Ryzen 3900X (or 3950X) on X370.

TheSlySyl

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I got my Ryzen 1700 and Asrock X370 Gaming K4 Fatal1ty at Ryzen launch. It was literally the only motherboard I could find in stock at the time I bought it, and it's been holding up decently well. RAM speed has been an issue. Constantly. I've never been able to run RAM over 3000 and be stable.

I've had the upgrade itch lately, mostly because there are a lot of games that I can't play at high refresh rates (such as Doom Eternal) or i'm straight up CPU throttled (Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, etc.)

I did my research and the Gaming K4 X370 is 8+4 phase VRM. It does have a beta bios that has support for 3900X and 3950X. My power supply should be able to handle it, and I can get the cooling required - but what are the chances that this is somehow gonna go sideways? I'm not really interested in overclocking once I get the 3900X in there, I've been running my 1700 at 3.9ghz for 3 years now and I'm sure that the 3900X is gonna be a noticeable increase even at stock.

Am I worrying too damn much?

I'm not looking to upgrade my motherboard at this time, i'm literally just wanting to get the best processor I can into this system right now. I'll likely get an X570 or B550 motherboard to get a Ryzen 4000 series CPU in the future, however I want this system to be the best it can be before I give it to my SO.

Also, on the BIOS page it warns to not update the BIOS unless you're gonna upgrade your CPU. I'm still using P 5.1 because of those warnings, but I'd assume that I just slowly upgrade each bios until I hit 5.8 BEFORE I attempt to install the 3900X (3950X) when I get one?
https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4/index.asp#BIOS
 
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If the board supports it and you're going to be running stock, you should be fine.

MOST (obviously, not all) X370 boards are garbage though. Make sure you have at least SOME airflow going over the board.
 
If the board supports it and you're going to be running stock, you should be fine.

MOST (obviously, not all) X370 boards are garbage though. Make sure you have at least SOME airflow going over the board.

sadly, the gaming K4 is just slightly above the "garbage" part.. was a good cheap board for the time with the processors it needed to run and that's it. wasn't much thought put into it in supporting later processors.


I got my Ryzen 1700 and Asrock X370 Gaming K4 Fatal1ty at Ryzen launch. It was literally the only motherboard I could find in stock at the time I bought it, and it's been holding up decently well. RAM speed has been an issue. Constantly. I've never been able to run RAM over 3000 and be stable.

I've had the upgrade itch lately, mostly because there are a lot of games that I can't play at high refresh rates (such as Doom Eternal) or i'm straight up CPU throttled (Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, etc.)

I did my research and the Gaming K4 X370 is 8+4 phase VRM. It does have a beta bios that has support for 3900X and 3950X. My power supply should be able to handle it, and I can get the cooling required - but what are the chances that this is somehow gonna go sideways? I'm not really interested in overclocking once I get the 3900X in there, I've been running my 1700 at 3.9ghz for 3 years now and I'm sure that the 3900X is gonna be a noticeable increase even at stock.

Am I worrying too damn much?

I'm not looking to upgrade my motherboard at this time, i'm literally just wanting to get the best processor I can into this system right now. I'll likely get an X570 or B550 motherboard to get a Ryzen 4000 series CPU in the future, however I want this system to be the best it can be before I give it to my SO.

Also, on the BIOS page it warns to not update the BIOS unless you're gonna upgrade your CPU. I'm still using P 5.1 because of those warnings, but I'd assume that I just slowly upgrade each bios until I hit 5.8 BEFORE I attempt to install the 3900X (3950X) when I get one?
https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4/index.asp#BIOS

it's not an 8+4, it's actually a 4+2 configuration with 3 dual drivers and 2 H/L mosfets per driver channel(signal -> driver -> into 2x2 highside/2x2 lowside mosfets). the biggest complaint most people have the board is VRM temps so i wouldn't trust it with a 3950x even stock.. maybe a stock 3900x if you're able to lower stock voltage without loosing any boost performance and have good case airflow over the VRM heatsinks. otherwise i'd say that sub 200 dollar board had a good life and might be time to move up to a higher quality board if you're going to drop 400+ dollars on a cpu. another option since your eventual plan is to move that board on to some one else, i'd actually look at the 3700x. the board should be able to handle that processor just fine and you'll be very close to the same performance in most games to the 3900x.

as far as bios updates go, follow the notes in P5.4 before updating since you're already on P5.1.. 3950 needs P5.5 to run, all the others will work with P5.4 then you can update to P5.8 after the new chips installed.
 
