wondering if anyone had any BIOS / Windows setup advice?

 

Specs:

 

9800 X3D

MSI X870 Tomahawk Wifi

2 x 16GB Corsair Dominator DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000Mhz

Antec HCG Pro 1200w PSU

GPU - using iGPU until I can get my hands on a 5090

Cooling - Dual Loop Custom Water

Case - Lian-Li o11 Evo XL

 

I've updated the BIOS to latest

Enabled EXPO Profile 1

Installed Win 11 Pro - no bloody ethernet or wireless drivers on install so that was a bit of a faff

Installed AMD chipset drivers

Installed AMD Adrenalin GPU drivers

Windows Updates done as usual

 

Everything seems to be working perfectly but since this is my first AMD I wasn't sure if I've missed anything.

 

I do have one 'unknown device' in device manager which I'm not sure about.

 

Idle temps are 42c and a couple of passes of Cinebench R23 which boosts all cores to about 5300Mhz peak at 72c. Room ambient is 22c.

 

Any other tips and tricks would be welcome.

 

C

 

 

Everything looks good. Nice computer  

 

What you can do is mess around with PBO and Curve Optimize.  This is basically an undervolt with an overclock.

I run my 9800X3D at 5.5ghz with similar temperatures to you.

Your temperatures look great both for idle and 5.3ghz all core boost though, fantastic.

 

I would also recommend uninstalling the Radeon Driver and disabling on iGPU in the BIOS once you get the 5090.

I had issues with my 7700x and 9800X3D where the iGPU would interfere with my RTX 4080 and some programs would read the Radeon graphics instead of my 4080.

I have helped at least 10 other people coming to the LTT Forum with an issue like this.

If you ever have to return the 5090 if it fails you can always reset the CMOS to get the iGPU back  

[ChrisLoudon]

6 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

Everything looks good. Nice computer  

 

What you can do is mess around with PBO and Curve Optimize.  This is basically an undervolt with an overclock.

I run my 9800X3D at 5.5ghz with similar temperatures to you.

Your temperatures look great both for idle and 5.3ghz all core boost though, fantastic.

 

I would also recommend uninstalling the Radeon Driver and disabling on iGPU in the BIOS once you get the 5090.

I had issues with my 7700x and 9800X3D where the iGPU would interfere with my RTX 4080 and some programs would read the Radeon graphics instead of my 4080.

I have helped at least 10 other people coming to the LTT Forum with an issue like this.

If you ever have to return the 5090 if it fails you can always reset the CMOS to get the iGPU back  

Thanks buddy,

 

Good to know I've not made any massive mistakes.

 

With regards to PBO and Curve Optimizer, I was going to give Ryzen Master a whirl first given I'm not too sure about the BIOS settings but I can't get it to run. It installs ok but as soon as I try and run it, I get a 'Ryzen Master Unable to Initialize' error.

 

Any ideas?

[Hinjima]

10 minutes ago, ChrisLoudon said:

Thanks buddy,

 

Good to know I've not made any massive mistakes.

 

With regards to PBO and Curve Optimizer, I was going to give Ryzen Master a whirl first given I'm not too sure about the BIOS settings but I can't get it to run. It installs ok but as soon as I try and run it, I get a 'Ryzen Master Unable to Initialize' error.

 

Any ideas?

Hmm, no idea. Never encountered that problem.  I don't use Ryzen Master.

Here are some fixes you can try.

 

The settings in the BIOS is actually very simple.

You just enable PBO and put a -30 on the Curve Optimizer and thats it.

It might not be stable at -30 so if it crashes you try -25 and keep going in 5 increments until stable.  The Curve Optimizer is the voltage.

 

I did PBO Enabled and -25 Curve Optimizer and I also manually added 200Mhz on all cores.

I always recommend doing anything like this in the BIOS and not through Software.

Even though Ryzen Master is a very good program.

 

Here you can see in the beginning how he enabled PBO and does a -30 Curve Optimizer on a Ryzen 7000 CPU on an MSI B650 motherboard.

The BIOS should be similar to yours and its the settings are the same for a Ryzen 9000.

