How can I get the most out of my 3700x?

[Smoked Brisket]

So, in the past, I have never cared about overclocking or seriously tweaking in the bios. My first build was with an Athlon xp and a 9800pro, that will tell you how long I have been a builder(for myself and the occasional family member.) Back then tweaking was more serious and, quite honestly, it was tough to risk parts you could not replace. Over the past 15 years or so I have simply bought the best intel chip, the best nvidia card, enabled xmp and called it a day. So here I am today all in on 2 Ryzen builds because, well we get older and, hopefully, have more funds for this hobby, AMD finally gets it shit together and makes a compelling product that is interesting enough for me to finally switch back. Interesting, as I made these recent purchases I kept saying that to myself. AMD is more interesting right now, they are trying some things that are not brute force and competing. Now I am sitting here with my 3700x and my 5700xt and I have done the same thing I always do, xmp enabled, all else to auto, job done.

It doesn't feel quite right. This is a fully custom water loop system, and my temps are not where they should be. Don't misunderstand, the temps are ok, idle mid 30's and 79 under AIDA64 stress test. However I do know water cooling, I have done it alot. That is good but not quite what it should be. I have tested and tried everything on the hardware side, trust me on this, I have gone overkill on cooling hardware. Please do not misunderstand, I am not afraid for my cpu or system, it runs fine, but I have read so much about voltage, PBO, setting everything up right with ryzen master, power plans, etc etc. I do believe that as a Ryzen owner there are some tweaks that I need to make to get the temps that I should have and to get the most out of it.

So that is what I am asking, is there a definitive guide to how to optimize ryzen processors? Can one of you guide me through the process? Yes there are lots of opinions on the internet, but I trust these forums rather than some guy with a blog or, god forbid reddit.

I am using an Asrock x570 Taichi, 3700x, gskill trident z neo 3600. Bios is up to date as is chipset. I humbly ask for your knowledge.

 

[ManofGod]

So, in the past, I have never cared about overclocking or seriously tweaking in the bios. My first build was with an Athlon xp and a 9800pro, that will tell you how long I have been a builder(for myself and the occasional family member.) Back then tweaking was more serious and, quite honestly, it was tough to risk parts you could not replace. Over the past 15 years or so I have simply bought the best intel chip, the best nvidia card, enabled xmp and called it a day. So here I am today all in on 2 Ryzen builds because, well we get older and, hopefully, have more funds for this hobby, AMD finally gets it shit together and makes a compelling product that is interesting enough for me to finally switch back. Interesting, as I made these recent purchases I kept saying that to myself. AMD is more interesting right now, they are trying some things that are not brute force and competing. Now I am sitting here with my 3700x and my 5700xt and I have done the same thing I always do, xmp enabled, all else to auto, job done.

It doesn't feel quite right. This is a fully custom water loop system, and my temps are not where they should be. Don't misunderstand, the temps are ok, idle mid 30's and 79 under AIDA64 stress test. However I do know water cooling, I have done it alot. That is good but not quite what it should be. I have tested and tried everything on the hardware side, trust me on this, I have gone overkill on cooling hardware. Please do not misunderstand, I am not afraid for my cpu or system, it runs fine, but I have read so much about voltage, PBO, setting everything up right with ryzen master, power plans, etc etc. I do believe that as a Ryzen owner there are some tweaks that I need to make to get the temps that I should have and to get the most out of it.

So that is what I am asking, is there a definitive guide to how to optimize ryzen processors? Can one of you guide me through the process? Yes there are lots of opinions on the internet, but I trust these forums rather than some guy with a blog or, god forbid reddit.

I am using an Asrock x570 Taichi, 3700x, gskill trident z neo 3600. Bios is up to date as is chipset. I humbly ask for your knowledge.

All I can tell you is PBO essentially makes manual overclocking almost pointless. However, if you can figure out per CCX overclocking, then it may be worth it. I have a 3600 and 2 x 3700X's and manually overclocking them really makes no noticeable difference.

 

[Smoked Brisket]

All I can tell you is PBO essentially makes manual overclocking almost pointless. However, if you can figure out per CCX overclocking, then it may be worth it. I have a 3600 and 2 x 3700X's and manually overclocking them really makes no noticeable difference.

Yes, I think I understand that. Maybe I was not clear. I am not looking to manually overclock the chip, I am asking how I should tweak bios to get the most performance and the least heat into the cpu. I want to set up the bios optimally. Thanks for the response.

