3700x idle voltages

adrichardson81 · 21 Jul 2019 at 12:07

Hi all

I noticed something odd with idle voltages on my shiny new 3700x. I've uninstalledCorsair ICUE, Core Temp and CPUZ in case they were messing with voltages in the background and am using the Ryzen balanced power profile.

Ryzen Master shows 1.475v idle with Ryzen balanced. Cores downclock and sleep like they're supposed to.

With Windows balanced, idle voltage drops to 0.93125. Cores seem to be downclocking and sleeping at around about the same level as they do with Ryzen balanced.

Temperatures and Cinebench scores are comparable between the two profiles. I also tried Ryzen high performance and Ryzen power saver, which didn't affect anything either way.

Is it safe to ignore Rob AMD's advice to leave it with the AMD profile and stick with the Windows profile? I've seen some suggestion that it may be an issue with MSI x570 boards, so I'd be interested to see if anyone's had a similar experience.

theone8181 · 21 Jul 2019 at 13:05

That's interesting as I've got the x570 going plus, and I'm using the Ryzen balanced but ive not seen anything below 1.3v or so.

~>Dg<~ · 21 Jul 2019 at 13:11

whats high performance idle temps ? also what cooler are you using .

HeX · 21 Jul 2019 at 13:40

Have a look at the AMD profile and look at what the minimum CPU state is set at. For some reason the AMD profile seems to put it at 90% and so your CPU us constantly boosting. Change it to 5% and you'll gain all the benefits of the AMD plan while allowing the CPU to clock down.

adrichardson81 · 21 Jul 2019 at 14:15

~>Dg<~ said:
whats high performance idle temps ? also what cooler are you using .

Ryzen high performance? Same as balanced - usually sits in the high 30s/lows 40s and I get the same with power saver. I'm running an H115i Pro, so a fairly generic 280mm AIO.

HeX said:
Have a look at the AMD profile and look at what the minimum CPU state is set at. For some reason the AMD profile seems to put it at 90% and so your CPU us constantly boosting. Change it to 5% and you'll gain all the benefits of the AMD plan while allowing the CPU to clock down.

Mine's got 0% for min clocks, but even 5% didn't make a difference.

I should have mentioned that PBO is also disabled, so it's not that either. Really at a loss here.

ltron · 21 Jul 2019 at 14:17

adrichardson81 said:
Hi all

I noticed something odd with idle voltages on my shiny new 3700x. I've uninstalledCorsair ICUE, Core Temp and CPUZ in case they were messing with voltages in the background and am using the Ryzen balanced power profile.

Ryzen Master shows 1.475v idle with Ryzen balanced. Cores downclock and sleep like they're supposed to.

With Windows balanced, idle voltage drops to 0.93125. Cores seem to be downclocking and sleeping at around about the same level as they do with Ryzen balanced.

Temperatures and Cinebench scores are comparable between the two profiles. I also tried Ryzen high performance and Ryzen power saver, which didn't affect anything either way.

Is it safe to ignore Rob AMD's advice to leave it with the AMD profile and stick with the Windows profile? I've seen some suggestion that it may be an issue with MSI x570 boards, so I'd be interested to see if anyone's had a similar experience.

Are you using Geforce Experience? Could you try turning the in-game overlay off in the settings and report back? It puts load on the CPU even on the desktop.

muon · 21 Jul 2019 at 14:20

Install hwinfo64 and look at the CPU package power consumption (high performance vs power saver). Then consider if it is really worth your time.

lltfdaniel · 21 Jul 2019 at 14:55

I also have the ryzen 3700x on high performance setting with the power plan, the ryzen high performance option that i am using now.

Nghtmare · 21 Jul 2019 at 15:03

lltfdaniel said:
I also have the ryzen 3700x on high performance setting with the power plan, the ryzen high performance option that i am using now.

1.425v is the lowest your CPU goes to?

Munimentum · 21 Jul 2019 at 15:20

Mine is the same, completely stock and the only thing I've done in the bios is enable XMP and set some fan curves. Just checked the Balanced Power plan and the minimum usage is 0% which is a shame as I was hoping that was the problem as it would've been a nice quick fix

muon · 21 Jul 2019 at 15:36

lltfdaniel said:
I also have the ryzen 3700x on high performance setting with the power plan, the ryzen high performance option that i am using now.

I can see you've only run that for 41 seconds. It takes a while for a system to settle. It may go a little lower than the 39.9W minimum you have.

Keep an eye on the thread utilisation.

Then compare to balanced or low power. I reckon it'll be a 10W-12W difference.

If you run your system 24/7 it'll be like an annual £15 cost.

adrichardson81 · 21 Jul 2019 at 20:47

ltron said:
Are you using Geforce Experience? Could you try turning the in-game overlay off in the settings and report back? It puts load on the CPU even on the desktop.

No change there either way unfortunately. I'll give hwinfo64 a go and see what happens.

ltron · 21 Jul 2019 at 21:24

adrichardson81 said:
No change there either way unfortunately. I'll give hwinfo64 a go and see what happens.