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sadly, the gaming K4 is just slightly above the "garbage" part.. was a good cheap board for the time with the processors it needed to run and that's it. wasn't much thought put into it in supporting later processors.

it's not an 8+4, it's actually a 4+2 configuration with 3 dual drivers and 2 H/L mosfets per driver channel(signal -> driver -> into 2x2 highside/2x2 lowside mosfets). the biggest complaint most people have the board is VRM temps so i wouldn't trust it with a 3950x even stock.. maybe a stock 3900x if you're able to lower stock voltage without loosing any boost performance and have good case airflow over the VRM heatsinks. otherwise i'd say that sub 200 dollar board had a good life and might be time to move up to a higher quality board if you're going to drop 400+ dollars on a cpu. another option since your eventual plan is to move that board on to some one else, i'd actually look at the 3700x. the board should be able to handle that processor just fine and you'll be very close to the same performance in most games to the 3900x.

as far as bios updates go, follow the notes in P5.4 before updating since you're already on P5.1.. 3950 needs P5.5 to run, all the others will work with P5.4 then you can update to P5.8 after the new chips installed.

One thing it has going for it though is how well AMD have been binning the 3900X/3950X as well as improvements from the 7nm process means that most boards shouldn't have a problem unless you have 0 airflow....
 
One thing it has going for it though is how well AMD have been binning the 3900X/3950X as well as improvements from the 7nm process means that most boards shouldn't have a problem unless you have 0 airflow....

it's for x470 version but it's the same vrm + configuration(except for the controller) as the x370 gaming k4.
 
I got my Ryzen 1700 and Asrock X370 Gaming K4 Fatal1ty at Ryzen launch. It was literally the only motherboard I could find in stock at the time I bought it, and it's been holding up decently well. RAM speed has been an issue. Constantly. I've never been able to run RAM over 3000 and be stable.

I've had the upgrade itch lately, mostly because there are a lot of games that I can't play at high refresh rates (such as Doom Eternal) or i'm straight up CPU throttled (Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, etc.)

I did my research and the Gaming K4 X370 is 8+4 phase VRM. It does have a beta bios that has support for 3900X and 3950X. My power supply should be able to handle it, and I can get the cooling required - but what are the chances that this is somehow gonna go sideways? I'm not really interested in overclocking once I get the 3900X in there, I've been running my 1700 at 3.9ghz for 3 years now and I'm sure that the 3900X is gonna be a noticeable increase even at stock.

Am I worrying too damn much?

I'm not looking to upgrade my motherboard at this time, i'm literally just wanting to get the best processor I can into this system right now. I'll likely get an X570 or B550 motherboard to get a Ryzen 4000 series CPU in the future, however I want this system to be the best it can be before I give it to my SO.

Also, on the BIOS page it warns to not update the BIOS unless you're gonna upgrade your CPU. I'm still using P 5.1 because of those warnings, but I'd assume that I just slowly upgrade each bios until I hit 5.8 BEFORE I attempt to install the 3900X (3950X) when I get one?
https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4/index.asp#BIOS
You will need to update your bios right before you install the Ryzen 3900/3950. The new bios will not support your 1700. I learned this the hard way.
 
It is not a real 8 phase. But a 4 phase should be fine as long as there is airflow around the VRM (no water cooling unless you ziptie a small fan on the VRM heatsink. Hell, might as well still do that even if you do air cool) and you do not run crazy CPU loads like Blender for long periods of time. For gaming it should be fine. For extra safety add -0.050V offset vcore and that should help to take some load off without losing any real life performance. (Few ten points in Cinebench, zomg...)
 
I have good airflow. I have dual 140mm exhaust fans in the rear of my case and dual 140mm intake. I want to add another 140mm to the front of the case (remove the unused 5.25 drives) but I'm not sure how that's possible unless i'm missing something obvious.
I just did a CPU stress test for 20 minutes and my VRMs according to HWinfo never went above 63c. (CPU was using 99 watts)

1592247052166.png



You will need to update your bios right before you install the Ryzen 3900/3950. The new bios will not support your 1700. I learned this the hard way.
So, update to 5.4 on my 1700, update to 5.5, it'll fail to boot, install the 3900X, then update to 5.8?
 
