Disable cores on a Ryzen 9 3950X?

[Helen Barber]

Just wondering if it's possible. I'm not making use of all the cores and sometimes have my pc running for a few days at a time.

Just wondering if I can disable cores? IE only use 4-6

 

[mickyflinn]

Ryzen master software can disable cores.

https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/ryzen-master

 

[Joxeon]

I think you can do this in the bios also.

 

[clv101]

Why would you need to? Don't unused cores throttle back to a few hundred MHz or even go to 'sleep' whatever that means automatically when not in use?

 

[Helen Barber]

Not sure, do they?^

 

[IICIIEII]

As clv101 said, the machine can take very good care of the cores that are not in use at the moment, I would not disable them. It would be different if you were talking about threads, since some apps run better when multithreading is disabled.

 

[IICIIEII]

Not sure, do they?^

They do... I have just made this screenshot. As you can see, some are in Sleep mode

 

[tommoT.Striker]

Bloody cores! they're everywhere!

 

[IICIIEII]

Bloody cores! they're everywhere!

 

[opethdisciple]

Don't those chips have something called Game Mode, which essentially turns of cores?

 

[Drumroll]

As long on your power plan the minimum processor state isn't 90, 95 or 100% (mine is 5%), unused cores will either be at very low frequencies or sleeping. Idling, few things running on background, my 3900x show a whole chip consumption of 30ish Watts. At 16p per kW, at idle, would take roughly 3 days to cost me 16p, without accounting for other costs.
Unless you're running on problems cooling the chip, or keeping a reasonable noise while doing it, no reason to cap the chip. Just the right adjustments required and the chip does all by itself.
Even a GPU, nowadays is quite clever with its power management.
Just make sure there isn't any app/service pushing the processor boost for no reason.

 

[Jamin280672]

Just wondering if it's possible. I'm not making use of all the cores and sometimes have my pc running for a few days at a time.

Just wondering if I can disable cores? IE only use 4-6

The cores go to sleep when not in use, but if its something you want to make a bit more permanent then do it in the bios, you can effectively change it from a 16 core chip to a 12 core or 8 core chip, or just enable it to use just 1 CCD all the time thereby disabling half the cores, saves having another piece of software in your start up programs everytime your PC boots too.

 

[smilingcrow]

Why not rent out your unused cores to an Intel owner?