Not sure about adjusting voltage for your R5 3600?
Not sure about adjusting voltage for your R5 3600?
Your BIOS should include PBO options that allow automatic adjustment or personalized configuration.
PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive) lets the BIOS manage your Ryzen's speed and power for better performance and efficiency. Turning it off can lower temperatures, especially if it’s already active. You can usually adjust a specific voltage setting to further cool things down. Many people forget how important good airflow is in cooling, and some processors need stronger cooling solutions. What case are you using? What cooling system do you have?
True undervolting isn't effective for the Ryzen 3rd generation. You can't use the curve optimizer (like adjusting Ryzen 5000 settings) and while a negative voltage offset is possible, it leads to clock stretching problems. Clock stretching causes clocks to appear high even though performance drops. The Ryzen 3000 series especially struggles with voltage changes, often reducing temps but also cutting performance significantly. The only reliable method to lower CPU voltage without major speed loss is manual overclocking, which still sacrifices single-core gains. If your temperatures stay below 90 and you're seeing normal clock speeds, it's usually safe to leave things as they are.
Are you referring to a guide for overclocking every core? The idea that one core at full boost while others run at base speed behaves similarly is common. I’m not familiar with clock stretching—how would I tell if it’s happening on my CPU? Also, I’ve never seen the curve optimizer in my BIOS and I only use an all-core OC setup.
Perform a benchmark using both voltage settings to observe results. If speed drops when lower voltage is used, it indicates clock stretching. This applies to a full manual overclock across all cores. Performance depends on the task—light threading works well with one core boosted and others at base. For demanding jobs like Cinebench or video rendering, a manual all-core overclock yields better results.
my 5600x runs smoothly at 4.3ghz before upgrading to a better cooler; it sometimes outperforms the stock version under certain games, though results aren't clear-cut. I believe it shouldn’t be a big concern. Checking the "effective clock" in hwinfo during stress tests helped confirm it matched my actual speed. It’s worth noting that with locked speed and voltage, this issue might not occur.