I have good airflow. I have dual 140mm exhaust fans in the rear of my case and dual 140mm intake. I want to add another 140mm to the front of the case (remove the unused 5.25 drives) but I'm not sure how that's possible unless i'm missing something obvious.
I just did a CPU stress test for 20 minutes and my VRMs according to HWinfo never went above 63c. (CPU was using 99 watts)

View attachment 253890



So, update to 5.4 on my 1700, update to 5.5, it'll fail to boot, install the 3900X, then update to 5.8?

A stock 3900x will use almost 140 Watts at full tilt. Mine will easily hit 180 Watts with the limits upped to the board max. So even when set to stock the chip with easily hit 140 Watts all core under load.
 
A stock 3900x will use almost 140 Watts at full tilt. Mine will easily hit 180 Watts with the limits upped to the board max. So even when set to stock the chip with easily hit 140 Watts all core under load.

Can you check how much power it draws with stock clocks and mild undervolt offsets (up to -0.050v), according to Hwinfo at least?
 
Also this test might interest you all.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-9-3900x-tested-on-cheap-b350-motherboard/

A cheap B350 with 4 phase VRM. TLDR it works as long as there is airflow but heavy workloads like Blender is definetly not recommended. It pushed the VRM temperatures way above 100C. Now, it is not excessive for VRM's themselves but everything surrounding them might not like it and suffer reduced lifespans.
 
I think I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna see if the announcement for the 3900XT that's supposed to happen tomorrow lowers the price of the 3900X, either way I'll likely end up ordering one before the end of the week.

I don't expect to be running anything that's 100% cpu, 24 thread for a long period of time. But I do utilize all 16 threads on a pretty regular basis so the extra 8 threads won't be wasted. I really need the IPC more than anything else.

I'm gonna upgrade my cooler to a Le Grande Macho as well, (my R7 1700 and Macho Rev B are both gonna migrate to my fiance's system - which is also part of why I want to upgrade, she's still running an R5 1400.
 
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I think I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna see if the announcement for the 3900XT that's supposed to happen tomorrow lowers the price of the 3900X, either way I'll likely end up ordering one before the end of the week.

I don't expect to be running anything that's 100% cpu, 24 thread for a long period of time. But I do utilize all 16 threads on a pretty regular basis so the extra 8 threads won't be wasted. I really need the IPC more than anything else.

I'm gonna upgrade my cooler to a Le Grande Macho as well, (my R7 1700 and Macho Rev B are both gonna migrate to my fiance's system - which is also part of why I want to upgrade, she's still running an R5 1400.

I know it is not the same but, I am running a 3700X in my Asrock X370 Taichi without issues.
 
I've run 3900X's and 3950X's on all kinds of motherboards across the entire price spectrum. You should be fine unless you plan on doing heavily multi-threaded workloads or you are overclocking to any real degree. If you start that, you really want to make sure you upgrade to something with a decent VRM if you want it to last. It might last on a cheap board. Sometimes they'll surprise you, but I would upgrade for piece of mind if I was running a cheap X370 board.

I know it is not the same but, I am running a 3700X in my Asrock X370 Taichi without issues.

No, it's not the same. It's not even close. The power consumption, TDP ratings and core counts are quite a bit lower than a 3900X or 3950X. The demand on the VRM's are vastly different as a result of that.
 
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Here's a fun question.
So, this is my top exhaust fan. (140mm) I, at the moment, have the cover over the second 140mm hole, but i took it off here.
The red thing that you can see through the hole is my VRM heatsink.
Cause VRM cooling is the issue, if I pushed this exhaust fan to the the other edge of the hole, would it help VRM cooling at all? Or is the difference likely so slight that it won't matter? What if I went really crazy and turned it into an intake fan? That way it would be blowing cold air directly on the VRM heatsink. (Likely would need a dust filter, but it also works against everything else i've learned in how to direct case airflow...)
I could also install another 140mm fan in the second area, but i don't know if that would actually benefit anything.

Just thinking outloud mostly.
 
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Might as well test it out now. Launch a Prime95 and see what the VRM temps are like on your current rig with a fan in both positions. In theory it should improve VRM temps because it should guarantee that there is airflow around the heatsink, but you never know.
 
