Guidance Requested - MSI X570 Tomahawk + Ryzen 3950X

[mswbull]

Looking for some advice.

I recently built my first AMD system in over two decades. The specification can be found below:

MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk WiFi
AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
Noctua NH-D15
64GB Patriot Viper Steel DDR4-3600
1TB Samsung 980 Pro M.2 PCI-e 4.0 NVMe SSD
PNY GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB XLR8 Gaming Overclocked Edition
EVGA SuperNova P2 1000W ‘80 Plus Platinum’ PSU

I am running the latest (non-beta) BIOS, Windows 10 20H2, with all drivers up to date.

There are two areas I am struggling with.

1. I was under the impression the Ryzen 3950X had a default vcore of 1.35v. With the BIOS voltages set to “auto” it reports 1.45v. During a PCMark run, HWMonitor reported a maximum vcore of 1.488v (although the number fluctuated a lot). Is this right? I had assumed the “auto” setting would target the default (conservative) voltages.

2. I have been having trouble achieving 3600MHz memory. When I enable XMP, the system simply fails to boot (locks before Windows). Through trial and error, I can get the system to boot at 3400MHz (manually configured), but it fails the PCMark run. 3200MHz appears stable, but a little disappointing considering the RAM XMP is rated at 3600MHz. Are the XMP values not guaranteed? I thought Ryzen 3000 would easily accept 3600MHz?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

 

[mswbull]

Thanks for the comments, greatly appreciated.

Regarding the CPU vcore, which voltage should I monitor in HWMonitor? With this many cores, there are a lot of readings, which are always fluctuating. Should I look at the average of the overall vcore?

On the Memory front, I have two sticks of 32GB (64GB in total). I have confirmed that they are installed in the optimal slots. I have also manually set the fabric to 1800MHz (Memory at 3200Mhz) and confirmed the system is stable. Therefore, does this point to the memory as the bottleneck?

In an attempt to get the system stable, I manually set the Memory at 1.45v. This did get past the POST, but failed to load Windows.

Thoughts? Anything I can do to help get the RAM (general usage) to 3600Mhz as defined by the XMP? If not, should I consider 3200Mhz with tighter timing? Can I achieve the same performance outcome?

Thanks for all the input.

 

[mswbull]

Thanks. I tried 1.45v, unfortunately the system still won't boot to Windows.

However, I am starting to think the issue might be related to the Motherboard/BIOS. For example, if I manually set the timings (same timings as auto) the system fails to boot. That seems like a software bug, correct? Why would the same timing manually set fail to boot?

 

[mswbull]

I've just updated to the latest beta BIOS, hoping it might help (it didn't).

Interestingly, I can boot at 3400/1700. However, the system is not stable under load (screen goes black). I tried increasing the memory voltage to 1.4v and now the system won't POST. I'm confused my more voltage to the memory would result in this outcome?

 

[mswbull]

You are overclocking the ram thus the controller on the CPU also need overclocking. Upping your ram voltage is one thing. The ram controller needs more juice also to run fclk 1800 and get it working in terms of communicating with the ram.

V_soc; V_ccd; V_iod; V_ddg they all matter

In terms of cpu voltage, you should look into PBO settings or you can do all core OC with under volt.

Thanks for the response.

To help me narrow down the the bottleneck, is it safe to assume that if the system is stable with FLCK 1800MHz, that the memory is the limitation? Or could it still be the memory controller on the soc?

I attempted memory 1.45v Memory and 1.2v Vsoc. Still no success at XMP settings (both auto and manual configured).

Any other thoughts?

 

[mswbull]

Yep, looking to achieve a stable 3600MHz (not above). Hoping to achieve the XMP values of the memory (18-22-22-42) at minimum.

Regarding the different voltages, any suggestion for safe starting values: V_soc; V_ccd; V_iod; V_ddg.

Thanks for the support.