 

[thesmokingman]

So that is what I am asking, is there a definitive guide to how to optimize ryzen processors? Can one of you guide me through the process? Yes there are lots of opinions on the internet, but I trust these forums rather than some guy with a blog or, god forbid reddit.

I am using an Asrock x570 Taichi, 3700x, gskill trident z neo 3600. Bios is up to date as is chipset. I humbly ask for your knowledge.

There isn't a definitive guide. But there is an order and process to it. These cpus are very different from previous generations of cpus from AMD and Intel. They react to context changes incredibly fast so if you by default are monitoring the wrong sensors it will "look" hotter or worse than it really is. Thus first I'd recommend learning to monitor the cpu the right way. Yea, there's actually a right and wrong way. Read link below for a quick primer on setting up monitoring. Tip, core voltage is SVI2 TFN, cpu temp is cpu die average, clocks are effective clock...

https://hardforum.com/threads/build...2-raid-render-monster.1990145/post-1044457505

Now for your other question getting the best out of the chip. The truth is leaving it stock is best for most users. W/o overclocking the next step is to tweak your memory and max out the infinity fabric clock. We do this by overclocking the memory from say 3600mhz to 3800mhz which is typically the max speed for the fabric, taking it from 1800mhz to 1900mhz. Download dram calculator, use the safe profile for starters and start inputting the timings into your bios. This improves the latency all around and will net a couple % in benchmarks.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/ryzen-dram-calculator-by-1usmus.246327/

The next steps are different methods of overclocking, but before that one needs to find the maximum safe voltage. And that begins a whole other ball of wax. The post below is a good cliffnote on voltage and the silicon FITness monitoring. Basically each chip is different so you have to run a specific test to find your own specific chips safe voltage.

So yeah, 1.325V is not safe. The maximum safe voltage for your personal zen 2 cpu is... I have no clue. If you want to be able to find this voltage turn on PBO and max PPT, TDC and EDC and run a worse-case workload as of The Stilts recommendation.

Also do not push past the Fmax on your cpu while at maximum FIT voltage. It can actually make the situation your cpu is in dangerous and add a risk of degradation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ejgc6p/1325v_is_not_safe_for_zen_2/

Once you have your max fit voltage then you can run an allcore overclock or the ratio overclock that manofgod mentioned. Also, keep in mind fmax, that's the frequency you ran the fit test at. The max fit voltage is only good for that fmax, so if you wanna run a higher clock then you have to use that clock (scalar) during the PBO test. In short, the max fit voltage is only good for the settings that you setup PBO for.

All I can tell you is PBO essentially makes manual overclocking almost pointless. However, if you can figure out per CCX overclocking, then it may be worth it. I have a 3600 and 2 x 3700X's and manually overclocking them really makes no noticeable difference.

Going to CCX overclocking is great but OP needs to go over the basics first like finding his max safe fit voltage or monitoring the cpu, etc etc.

 

[Smoked Brisket]

There isn't a definitive guide. But there is an order and process to it. These cpus are very different from previous generations of cpus from AMD and Intel. They react to context changes incredibly fast so if you by default are monitoring the wrong sensors it will "look" hotter or worse than it really is. Thus first I'd recommend learning to monitor the cpu the right way. Yea, there's actually a right and wrong way. Read link below for a quick primer on setting up monitoring. Tip, core voltage is SVI2 TFN, cpu temp is cpu die average, clocks are effective clock...

https://hardforum.com/threads/build...2-raid-render-monster.1990145/post-1044457505

Now for your other question getting the best out of the chip. The truth is leaving it stock is best for most users. W/o overclocking the next step is to tweak your memory and max out the infinity fabric clock. We do this by overclocking the memory from say 3600mhz to 3800mhz which is typically the max speed for the fabric, taking it from 1800mhz to 1900mhz. Download dram calculator, use the safe profile for starters and start inputting the timings into your bios. This improves the latency all around and will net a couple % in benchmarks.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/ryzen-dram-calculator-by-1usmus.246327/

The next steps are different methods of overclocking, but before that one needs to find the maximum safe voltage. And that begins a whole other ball of wax. The post below is a good cliffnote on voltage and the silicon FITness monitoring. Basically each chip is different so you have to run a specific test to find your own specific chips safe voltage.



https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ejgc6p/1325v_is_not_safe_for_zen_2/



Going to CCX overclocking is great but OP needs to go over the basics first like finding his max safe fit voltage or monitoring the cpu, etc etc.