I've run 3900X's and 3950X's on all kinds of motherboards across the entire price spectrum. You should be fine unless you plan on doing heavily multi-threaded workloads or you are overclocking to any real degree. If you start that, you really want to make sure you upgrade to something with a decent VRM if you want it to last. It might last on a cheap board. Sometimes they'll surprise you, but I would upgrade for piece of mind if I was running a cheap X370 board.



No, it's not the same. It's not even close. The power consumption, TDP ratings and core counts are quite a bit lower than a 3900X or 3950X. The demand on the VRM's are vastly different as a result of that.

I is not as significantly different as you make it out to be. (Meaning, it is not a night and day difference, is what I am thinking.) Also, I have an Asrock mainboard and he is of the lesser model. Any information is helpful, even though it is not the exact same setup.

OP: Is that a Define R4 or Define R5 case?
 
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I is not as significantly different as you make it out to be. (Meaning, it is not a night and day difference, is what I am thinking.) Also, I have an Asrock mainboard and he is of the lesser model. Any information is helpful, even though it is not the exact same setup.

OP: Is that a Define R4 or Define R5 case?
Define R5, which i've really enjoyed working with. I generally keep the door closed when its idle and then open it when i'm gonna game or do something stressful.

Might as well test it out now. Launch a Prime95 and see what the VRM temps are like on your current rig with a fan in both positions. In theory it should improve VRM temps because it should guarantee that there is airflow around the heatsink, but you never know.
Yeah, as much of a pain in the ass as it will be to move that fan now, if I move it later and it DOESN'T do anything then it'll be even more annoying.
Max temp I can get with small FTT in Prime95 is 72c CPU and 73c VRM. (Both of which are higher than I've ever seen it in a non simulated scenario.) I'm partially writing this down for my own sake.
 
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My recent adventures in dropping the noise of my pc have shown me that airflow helps, but only to a point. The size, shape and density (not to mention thermal conductivity) of heatsinks matters vastly more than a small to medium amount more airflow.

To illustrate the point, I have effectively tripled the airflow through my case recently with modifications, but only dropped a few (2-3) degrees off the peak load temperatures.
Likewise if you remove one of the fans from a D15 cooler, you net a loss of 1.5-2C at best, despite the added flow.

Further, increasing fan speeds to “maximum warp” does not make much of a difference from 70-75% but increases noise substantially.
 
I is not as significantly different as you make it out to be. (Meaning, it is not a night and day difference, is what I am thinking.) Also, I have an Asrock mainboard and he is of the lesser model. Any information is helpful, even though it is not the exact same setup.

OP: Is that a Define R4 or Define R5 case?

It's not double, but it's not insignificant either.
 
Can you check how much power it draws with stock clocks and mild undervolt offsets (up to -0.050v), according to Hwinfo at least?

I can tell you on mine that any undervolt at all and my system will crash.
 
I can tell you on mine that any undervolt at all and my system will crash.
That's concerning. I've been running my Ryzen 1700 undervolted for years. I've been maintaining 3.9ghz at 1.25V. I was really hoping to do the same with the 3900X. Apparently it can operate as low as 1.05!?


ht as well test it out now. Launch a Prime95 and see what the VRM temps are like on your current rig with a fan in both positions. In theory it should improve VRM temps because it should guarantee that there is airflow around the heatsink, but you never know.
So I moved the fan the 2 inches over and there's literally no difference in VRM temps. I can definitely say that ambient temp has gone up, so i'm gonna consider it margin of error. I do think that more hot air is being exhausted out of my case, so that's potentially a good sign. Either way...

1592431099167.png

Now I just need to wait for the cooler to arrive and a day off.

You will need to update your bios right before you install the Ryzen 3900/3950. The new bios will not support your 1700. I learned this the hard way.

So - this is my plan.

https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4/index.asp#BIOS
I'm on 5.1 right now - I update all the way to bios 5.4 on my 1700, the last one before the "summit ridge cpus are not reccomended on this BIOS" but also the first bios that allows the 3900X

https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4/index.asp#CPU
Switch out my CPU to the 3900x, make sure it boots (which I understand takes a couple cold reboots and can take a minute)
then update my bios to 5.5 and then finally 5.8?
After that and i'm expecting some memory tweaks I should be good to go!

Aside:
Why was the Ryzen 3900 never allowed for retail? That CPU would have been perfect for what I need.
 
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You will need to update your bios right before you install the Ryzen 3900/3950. The new bios will not support your 1700. I learned this the hard way.

