Ryzen 7 1700 + B350 Overclocking Tidbits

bwang

[H]ard|Gawd
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Bought a R7 1700 and an Asus PRIME B350-Plus to play with and to make my token contribution to AMD so they can keep on chuggin', figured folks here would be interested in the numbers.

All tests were done using a 400W Antec server supply. CPU currents were measured using a clamp DC ammeter on the 12V wires going into the CPU 8-pin. The rest of the setup consisted of Windows 10 Enterprise (I made sure Defender and Windows Update were disabled), an XFX HD5750 for basic video output, and a 320GB 7200RPM 2.5" drive. Not the most upscale of setups, but unlikely to affect overclocking figures.Everything was done on an open-air setup in a room with ~20C ambient temperatures - I expect stock cooler mileage to go down slightly in a case with higher ambient temps. Adjustments were made on-the-fly in Ryzen Master.

Stock cooler numbers

Wraith Spire is remarkably good for a stock cooler, able to hold off 120W while remaining reasonably cool. Gone are the days of shitty stock coolers that would run stock-clocked i7's at 90C.

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The bad news: 3.8GHz seemed somewhat unattainable on the stock cooler; there was a distinct feeling of thermal runaway (Prime95 would run until temps hit about 76C or so and then crash, but not hard enough to bring down Windows).

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Power seems quite in check out to 3.7GHz, and is not great at 3.8GHz, though you do lose some efficiency past 3.5GHz.

High-End Air numbers

I broke out the old Thermalright TRUE 120 for some testing; it's not a modern cooler by any means but it could cool 200+W 45nm processors back in the day so I figured it would be fine. Note that numbers up to 37x are the stock cooler numbers from above, the stock cooler did a good enough job that I didn't bother rerunning the benchmarks.

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40x was pretty much unattainable on my setup. Temperatures climbed rapidly, eventually crashing hard enough to trigger a reboot. I'm pretty sure this is a die thermal resistance limit; it is just not possible to remove 25W per core on Ryzen's die while maintaining the sub-70C temps needed for stability. I tried 1.4375V as well, but power climbed to 204W (17A) and the system similarly rebooted.

4C/8T numbers

Going by the theory that the frequency wall at 39x was thermal, I disabled four cores in hopes that the lateral heat conduction in the die would reduce temperatures substantially.

3p2COvX.png


While temperatures did go down dramatically, enabling much improved operation at 40x, 41x was very out of reach; temperatures remained in control, but Windows crashed before I could get meaningful power readings.

Prime95 Blend numbers

Not satisfied with the lack of 4GHz, and still going by the thermal stability theory, I tried Blend, which I figured is more representative of enthusiast thermal loads.

aLgW0ZN.png


It pulled off 40x fine, albeit requiring slightly more voltage to do so than the quad core test (crash after about 10 minutes of blending at 1.375V) As a bonus, the lower temps also translate into slightly reduced voltage requirements.

Voltage/Power scaling

For science's sake, I left the multiplier at 30x and slowly raised the voltage.

v7TGnQN.png


Not as interesting as I expected, looks like standard quadratic-ish scaling out to 1300mV, then something happens, resulting in a bump in power consumption. The bump looks like part of the reason we can't get past 40x, if process refinements could move it out we'd get more frequency headroom.

