Ryzen 3950X high idle clocks

[FTLN]

Hi All,

I seem to have high idle clocks and high idle temps on Ryzen 3950X.
Lowest clock I have seen is 3ghz and idle temps are 35c-40c.

Fresh windows install November update
Latest AMD chipset drivers
Motherboard is B450 I Aorus Pro WiFi (dont laugh please, it does its job just fine, just very high vrm after a 1 hour render 115c )

No other software installed apart from portable versions of CPUz & HWInfo64

Any ideas ?

Also, I don't like to see my voltage hitting 1.5v whilst idle although under load it is much lower 1.17v to 1.2v depending on the core

 

[Dark NighT]

No question about this, this vrm isn't up to the task, it's only a 4 phase, the vrm heatsink barely has any surface area to properly cool it. for a 3rd gen 8 core like the 3700x or maybe 3800x this would just about be enough, but a 16 core needs a beefy vrm and this clearly isn't one.


If the temperature of vrm's is 115c, which is usually measured between the actual vrm chips, that means the chips themselves are even hotter and probably running out of spec at these temperatures, get a better board before the cpu gets killed with to much volts or the vrm blows up, also possibly killing the cpu.

 

[grec]

I'm sure you are but since you didn't mention, is that definitely latest BIOS too? I don't own a Ryzen but surely if the voltages are rising at idle something has gone quite wrong with power management and states? Have you also tried a BIOS settings reset?

 

[FTLN]

No question about this, this vrm isn't up to the task, it's only a 4 phase, the vrm heatsink barely has any surface area to properly cool it. for a 3rd gen 8 core like the 3700x or maybe 3800x this would just about be enough, but a 16 core needs a beefy vrm and this clearly isn't one.


If the temperature of vrm's is 115c, which is usually measured between the actual vrm chips, that means the chips themselves are even hotter and probably running out of spec at these temperatures, get a better board before the cpu gets killed with to much volts or the vrm blows up, also possibly killing the cpu.

But at idle VRM temps are very excellent, problem I have today is with high idle cpu temps 40c, CPU not clocking down below 3ghz and high idle voltage with peaks of 1.5v. Ambient temp in my office is around 18c.

IDLE SCREENSHOT

FULL LOAD SCREENSHOT

 

[grec]

I wouldn't worry an insane amount about 115C temps, all these MOSFETs are tested at 150C for days and rated at 125C for safe stated lifetime use which is fairly safely under the actual damaging temps to account for low accuracy temp sensors. There is definitely some clear efficiency losses from current drain and such past 100C that gets quite stark past 125C but damage occurs much higher. To be honest I've heard more problems with the heatsinks themselves catching fire with all these fancy plastic shrouds they have nowadays.

 

[FTLN]

@Tgrech, bios is latest November release & set to default with XMP enabled on the RAM.
Actually when checking with cpuz only (hwinfo64 closed) the voltage seems to be stable so the high voltage I see at idle with hwinfo64 could be a side affect of it polling the status of the cores too quickly as per this article: https://www.techpowerup.com/257312/...age-exaggerated-a-case-of-the-observer-effect

But the above article does not explain the fact that I don't see my CPU clocking down below 3ghz.
The always above 3ghz clock speed could be the cause for the high idle temp opn the cpu.

 

[grec]

It's not from the Minimum processor state settings in here or anything like that is it? I'd contact Gigabyte if you can't find any reason for it

 

[FTLN]

Seems like you found the culprit, on AMD balanced profile and on 1usmus profile minimum cpu state is set to 99% ! ! !

 

[RobM]

IMHO that board is not able to handle the 3950x as it was not designed to run that high a CPU. You need something a bit beefier to be able to handle that many cores at full tilt if you want to see better clocks and temps.

 

[looz]

IMHO that board is not able to handle the 3950x as it was not designed to run that high a CPU. You need something a bit beefier to be able to handle that many cores at full tilt if you want to see better clocks and temps.

Looks to me that it's handling a 140W load fine.

 

[FTLN]

I'm still playing with Ryzen Master and I have done a manual overclock to 4.3ghz all core and set 1.35v.

With Cinebench R15 underload I have vdroop to 1.244v on all cores and its stable.

Power into the VRM's is shown as 237w

I think I will order another board with a better VRM, most probably the ASUS Strix X570i Gaming although I do like the idea of thunderbolt 3 on the Asrock x570 itx...

 

[FTLN]

So in fact I feel like I passed a masters degree in AMD processors last night:

Apparently ZEN 2 is nothing like we have seen before and clocks I see are completely normal.

All explained here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/db60m3/the_zen_2_faq/

My Zen 2 CPU is not downclocking when idle. Is that normal?
It is. Zen 2 uses an extremely aggresive "race to sleep" approach. The CPU cores will sleep, wake up, boost, do work and go back to sleep in miliseconds.

Ryzen Master and HWInfo64 can accurately track this downclocking behaviour, named "effective clock", and other software may simply display the base clock instead. However, according to the manufacturers and devs, this does not mean that your CPU is not downclocking when idle. Also, make sure you're using the Ryzen Balanced power plan provided by the AMD Chipset driver.

A possible reason for your CPU not downclocking properly is CPPC2 (Collaborative Power and Performance Control) and Cool'n'Quiet being disabled. These options can be available on some motherboards, allowing the user to change them manually. It seems many vendor's "Auto" function actually ends up with it disabled. Without these features enabled the CPU may show high idle frequency issues. However, according to a Gigabyte rep, Cool'n'Quiet was removed from the BIOS by AMD in AGESA itself, so it is possible that you will not find the option.

If you feel that your CPU is indeed not downclocking at all, there may be a rogue app, a faulty BIOS setting or implementation, or some other software issue. Contact the community or AMD's support for assistance.

 

[tolagarf]

Seems like you found the culprit, on AMD balanced profile and on 1usmus profile minimum cpu state is set to 99% ! ! !

Yeah I also been wondering why it's necessary to have a "balanced" profile run at a minimum of 90-99%. Doesn't seem balanced at all to me, which is why I use Bitsum Process Lasso to handle my CPU affinity and power profiles.

 

[Dawelio]

What you need to keep in mind as well is that with AMD and Ryzen, they are still having voltage issues with their BIOS. Ryzen are running rather high voltages on auto.

Just by doing basic web browsing etc, my 3700X were hovering around 1.4 - 1.5V, and that is stock clocks. Had to manually downclock it to a 1.3V for now, will go lower once I have the time to fully sit in and test the stability of undervolting.

 

[FTLN]

Switched over to an asrock x570 itx board, VRM temps never above 65c even after 20 minute aida64 stability test. Idle cpu temps seem to be much lower on this board, around 29c.

This board has TB3, would love to get an external 10gbs network card.