If the cores are downclocking and sleeping on Ryzen Balanced then it is safe despite the 1.475V reading. This is the normal boost voltage for lightly threaded loads. If you look in Ryzen Master is current/power draw low when it shows 1.475V? If so, it's more evidence that this voltage is not dangerous. If it's doing it under high power then it could be a problem. Is it lowering the voltage at all at idle, even for a short time? CPU-z is a good tool to monitor this (make sure you don't run multiple tools at once as it can skew the results).

You can use the standard balanced profile if you want but you'll lose responsiveness and a little bit of performance and I don't recommended it if Ryzen Balanced is working as intended.

adrichardson81 · 21 Jul 2019 at 22:27

Ok so here's what I get from HWInfo

Windows balanced

Ryzen balanced

I had ryzen master running to double check voltages and interestingly the lowest it dipped to was 1.43 and stayed at 1.47, so the 1.012 reading is a surprise.

There's definitely a temperature difference at idle, but the average difference isn't as great as I expected.

ltron · 22 Jul 2019 at 00:45

adrichardson81 said:
Ok so here's what I get from HWInfo

Windows balanced

Ryzen balanced

I had ryzen master running to double check voltages and interestingly the lowest it dipped to was 1.43 and stayed at 1.47, so the 1.012 reading is a surprise.

There's definitely a temperature difference at idle, but the average difference isn't as great as I expected.

Looking at the individual CPU core powers, they are going very low which is good. It seems to be working normally from your screenshots. If you leave it idling for longer without even touching the PC will it go under 1V using Ryzen Balanced? This would make doubly sure, but from your screenshot I am confident it's working as it should.

Remember, don't run Ryzen Master at the same time as HWInfo as they can conflict, skewing the results. Only use one monitoring program at a time.

adrichardson81 · 22 Jul 2019 at 10:24

ltron said:
Looking at the individual CPU core powers, they are going very low which is good. It seems to be working normally from your screenshots. If you leave it idling for longer without even touching the PC will it go under 1V using Ryzen Balanced? This would make doubly sure, but from your screenshot I am confident it's working as it should.

Remember, don't run Ryzen Master at the same time as HWInfo as they can conflict, skewing the results. Only use one monitoring program at a time.

Thanks - left it idling for 10 mins with only hwinfo64 running and voltsgez don't visibly drop below 1.43, and even then it was for about a second or so. If they're going lower, it doesn't register visibly, whereas windows balanced drops to 0.9 almost as soon as things settle down.

It looks like it's perfectly safe to use Ryzen balanced on this board, but I really can't see what it brings to the table over Windows balanced...

Edit - Interesting that average cpu power seems lower across the board with Windows balanced.

Kashinoda · 22 Jul 2019 at 10:38

adrichardson81 said:
Thanks - left it idling for 10 mins with only hwinfo64 running and voltsgez don't visibly drop below 1.43, and even then it was for about a second or so. If they're going lower, it doesn't register visibly, whereas windows balanced drops to 0.9 almost as soon as things settle down.

It looks like it's perfectly safe to use Ryzen balanced on this board, but I really can't see what it brings to the table over Windows balanced...

Windows' plans are less reactive when it comes to boosting, you'll see a degradation in scores if you actually benchmark with them.

You're voltages are within safe limits, no point working yourself up about it. See the post I made here:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ce4gm4/psa_stop_nerfing_your_cpu_by_undervolting_stop/

As an aside CPU-Z seems the most accurate for me when it comes to reporting voltages but I don't believe any program is polling fast enough to give you readings. Unless you're OCing then I'd advise against watching voltage readings. Ryzen Master actually seems the worst.

PowerPie5000 · 22 Jul 2019 at 11:18

I've not got the 3700x, but have a 3600 running on an Asrock X470 Taichi board and using the Ryzen balanced power plan. My idle voltages sit at 0.919v across all cores (2.2GHz) and load voltages can reach up to 1.475v (4.2GHz), which I feel is a little high.

welshrat · 22 Jul 2019 at 11:34

To everyone who has not voltage drops on Ryzen Balanced, You need to check you have the latest plans and chipset drivers. despite installing them I still had the old ones, I had to do the following to get the latest.

welshrat said:
Just a heads up in case this helps anyone else. Since I installed the latest chipset drivers I hadn't got the correct power plans and also ryzen master was giving me headaches and not starting.

I followed this https://community.amd.com/thread/241036

and then after I deleted that I uninstalled ryzen master and the chipset drivers I then deleted everything in C:/AMD and reinstalled. I now have all the correct plans and Ryzen master is working fine. Also my Ryzen Balanced plan has the minimum processor state at 0% compared to the one that was installed from previous that had 90% everything seems to be working much better now.

EDIT. This all seems to have improved things temp and boost wise. now not hitting over 70 degrees in battlefield (generally sits at 60 degrees apart from odd spike to 69) idle volts now at 0.9 with odd reading of 0.2 and idle freq down to 1.8ghz. All core boost in BF5 now 4.267ghz

Much happier with everything now.

VortexA1 · 22 Jul 2019 at 11:35

PowerPie5000 said:
I've not got the 3700x, but have a 3600 running on an Asrock X470 Taichi board and using the Ryzen balanced power plan. My idle voltages sit at 0.919v across all cores (2.2GHz) and load voltages can reach up to 1.475v (4.2GHz), which I feel is a little high.

1.47 on load is normal. AMD say up to 1.5 is how the cpu reacts.