Conclusions
  • Ryzen Master is pretty good. After leaving it running for half an hour while I wrote up this post it crashed, but seemed to work fine when I reopened it. The UI is damn responsive for a overclocking tool, as good as any I've ever used.
  • The PRIME B350-Plus BIOS is not great as far as overclocking goes. In particular, the option to set a fixed voltage is missing, and I have no idea what the 'FID' and 'DID' ratios do (raising DID seems to lower the target frequency??). Presumably this will be remedied in a later BIOS release.
  • Ryzen, or at least my sample, seems to have poor frequency-temperature characteristics past about 75C. On both the 38x stock and 40x aftermarket tests, Windows crashed when the temperature readout in Ryzen Master crossed 75C.
  • It looks like on 8 cores, the thermal limitations come from the ability to pull heat out of the die, not because of the thermal resistance of the heatsink to air. Temperatures climbed rapidly in response to frequency changes, and at least qualitatively, the fins on the TRUE 120 were quite cold.
  • On 4 cores, efficiency is solid. Voltage scaling is not as good as Kaby Lake (which ships at 4.2GHz and typically in the 1.225V neighborhood), but power consumption is in control and temperatures are very low.
  • Ryzen has two distinct bumps in efficiency. I'm wary of saying where they are based on a single sample, but it looks like the first is in the neighborhood of 35x and the second, around 38x. Pushing for that last two bins (or eight, if you want to be picky) causes an insane increase in power consumption on my sample; the sample to sample cutoff may vary but I feel safe in saying that you will lose a whole lot of performance/watt right around 3.8+/- GHz.
 
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Thank you for this, the bios bits are worrysome but it's early so let's hope they iron those out. We need more stuff like these for the outher b350 boards. Folks dreams of buying a 4c/8t chip and unlocking to 8/16 then OCing to 3.8 on a cheap board mustn't be dashed!
 
Thanks, I just bought the same combo at Microcenter last night. I got it to boot, but didn't have any time to play around beyond that.
 
Added some power figures for 38x on stock cooler, it was not stable on Prime95 Small FFT but the instability seemed to be entirely thermal, so the datapoint is worth something.

pgaster: I'd be interested in seeing if your copy can do 37x at 1.2V like mine, it seems to be a sweet spot (just look at those 38x power figures!)
 
Added some more numbers for 38x and 39x on a Thermalright TRUE 120. Man this thing scales badly past 37x...
 
whew, triple post - added a single 4C/8T datapoint. efficiency is quite good.
 
what effect does 8c / 8t have on temps / power draw?

I'm not seeing an option to disable SMT in this BIOS, unless it's very well-hidden. Also perhaps worth noting, running Prime95 Blend instead of SmallFFT dropped 3.9GHz power to 105W (and consequently temperatures to 49.25C), and Blend is much more representative of real-world workloads as far as thermals go.

If your goal is stability in non-AVX workloads, 39x seems achievable on the stock cooler. I really wish Ryzen had an AVX clock setting like Kaby Lake does, even scientific code doesn't use AVX, but its annoying to have to remember to lower your clocks for those rare times it shows up.
 
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When you overclock, does that also affect the turbo boost frequency? Is turbo disabled during an overclock?
 
When you overclock, does that also affect the turbo boost frequency? Is turbo disabled during an overclock?

From what I have read the answers are "yes", and "yes", which makes overclocking a catch-22.

The Stilt has a great thread on AT: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/ryzen-strictly-technical.2500572/

"One of the major down sides of the "OC-Mode" is that upon activation both Turbo and XFR will be disabled as well. Basically, this means that unless you are able to reach at least the default MSCF / XFR frequency on all cores, then you will essentially be losing single threaded performance compared to stock configuration."

(Note - MSCF – Maximum single core frequency.)


It's a good read. I think I'll be just leaving mine stock for a while anyway.
 
How did the leakers got 5Ghz?

I regret getting this Corsair H105 now. Should've bought a new rad to go with my Supremacy Evo.
 
How did the leakers got 5Ghz?

I regret getting this Corsair H105 now. Should've bought a new rad to go with my Supremacy Evo.

The 5GHz result was with subambient cooling.
I wouldn't regret the H105 just yet, the inability to reach 4GHz I ran into didn't seem to be related to the heatsink running too hot, but rather due to an inability to transfer heat from the die to the bottom of the heatsink (or cold head, in your case).
 
Maybe its time to break out my angle grinder and thermal pads. I can cut a hole at the back of the case, apply thermal pad at back of the mobo, and put another heatsink on the back.

Back when I had a FX6100, when watercooling wasn't enough, I pointed a 80mm fan at the back of the mobo and drop core temps by a few degrees.
 
ya know, double-sided cooling is a thing in the industry... :p
it's true, by cooling the power planes you can suck heat out of the die through the ground and Vcc pins, of which there are a good number.
 