 

[ChrisLoudon]

38 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

Here are some fixes you can try.

Thanks for the link. I already tried those fixes but nothing seems to be working. From the looks of things RM is affecting a number of users.

 

As far as the BIOS tweaks go, I did as you suggested and set the CO to -30 and that made a huge difference to temps. Temps maxed at 60c @ 5.3Ghz.

 

I couldn't for the life of me find a BIOS setting to increase my core frequencies. There was an entry at 4700Mhz  but I couldn't edit that and I couldn't see anything anywhere with an editable 53, 54, 55.... multiplier bit.

 

Looks like I've got plenty of thermal headroom so would be handy to know how to get a few hundred more Mhz out of each core.

[Hinjima]

16 minutes ago, ChrisLoudon said:

Thanks for the link. I already tried those fixes but nothing seems to be working. From the looks of things RM is affecting a number of users.

 

As far as the BIOS tweaks go, I did as you suggested and set the CO to -30 and that made a huge difference to temps. Temps maxed at 60c @ 5.3Ghz.

 

I couldn't for the life of me find a BIOS setting to increase my core frequencies. There was an entry at 4700Mhz  but I couldn't edit that and I couldn't see anything anywhere with an editable 53, 54, 55.... multiplier bit.

 

Looks like I've got plenty of thermal headroom so would be handy to know how to get a few hundred more Mhz out of each core.

I am reading through the BIOS manual for the X870 Tomahawk to find the settings.

 

Under overclocking you should find

Precision Boost Overdrive Scalar Ctrl: Set this to Manual.

Precision Boost Overdrive Scalar: When set Ctrl to Manual, type in 10 here.  This is just a little bit of voltage boost if needed. Nothing that will harm your CPU or cause issues.

CPU Boost Clock Override: Enable.

Max CPU Boost Clock Override(+): Type in 200.  This is the max you can type here.  This will add a 200Mhz boost to all cores.

 

Here is a picture from my ASUS BIOS.
Yours will be a bit different but things should be named the same.

 

I watched a lot of guides for the 9800X3D overclocking and I found this to be the most stable and safe overclocking method.

I have been overclocking for 2 decades but the AM5 platform is a bit different with the PBO and Curve compared to old school overclocking.

You can push it to 5.7Ghz with some other tweaks but stability is not guaranteed at this speed.

I would say that a PBO, -30 to a -20 Curve optimizer and a +200 Mhz all core is the way to go for stability and reliability.

[ChrisLoudon]

13 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

Yours will be a bit different but things should be named the same.

 

Nice one buddy, that worked a treat.

 

Having been an Intel man for pretty much 3 decades makes all this a bit different but easy enough when you know what to look for.

 

That's 5.5Ghz on all cores maxing at 74c. Still need to look at my fan curves so can probably that down a few degrees more.

 

CPU package power topped out at 130w and R23 score of 24017.

 

Does that sound about right?

[Hinjima]

10 minutes ago, ChrisLoudon said:

 

Nice one buddy, that worked a treat.

 

Having been an Intel man for pretty much 3 decades makes all this a bit different but easy enough when you know what to look for.

 

That's 5.5Ghz on all cores maxing at 74c. Still need to look at my fan curves so can probably that down a few degrees more.

 

CPU package power topped out at 130w and R23 score of 24017.

 

Does that sound about right?

Perfect!    

Yeah, I have been overclocking Intel CPU's for over 20 years but I bought a Ryzen 7700x in January 2023 so I had to learn how AM5 works.

And the 9800X3D works a little bit different with the Scalar options etc.

 

5.5Ghz is what I was expecting, this is what I am running as well.  Its a decent bump up from stock 5225-5300Mhz while being stable without overvolting or crazy temperatures.

74c during an all core load is great! 

If it crashes during any gameplay or similar you should just change the -30 curve optimizer to -25 or -20. That should be enough, not all AM5 CPU's can handle -30.

 

Yup, that looks like a normal power / wattage draw at 100% load and the score looks great.

I see around 70-95w during CPU heavy games.

 

All looks good  

 

I see no reason to push it further.  It will definitely affect stability and there is diminishing returns by bumping up the core speed.