That is not true with the Asrock mainboards. Yes, the newest bios is not recommended and also, it does not make any real difference with the 1000 series but, the machine will post and function just fine. (This is the 1.0.0.4B level bios.) I have a B350 mtix, B450mitx and X370 Taichi and they all worked fine. I now have 3000 series in all 3, however.

That said, the older bios may have issues or not work at all with the 3900X so yeah, an update will be needed first. Which board do you have?
 
That is not true with the Asrock mainboards. Yes, the newest bios is not recommended and also, it does not make any real difference with the 1000 series but, the machine will post and function just fine. (This is the 1.0.0.4B level bios.) I have a B350 mtix, B450mitx and X370 Taichi and they all worked fine. I now have 3000 series in all 3, however.

That said, the older bios may have issues or not work at all with the 3900X so yeah, an update will be needed first. Which board do you have?
I have the CHVI, and the 7704 bios would boot to Windows, but not run applications, on my old 2700.
 
We have post!
Oh god those default ram timings hurt.

Everything is absolutely stock right now but I'm in windows. Time to update the bios those last few times and get my ram above ddr2000. Lmao.

I'm using my older (still massive) cooler at the moment, but I'll upgrade to the Macho when it arrives this weekend - which will also let me compare temps and know if that was actually worthwhile money to spend.
 

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Been running benchmarks and stress gaming for s few hours now. Hit XMP, put the RAM at the previously stable 2800 and everything booted and ram perfectly. Even did a prime 95 torture test - CPU is surprisingly staying around 60c, with prime 95 running the VRMs got a toasty 90c, but I haven't seen them go above 65c in literally any other scenario and it's usually staying around 50c. In general temps are lower than my 1700, but considering I had to keep my 1700 at a constant 3.9ghz to be stable that kinda makes sense.

Biggest change thus far is I'm now mostly GPU limited in Planet Coaster, at 4k instead of a fluctuating 20fps I'm sitting around 40-45, I'm sure I can mess with more settings to get that higher. Cities Skylines is still only about 25FPS, but it's a FAR more responsive 25fps, which is nice, but a little underwhelming.

Monster Hunter World is now basically a locked 60fps, even in super intense screen situations. I honestly didn't think that I was CPU limited there, so a damn nice improvement.

I'll give Doom Eternal and some FPS a try later tonight, I know I was CPU limited at high refresh rates on a few.

The bad news is that putting my RAM over 3000 is an instant crash and bootloop till the motherboard hard resets itself. Putting it at 2933 loads into windows but crashes under load. Might be stuck at 2800. So I'm guessing that's a motherboard limitation. So be it.

Beat my previous best 3dmark score by nearly 1000 and finally broke 10k!

Alright. More gaming to do, everything thus far has been with my side off, but I'll put the sides back on when I upgrade my cooler this weekend. So far I'm happy.
 
Been running benchmarks and stress gaming for s few hours now. Hit XMP, put the RAM at the previously stable 2800 and everything booted and ram perfectly. Even did a prime 95 torture test - CPU is surprisingly staying around 60c, with prime 95 running the VRMs got a toasty 90c, but I haven't seen them go above 65c in literally any other scenario and it's usually staying around 50c. In general temps are lower than my 1700, but considering I had to keep my 1700 at a constant 3.9ghz to be stable that kinda makes sense.

Biggest change thus far is I'm now mostly GPU limited in Planet Coaster, at 4k instead of a fluctuating 20fps I'm sitting around 40-45, I'm sure I can mess with more settings to get that higher. Cities Skylines is still only about 25FPS, but it's a FAR more responsive 25fps, which is nice, but a little underwhelming.

Monster Hunter World is now basically a locked 60fps, even in super intense screen situations. I honestly didn't think that I was CPU limited there, so a damn nice improvement.

I'll give Doom Eternal and some FPS a try later tonight, I know I was CPU limited at high refresh rates on a few.

The bad news is that putting my RAM over 3000 is an instant crash and bootloop till the motherboard hard resets itself. Putting it at 2933 loads into windows but crashes under load. Might be stuck at 2800. So I'm guessing that's a motherboard limitation. So be it.

Beat my previous best 3dmark score by nearly 1000 and finally broke 10k!

Alright. More gaming to do, everything thus far has been with my side off, but I'll put the sides back on when I upgrade my cooler this weekend. So far I'm happy.