Sir I want to follow along, but are you saying that Ryzen is perfect out of the box and it is just monitoring software giving bad temp readings? It has been proven that motherboard manufacturers are juicing the voltages, or at least the readings reported to the chip. I understand that Ryzen shows high voltage at idle then decreases under load. I am not panicking over that. So I need to follow that last link first? Edit: looks like you deleted that part. This is confusing, that reddit post says stock voltage is unsafe. This is what I am talking about. I am not trying to be combative, but you claim that only one monitoring service is right, then to tweak memory then a reddit post that says I need to lower voltage. I really do appreciate the responses, I am sorry if I am not getting some obvious thing.

 

[thesmokingman]

Oh you're referring to the under reporting of power usage by the motherboard here? That refers to power usage not temps or voltages. It's a good test to run... but a different topic.

However there is a distinction to be learned here. By default most software by that I mean 99% software monitoring is doing it wrong when it comes to Ryzen 2 cpus. Hell even motherboards heh. Take the voltage for example, Ryzen two has different situations for voltage, low current and high current loads and in the case of dual CCD chips, where that voltage is actually going, CCD 0 or CCD1 or both CCD. The problem is there is only one voltage reading and it does not distinguish between the different situations. Thus its important to know how the voltage works so we don't automatically freak out. Lemme explain the two main current loads. Low current load is single core usage and in this situation voltage can spike up to 1.5v and it is safe SINCE it is a low current load, ie. only one core. High current laods are when all cores are maxed out or near max and this voltage will not exceed the max fit voltage for high current loads. It is usually in the ballpark of 1.325v and most often less. What this means is that you will generally speaking never see 1.4v while all cores are at max or near max load. And when you do see close to 1.5v it is only going to one core.

https://hardforum.com/threads/expla...reporting-deviation-metric-in-hwinfo.1997633/

 

[thesmokingman]

Sir I want to follow along, but are you saying that Ryzen is perfect out of the box and it is just monitoring software giving bad temp readings? It has been proven that motherboard manufacturers are juicing the voltages, or at least the readings reported to the chip. I understand that Ryzen shows high voltage at idle then decreases under load. I am not panicking over that. So I need to follow that last link first? Edit: looks like you deleted that part. This is confusing, that reddit post says stock voltage is unsafe. This is what I am talking about. I am not trying to be combative, but you claim that only one monitoring service is right, then to tweak memory then a reddit post that says I need to lower voltage. I really do appreciate the responses, I am sorry if I am not getting some obvious thing.

I hadn't read this edited post so here goes. I didn't delete anything from my main points.

First the reddit post is NOT talking about stock voltages. It is dealing with manual voltages, what is safe, and how to figure your chip's safe voltage.

I'm not making any claims that were NOT already put forward by AMD themselves, and you WILL see that when you research even a lil bit. What I was showing you is how to use hwinfo to not only avoid the observer effect, but to harness it's awesome feature set. There's a handful of other seriously unbeaten reasons to use afterburner/rtss/hwinfo too. The way it integrates with afterburner and riva statistics is insanely powerful. There are a few tricks to using afterburner that many ppl still do not know now. Like for ex. afterburner is the easiest and quickest way to check on hardware acceleration on the desktop. A lot of the weird shit that happens on windows desktop is because of apps calling for hardware acceleration, add to that the fact that all this is done w/o informing the user. Thankfully the easiest way of listing apps calling for hw accel is afterburner, and the easiest way of controlling whether an app gets hw accel or not is with rtss.

For ex.

Apparently, most modern CPU monitoring utilities cause what is known as "the observer effect:" the process of measuring the processor's load itself causes load on the processor.

"We have determined that many popular monitoring tools are quite aggressive in how they monitor the behavior of a core. Some of them wake every core in the system for 20 ms, and do this as often as every 200 ms. From the perspective of the processor firmware, this is interpreted as a workload that's asking for sustained performance from the core(s). The firmware is designed to respond to such a pattern by boosting: higher clocks, higher voltages," stated Robert Hallock, AMD's head of technical marketing for processors. "So, if you're sitting there staring at your monitoring tool, the tool is constantly instructing all the cores to wake up and boost. This will keep the clock-speeds high, and the corresponding voltages will be elevated to support that boost. This is a classic case of observer effect: you're expecting the tool to give valid data, but it's actually producing invalid data by virtue of how it's measuring," he added.

https://www.techpowerup.com/257312/...age-exaggerated-a-case-of-the-observer-effect