Are thermals suitable and should I consider overclocking my GPU?
Are thermals suitable and should I consider overclocking my GPU?
My initial setup
CPU - Ryzen 5 7600x
GPU - Zotac RTX 5070 Ti Sff ready Solid OC
Motherboard - MSI Mag B650M Gaming plus DDR5 Wi-Fi6e
RAM - XPG Lancer Blade 2x16GB DDR5 6000MHz
SSD - Kingston NV3 1TB Gen4 M.2 NVMe
CPU Cooler - Cooler Master Masterliquid ML240L Core II White
Case Fans - 2x Antech Neon OEM ARGB 120mm White
PSU - CoolerMaster MWE Gold V3 850W ATX 3.1
Case - Deepcool ch160 plus (sff 19.5L case)
This was my first build without any prior experience. I did the most research possible. For now, what are the temperatures? Current idle is between -28 to 30°C (GPU) and 32 to 35°C (CPU) with intake and AIO at 40% and exhaust at 30% (fans stay off below 30%). I kept exhaust RPM low because it matched closely with AIO, so I assumed equal airflow would be better.
For the GPU
- Ran 15 minutes of Unigine Heaven benchmark at maximum settings (3D off) at 1440p. The average temperature was around 70-73°C, with a peak of 75°C for a short time. The GPU exceeded its advertised boost clock, and I wondered if overclocking would be beneficial given the thermal margin.
For CPU
- Ran 10 minutes of Multi-thread Cinebench. It ran hotter than expected, maintaining around 88°C throughout. Although I heard the 7000 series tends to overheat, it’s within normal range. At full load, AIO and intake were at 100%, while exhaust was at 80%. The temperatures seem acceptable, but I’m unsure if I should stop testing them now after finishing the build.
I know about lowering the CPU voltage, but should I also lower the GPU voltage? I thought the GPU temperatures staying below 100% at idle were typical for a SFF case with a 19.5L cooler. The stock fan curves run around 80-100% even when idle, which is why I switched to custom curves. Still, I plan to try another test using the stock curves to see if it helps. Updated my BIOS to the latest version (7E24v1B) and used HWinfo for the testing.
Your temps look fine.
If you're a hobbyist and tinkerer, feel free to experiment with your cpu and gpu.
Otherwise, just enjoy your games.
That's what I initially believed, but I'm receiving conflicting views—some say it works well for a small PC while others warn it might void the warranty. I'm trying to consider all perspectives and reach a conclusion at this point.
Overclocking used to be a way to gain something without paying.
Now it's not so easy.
Manufacturers sorted their CPU and GPU chips.
They could offer better versions at higher prices.
In general, trying to overclock a CPU or GPU won't usually give you enough extra performance to notice without a synthetic test.
You cannot cancel your warranty because your thermals aren’t ideal—that’s not valid. Issues with voltages and overclocking might lead to voiding it. Your temperatures seem acceptable, though not impressive. Avoid using Ryzen Master for overclocking or undervolting; instead, adjust settings directly in the BIOS if you need more control.
It's uncertain whether undervolting the CPU would cause significant bottlenecks or have a minimal impact.
I'm not sure about the exact meaning, but if done properly, undervolting won't create more bottlenecks than what you already have, and might even improve things. When you lower the voltage, your CPU can perform the same tasks with less power, resulting in less heat and faster response when increasing frequency, leading to better performance.
The problem is resolved. I conducted extensive research and adjusted the settings using Amd PBO2 for precision overclocking. This allowed me to manually lower the CPU voltage and reduce the thermal throttle limit significantly. It's really impressive! Idle performance remains unchanged, but during the Cinebench multi-core stress test at full load, my CPU maintained 100% speed around 5.2ghz, with a power draw of 92 watts and temperatures staying at just 57°C. The final Cinebench score is essentially the same as before.