Takes quite a bit of tuning to get memory to work better but it is possible. I took my 3200 ram that would only do 3000 to 3600 now, but that took some trial and error and I run all custom settings. Sounds like it's working good for you in the games you play.
 
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Been running benchmarks and stress gaming for s few hours now. Hit XMP, put the RAM at the previously stable 2800 and everything booted and ram perfectly. Even did a prime 95 torture test - CPU is surprisingly staying around 60c, with prime 95 running the VRMs got a toasty 90c, but I haven't seen them go above 65c in literally any other scenario and it's usually staying around 50c. In general temps are lower than my 1700, but considering I had to keep my 1700 at a constant 3.9ghz to be stable that kinda makes sense.

Biggest change thus far is I'm now mostly GPU limited in Planet Coaster, at 4k instead of a fluctuating 20fps I'm sitting around 40-45, I'm sure I can mess with more settings to get that higher. Cities Skylines is still only about 25FPS, but it's a FAR more responsive 25fps, which is nice, but a little underwhelming.

Monster Hunter World is now basically a locked 60fps, even in super intense screen situations. I honestly didn't think that I was CPU limited there, so a damn nice improvement.

I'll give Doom Eternal and some FPS a try later tonight, I know I was CPU limited at high refresh rates on a few.

The bad news is that putting my RAM over 3000 is an instant crash and bootloop till the motherboard hard resets itself. Putting it at 2933 loads into windows but crashes under load. Might be stuck at 2800. So I'm guessing that's a motherboard limitation. So be it.

Beat my previous best 3dmark score by nearly 1000 and finally broke 10k!

Alright. More gaming to do, everything thus far has been with my side off, but I'll put the sides back on when I upgrade my cooler this weekend. So far I'm happy.

90c is hot but not overly so for a VRM. What ram do you have and what die it is (check with Typhoon Burner)? There are some dies that simply do not clock and your only hope is to tighten the timings as much as you can.
 
90c is hot but not overly so for a VRM. What ram do you have and what die it is (check with Typhoon Burner)? There are some dies that simply do not clock and your only hope is to tighten the timings as much as you can.
I'm running a mixed set of 48GB of G-Skill Ripjaw V. 2x 8GB sets of Samsung 3200 and 2x 16GB sticks of Sk. Hynix 3200
I don't have much hope tightening timings considering how wildly different the two sets are. I utilize all the ram so I really don't want to remove any sticks - so I'm pretty much stuck at a lower speed I expect. Could I go out and get better RAM? Yes. Am I going to? Probably not. My goal with the 3900X upgrade was to make this AM4 platform last me till AM5. Not bad for a cheap launch motherboard.

Now that the (ambient) temperature is warming up and i've done a lot more, my CPU idles at around 45c, it's gone as high as 75c during a stress test but it usually stays in the 55-65 range under normal load. (Which lately has been plex transcoding.) I'm hoping the new cooler will lower those when I install it after it arrives. Weirdly I can't really seem to push the CPU wattage over 100 watts in any scenario, no matter the temperature. Apparently I have hit 4.6ghz on a few cores, but i suspect that was only for seconds at a time. Usually things seem to stick in the 4.3ghz range, which for completely stock - I'm really happy with.
I finally have enough cpu power that transcoding isn't making ANY noticeable difference no matter anything else my computer is going. I'm not gonna miss those stutters.
 
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Got everything installed with the new, insanely huge, cooler, temps are high, went to reseat the heatsink and its definitely not making enough contact. Maybe 1/4, if that, of the base was actually connecting. It's "idling" around 55c which is silly for a heatsink of this size. I think the CPU heatspreader itself is just a tiny bit too short but there's no way to tighten things any further with the mounting system that thermalright uses. I was able to do some minor re-seating by putting a tiny bit of extra force between the top of the cold plate and immediately shaved off 8C from load temp. I'll give it a more intense look to see if things are level in a few days. I think I have a solution involving 2mm thick compressable anti-vibration pads between the mounting plate and the top of the heatsink base...

1592673939302.png

1592674011773.png


It's still running flawlessly, just the temps are higher than i'd like.
 
I have the same cooler and CPU and temps are much lower. It doesn't seem like you have it installed correctly. Did you use the black square plastic piece with the backplate? That should give you some space between the backplate and motherboard. You should also make sure the metal squarish piece that attaches the heatsink to the mounting kit is positioned so it wraps around and down towards the motherboard/CPU (if that makes sense).
 