We'll see when I get my 1700. I preordered a ASUS X370 but newegg had no stock, so I got a B350 too.

Can't wait to overclock again :p
 
a small update, I had to tweak the 39x numbers to get stability; 1.325v crashed after about half an hour of Prime. 1.350 crashed after about an hour.
also realized I had completely dropped the 35x row from the power measurements; fixed that. 35x is an interesting frequency (sits right at the edge of a bump in power consumption) so I'm glad I caught that.
 
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I was hoping for more out that board :/ Well maybe the Gigabyte Gaming or one of the ASRock B350 boards will have more features, unless ASUS has a new bios on the way.
 
I was hoping for more out that board :/ Well maybe the Gigabyte Gaming or one of the ASRock B350 boards will have more features, unless ASUS has a new bios on the way.

I just got the asus b350 and the newest bios update is 2/24 I think. a well known overclocker said the gigabyte had garbage vrms and I had a feeling the asus bios was more sorted. mine is running well with ddr4 3000 cl 15
 
What's the consistent speed with stock cooler and full load? Is it able to maintain all core turbo indefinitely (and what speed) or does it throttle down?

Good to know the stock cooler is good to 3.8 oc, if it can maintain turbo speeds indefinitely at stock settings might not be much need to oc.
 
bwang, how hot are the mobo vrm's? as you say, it's possible that there is a thermal wall with "standard" cooling, but just to be sure...

Thank you for your time doing those tests :)
 
bwang, how hot are the mobo vrm's? as you say, it's possible that there is a thermal wall with "standard" cooling, but just to be sure...

Thank you for your time doing those tests :)

I'm seeing 58C or so (accurate to a few C I'd guess, my IR thermometer isn't calibrated to the emissivity of the heatsink coatings) on VRM heatsinks in 19.5C ambient temperatures. This is on SmallFFT @39x with the settings in the OP.
 
So not much benefit oc wise in a z370. You can get 3.8ghz for $429 from a 1700+b350+wraith or 4.0 for $800 from a 1800x+z370+high end air cooler or maybe 4.1 if you add another $50 for an aio. Not sure 200mhz is worth $400...
 
So not much benefit oc wise in a z370. You can get 3.8ghz for $429 from a 1700+b350+wraith or 4.0 for $800 from a 1800x+z370+high end air cooler or maybe 4.1 if you add another $50 for an aio. Not sure 200mhz is worth $400...

worth noting that 38x/39x were not stable on the stock cooler on Small FFT. I didn't get a chance to test 38x or 39x Blend on the stock cooler, but the 39x Blend power numbers match the 36x Small FFT stock cooler numbers, so there's a solid chance it will work.
 
Thank you for this, the bios bits are worrysome but it's early so let's hope they iron those out. We need more stuff like these for the outher b350 boards. Folks dreams of buying a 4c/8t chip and unlocking to 8/16 then OCing to 3.8 on a cheap board mustn't be dashed!

given they're coming out later and the way the 8 core die design is it'll make it really easy to just do a single 4c die. you'll most likely see failed 8 core processors used for the 6c/12t 1600/x though..
 
I think we'll probably see 4c parts based off of both Summit Ridge and Raven Ridge. Potentially even RR parts without graphics.

I doubt they will make a unique 4c mask without any graphics; at their volume they want to be able to use a wafer as much as possible even if individual dies aren't all fully utilized.

Going by the options on my board they can definitely harvest 2+2 and 4+0 parts. Its not impossible they could harvest 3+1 one parts as well (3+3 is an option for me, cant recall for sure what else and don't feel like bouncing right now).
 
Do you think any of the limitations might be caused by the motherboards ability to deliver stable power at high current draws and related component temps raising significantly? Just curious.
 
Do you think any of the limitations might be caused by the motherboards ability to deliver stable power at high current draws and related component temps raising significantly? Just curious.
I don't think so, 60C VRM heatsinks are pretty cool as far as semiconductors go (thermal cutoff for the VRM's is probably 125C or so). Folks with Crosshair VI's were getting comparable clocks, and the Crosshair has a lot more MOSFET in it's VRM's than the B350 boards.
 
