Make CPU and GPU not use as much electric?

Helen Barber

Helen Barber

Helen Barber

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9 Aug 2020
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I have a 6900XT and a AMD Ryzen 9 3950X

Im only just doing some basic work these days. Can I cripple the above in some way to lower power needed?

not being a cheapo, just don't see the point when not gaming these days :)
 
While not under load they won't be using much power anyway. They clock down and put cores to sleep by themselves when under no load. So there's going to be little you can do while not gaming.

Undervolting etc is only really effective while under load.
 
As above if you are doing non gaming tasks the cpu and gpu fairly much manage themselves. If you are gaming I would suggest thinking about Radeon chill. Using it in older games my 6800 often uses less than 60watts, which is less power than the 6500xt can draw, https://youtu.be/y0fQN6E--Ng
 
With the CPU, you can turn off pbo / boosting and run the CPU at the base clock, or use eco mode if available, but as said above, it won't make a lot of difference in general desktop use. You could turn off some cores if available, but I don't know if that will help as Ryzen is pretty good at turning them off itself.

I don't know if AMD CPUs are still the same, or if this has been fixed, but previously there were a few things you could do that reduced idle by quite a lot, for memory: turning off XMP and running at 1.2v @ 2666 and there were some apps that prevented it from low idle mode, I think steam was one of them, but I can't remember the specifics, it had something to do with apps and how they use a timer.
 
Electricity usage varies depending what you're doing. It's not drawing electricity for gaming while you're working. It does a pretty good job at that, so don't bother tinkering.
 
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