You should also make sure the metal squarish piece that attaches the heatsink to the mounting kit is positioned so it wraps around and down towards the motherboard/CPU (if that makes sense).
Oh thank you! That was it. I don't know how I didn't catch that when I was installing. Idle went down about to about 45c, load is now just under 80 during prime95 and cinebench. I still don't think its perfect but i'm gonna have to wait till I get more thermal paste to make one last attempt at getting temps any better.
 
So, and let me know if i'm reading ANY of this correctly.

As a preface: My ambient temperature right now sucks. It's summer, it's hot, my office doesn't have AC. My ambient temp is probably at least 30'c.

So, I reinstalled my massive cooler, I adjusted it, made sure that it was making contact, did a few tweaks to try and force contact. I took the cpu out and made sure the damn things actually connected, i've done everything aside from straight up lapping it.

I'm still getting around 50c idle. Now, from the research i've been doing. My "idle" isn't truly idle. I have constant monitoring services open. I have afterburner for my GPU, and I use rainmeter for monitoring things like temperatures, individual core usage, fan speeds, and most importantly, I have a monitoring service for my 9 hard drives.

Temps went down after i adjusted how the heatsink was installed, load temps went down MASSIVELY. (I'm talking 95c throttling is now about 80'c during a prime-95 stress test. Still way too high but... better, shows my heatsink is actually working.)

I booted up HWinfo64 to check my clocks and saw that new Power Reporting Deviation metric that's been making all the rounds lately. I've read a few articles on it. I'm seeing that 95% to is considered good. Which means that things are really bad in my case.

Mines reporting around 60%. Which means in theory that my cpu is constantly pulling around 2V and my idle is at 1.5v and no wonder i'm getting boosts to 4.6ghz constantly even at low load and everything is running so hot. If I had 2v and no thermal ceiling i'd probably be pushing 4.6ghz too!

So I said fuck it. I went to my UEFI, turned my SOC down to 1.00, turned my offset voltage to the lowest it could go, -.1 and went to see if it booted. Most of what i've read said that this is basically a situation that would never boot. Mine did.

It booted fine, it stress tested fine, hell, my cinebench numbers are practically identical. This makes me think that that Power Reporting Deviation is actually true. I've been juicing my CPU a full near 50% higher volts than required.
I've only had it running this way for a few hours now but I don't see any reason that I need to change it unless it becomes unstable.

So, i'm assuming this is likely a motherboard issue? This won't be fixed from a BIOS update because I'm frankly amazed this low tier, launch, discontinued, x370 board got as many bios updates as it has.

So, with some more messing around and doings things manually -

I turned on voltage at a constant 1.1 and boost clock to 3.8, my idle went down to 42c, my load temp was about 65c. I'm gonna mess around with this some more, but is there a way to set a max boost clock that doesn't become a constant all core clock? Or is that something that I'd need to use Ryzen Master to tweak?

Note: Important to note that despite the temps, this has all been perfectly stable. I haven't crashed te cpu once YET from any of the changes i've done.
 
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My 3900x idles in 40's with software running to see what it is doing. It bounces pretty much from 38-48 and I have a 280mm AIO in a push/pull config and ambient according to the sensor under my PC between 21-24C depending on if I fire up the Central AC or just have the windows open in the house. PC is in the basement living room. You temps for P95 are fine, mine will hit the mid 80's as well. That is not bad.
 
So, and let me know if i'm reading ANY of this correctly.

As a preface: My ambient temperature right now sucks. It's summer, it's hot, my office doesn't have AC. My ambient temp is probably at least 30'c.

So, I reinstalled my massive cooler, I adjusted it, made sure that it was making contact, did a few tweaks to try and force contact. I took the cpu out and made sure the damn things actually connected, i've done everything aside from straight up lapping it.

I'm still getting around 50c idle. Now, from the research i've been doing. My "idle" isn't truly idle. I have constant monitoring services open. I have afterburner for my GPU, and I use rainmeter for monitoring things like temperatures, individual core usage, fan speeds, and most importantly, I have a monitoring service for my 9 hard drives.

Temps went down after i adjusted how the heatsink was installed, load temps went down MASSIVELY. (I'm talking 95c throttling is now about 80'c during a prime-95 stress test. Still way too high but... better, shows my heatsink is actually working.)