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I don't think so, 60C VRM heatsinks is pretty cool as far as semiconductors go (thermal cutoff for the VRM's is probably 125C or so). Folks with Crosshair VI's were getting comparable clocks, and the Crosshair has a lot more MOSFET in it's VRM's than the B350 boards.

That really lowers the value (to me at least) of spending the money on an expensive X370 board. Opens up more options.
 
It is a great buy, and the CPU I think AMD has been aiming us towards all along (1700).
If you lean gaming, 7700. If you lean workstation 1700. If you keep your system 4+ years? 1700 without a doubt.
 
so far, i am seeing little benefit to overclocking the cpu itself. I went from stock to 3.3ghz and now 3.9ghz and my fps is not changing much. my cs:go benchmark (720p low settings) went from 292fps with 2133 memory to 312 with ddr4 3000 cl15 (stock cpu clocks). now at 3.9ghz im at 334fps. overwatch must be gpu bound as overclocking did nothing there, war thunder got 201fps on highest settings 1080p. cpu-z benchmark scales well with clock speed. my single thread is up to 2270 from 1880 or so
 
Just noticed a problem, or I think it was a problem, with my board. With Win10, cpu-z and HWiNFO showed the VID as 1.55V. It also never changed. At first I thought it was an error, then I checked the power plan and it was set to High Performance. After I changed it to Balanced, then the voltage drops and bounces around as expected. Now 1.35V is the max I see. I can't believe it was running at 1.55V all the time. That's insane. I hope a bios update can fix this. Or maybe I could run High Performance if I undervolt in the bios. All I know is that I don't want to run high voltage all the time.


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Performance seems good under the Balanced power plan:
cpu-z bench: 2128 single, 16733 multi
cinebench 15: 148 single, 1399 multi

Not bad for a cheap board. No need to splurge on a Crosshair.
 
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Just noticed a problem, or I think it was a problem, with my board. With Win10, cpu-z and HWiNFO showed the VID as 1.55V. It also never changed. At first I thought it was an error, then I checked the power plan and it was set to High Performance. After I changed it to Balanced, then the voltage drops and bounces around as expected. Now 1.35V is the max I see. I can't believe it was running at 1.55V all the time. That's insane. I hope a bios update can fix this. Or maybe I could run High Performance if I undervolt in the bios. All I know is that I don't want to run high voltage all the time.


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Performance seems good under the Balanced power plan:
cpu-z bench: 2128 single, 16733 multi
cinebench 15: 148 single, 1399 multi

Not bad for a cheap board. No need to splurge on a Crosshair.

I saw that on my asus b350 prime too. CPU-Z was showing 1.55v but ryzen master was reporting 1.275V
 
The undervolt thing might be fitting to the process used to make the chips. Hard setting values may get you better performance certainly in overclocking.
 
I saw that on my asus b350 prime too. CPU-Z was showing 1.55v but ryzen master was reporting 1.275V

same here, I think it's a bug in CPU-Z; power consumption matched what was expected for the real voltage setpoint. not 1.55V.
 
I think we'll probably see 4c parts based off of both Summit Ridge and Raven Ridge. Potentially even RR parts without graphics.

I doubt they will make a unique 4c mask without any graphics; at their volume they want to be able to use a wafer as much as possible even if individual dies aren't all fully utilized.

Going by the options on my board they can definitely harvest 2+2 and 4+0 parts. Its not impossible they could harvest 3+1 one parts as well (3+3 is an option for me, cant recall for sure what else and don't feel like bouncing right now).

I disagree. Yields are not that bad. Disabling half of 8c parts to make 4c parts will be a total waste. It will cost half the price to build real 4C parts.

I would bet even most of the 6C parts have 8 good cores.
 
Better off with 4 core packages as it's the lower end integrated stuff. 2 and 3 core lowest end for tablets and laptops.
 
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