Looking for advice on reducing voltage or clock speed for Zen 2 (R5 3600)?
Looking for advice on reducing voltage or clock speed for Zen 2 (R5 3600)?
Working on the Xbox build in my rig and facing tight space, poor ventilation, and a small cooler, the 3600 overheats significantly even without PBO enabled. After installing it, I switched to Eco-mode just to forget about it. Now I’m trying to squeeze out maximum performance while keeping temperatures low. I managed to hit 3.9Ghz per core at 1.075v, achieving idle and load temps around 32°C/65°C, with a power consumption of roughly 50-55W in both Cinebench and Prime95. To push it further, I adjusted the voltage manually and increased clock speeds until it crashed—this gives a quick underclock but sacrifices single-threaded speed. Is there a way to fix the poor single-thread performance? It seems odd that the CPU stays at 3.9Ghz while only one or two cores are active. The motherboard is an MSI B450I Gaming Plus AC, if that’s relevant.
It works fine with its standard settings. The system adjusts itself based on its environment. Keep the temperature at 95°C, and it will maintain optimal performance by increasing and then reducing speed when necessary. Stick to the default configuration for the best results. Focus more on improving memory efficiency rather than raw power.
I haven’t spoken for the 3600x, but my 3900x performed similarly on the same board. Running at 1.4v with no load kept me under 4.0ghz, maintaining around 58-65°C. The stock cooler would oscillate and fluctuate. If I push it to max via the savings plan, it drops to .9, but the cores wouldn’t exceed 2.14ghz and would stay cool up to 55°C on the stock cooler. Many users with MSI B450, x470, and x570 boards reported the same issue. It looks like a BIOS bug is skipping temperature readings or failing to lower properly. I’ll check my ASUS board next Monday to see if it matches, though that might point to another problem. Too much voltage.
I had already thought about this before – my CPU would overheat and consume too much power with only 200W available. A maximum of 65W seems realistic, anything below that would be better for me. I was just trying to find ways to improve its single-thread performance. The current temperature is stable thanks to the fan on the heatsink while it’s open air, but once it’s mounted in the chassis it will rise significantly, reaching around 3-3.1Ghz, which is much lower than when it draws more power than needed.
I'm not facing any of these problems because I've adjusted my chip manually right now. 1.1v is what it's showing according to hwinfo and Ryzen Master, so that seems correct. I'm curious about ways to underclock and undervolt more effectively than just entering numbers into the voltage and clock speed settings.
I see what you did there! (missed the 200w PSU, just checking your other discussion!) Here are some suggestions: turn off 2 cores/4 threads – keeps you with 8 threads, which is enough for gaming. Keep all cores on, switch off SMT and test both thermal and v-core performance. Check the CPU-Z tab, save a report as txt, open it, view "p-states" to see v-core behavior. Experiment with different numbers and try lowering the LLC to level 3. I ran mine at level 2 but got much slower clocks. Keep tweaking!
All the ideas were helpful, though they seem to work best with multi-threaded tasks. I’d love more precise control over clocks when the CPU isn’t fully loaded. On my 8700K I can adjust turbo settings like 5.1 for single core, 5.0 for two cores, etc., but nothing similar exists on this build. A bit let down, but I’ll hold onto it and see how it performs.
Not really applicable in any significant way. Increasing the clocks of two cores causes the others in the ccx to drop when all cores are loaded. I’m considering adjusting it but wouldn’t want to enable a profile each time I reboot. This was one of the initial steps I took—it’s currently limited to 55W, which is 10W above the eco-mode setting on the 3600. I’ll keep exploring more about Ryzen undervolting.