I booted up HWinfo64 to check my clocks and saw that new Power Reporting Deviation metric that's been making all the rounds lately. I've read a few articles on it and, well. Things are bad I'm seeing that 95% to is considered good.

Mines reporting around 60%. Which means in theory that my cpu is constantly pulling around 2V and my idle is at 1.5v and no wonder i'm getting boosts to 4.6ghz constantly and everything is running so hot.

So I said fuck it. I went to my UEFI, turned my SOC down to 1.00, turned my offset voltage to the lowest it could go, -.1 and went to see if it booted. Most of what i've read said that this is basically a situation that would never boot. Mine did.

It booted fine, it stress tested fine, hell, my cinebench numbers are practically identical. This makes me think that that Power Reporting Deviation is actually true. I've been juicing my CPU a full near 50% higher volts than required.
I've only had it running this way for a few hours now but I don't see any reason that I need to change it unless it becomes unstable.

So, i'm assuming this is likely a motherboard issue? This won't be fixed from a BIOS update because I'm frankly amazed this low tier, launch, discontinued, x370 board got as many bios updates as it has.

So, with some more messing around and doings things manually -

I turned on voltage at a constant 1.1 and boost clock to 3.8, my idle went down to 42c, my load temp was about 65c. I'm gonna mess around with this some more, but is there a way to set a max boost clock that doesn't become a constant all core clock? Or is that something that I'd need to use Ryzen Master to tweak?

I suggest you not randomly adjust things w/o fully understanding the apparatus underneath. Take the power deviation, if you got 95% that means your board is not lying to your cpu. And that deviation number is only valid during an allcore situation with all cores loaded like running a Cinebench multi run.

I again warn that it's dangerous to make guesses about the voltage. If you got 60%, that means you or your board is reporting less power draw than what the cpu thinks it should have. Your cpu is not using 2V, thinking like that is way off the mark my man. Again, with you using negative voltage settings YOU are limiting the power consumption to the cpu. Anyone can test this easily by comparing their power deviation at stock vs a negative offset. The negative offset will produce numbers well below 95%.
 
I again warn that it's dangerous to make guesses about the voltage. If you got 60%, that means you or your board is reporting less power draw than what the cpu thinks it should have. Your cpu is not using 2V, thinking like that is way off the mark my man. Again, with you using negative voltage settings YOU are limiting the power consumption to the cpu. Anyone can test this easily by comparing their power deviation at stock vs a negative offset. The negative offset will produce numbers well below 95%.
The 60% number are at 100% stock (aside from RAM XMP), before I changed any numbers in the UEFI.

I'm still reporting a maximum of 1.5V after my crazy lowering of SOC to 1.0 and my offset to -.1
Also I still have a maximum of 4.5ghz + on 6 of my 12 cores, the other 6 show a max of 4.3. Average of all cores over 4+ hours now being around 3.9ghz.
I DO have an active transcoding job on my computer at the moment, so those numbers are not truly idle.

Yet again, if i'm somehow reading this wrong let me know, I've never had a CPU perform like the Ryzen 3000 series is doing so this is all very weird to me.

In the past I figured out a good voltage, a good mhz % overclock and just set it and forget it once i figured out a stable mix of voltage and temperature.
 
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The 60% number are at 100% stock (aside from RAM XMP), before I changed any numbers in the UEFI.

I'm still reporting a maximum of 1.5V after my crazy lowering of SOC to 1.0 and my offset to -.1
Also I still have a maximum of 4.5ghz + on 6 of my 12 cores, the other 6 show a max of 4.3. Average of all cores over 4+ hours now being around 3.9ghz.
I DO have an active transcoding job on my computer at the moment, so those numbers are not truly idle.

Yet again, if i'm somehow reading this wrong let me know, I've never had a CPU perform like the Ryzen 3000 series is doing so this is all very weird to me.

In the past I figured out a good voltage, a good mhz % overclock and just set it and forget it once i figured out a stable mix of voltage and temperature.

You got 60% at stock, omfg? That means your board is goosing the chip by quite a bit. First thing I would do is disable PBO and then test again.

Regarding these cpus there is a slight learning curve with them, so I'm gonna cheat and link to a thread instead rewriting everything here.

https://hardforum.com/threads/how-can-i-get-the-most-out-of-my-3700x.1997903/post-1044623023
 
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