Overclocking in Bios using Ryzen 5 3600 on X370

[WanderingNomad]

So maybe this is not too relevant any more but my latest build is with a brand new discounted Ryzen 5 3600 and a ASUS Prime-Pro X370 board purchased on the used market.

The ASUS board had mixed reviews but mainly due to lack of RGB headers and early BIOS issues with the Ryzen architecture that were sorted with later BIOS upgrades. The board has everything i needed and i put a good value WD Blue NVME SSD in the M.2 slot which was on special offer - this SSD is one of the more consistent DRAM Less drives with read of 2400 and writes of 1700 - testing has showed that it maintains these speeds though - not just burst speeds. The Aura on the board is of the 12V RGB 4 pin kind and everything has moved to 5V ARGB these days. But RGB isnt my most important feature although it looks good.

So having done some research on Ryzen, i decided that basically RAM overclock and AMDs own PBO would probably be the best option. My RAM is Micron E Die single rank 8GB x2 (16GB) 3600mhz DDR4 @ 16-18-18-38 1.35V - I was hoping to push these to 3800mhz and get the FCLK to 1900 MHz to keep the 1:1 sweet spot in tact. I checked 1USMUS but didnt take the settings as verbatim and played with a couple of clear CMOS to find what worked. This RAM seems especially sensitive to TRFC - the other timings will tighten nicely.
I set the RAM to 1.395V in BIOS - set FCLK and MCLK and UCLK all to 1867 (1900 wasnt booting, may need more voltage somewhere) with SOC voltage at 1.075V - the CPU i set to AUTO with a negative offset of 0.0375V.

RAM speed set to 3733 to maintain the 1:1 - i set timings to 16-18-16-34-56 on the primary and tightened the others especially TFAW which will go as low as 24, i leave it at 28 for stability. So thats an extra 133Mhz with tighter timings for a small voltage bump. I still think 3800 with 1900 1:1 would be the best sweet spot here but its close - im unsure if the CPU will do 1900 - as i say maybe more volts required somewhere.

The AMD CBS settings i left all on Auto - after optimising the DIGI-VRM by setting LLC level 4, 130% power capacity and optimised phase - i set the PBO to 140 PPT 120 TDC and 140 EDC with a 200mhz boost and a X8 scalar. HWinfo is reporting that the global max boost is now 4.4ghz with base bo0st at 4.2ghz - the 200MHz being the applied PBO.

Monitoring the system the chip heads down to 2215Mhz under low load, and im seeing regularly 4.3Ghz on all cores under load. Under load the auto voltage with the offset is reading about 1.375V - i use RYZEN balanced power profile under normal use and i have set High Performance to 100% minimum and maximum processor state to try to minimise darting about of the cores while gaming

So just with a few tweaks, we get the boost of PBO and Ram timings and the infinity fabric boost - i get 52000MBs Read - 30000MBs Write and 47000MBs Copy on Aida ram bench.

Im sure that there is more performance left in the system with better tweaking but finding the sweet spot is the Key of course.

Thanks for reading

 

[WanderingNomad]

Well day 2 of playing with this and i thought lets try an all core overclock - i went conservative and set 1.38V manual in the BIOS - set the All core to 45x to give a 4.5ghz all core setting - several run throughs of Cinebench R15 in a row (15) saw my peak temperatures reach 81C and the all core clock seeming stable.

I also adjusted my Ram Timings slightly more to give 16-18-16-34-52 @ 3733Mhz with 1866 FCLK/UCLK/MCLK still at 1.395V

My R15 score was 1876 on the CPU

I also run Performance Test 8 ( prefer it to 9 ) and the best score they have was 5333 total points - this OC scored 6092 total points

However - despite Cinebench and Ptest being fine, running AIDA 64 memory benchmark caused a crash every time on the L3 cache section of the test - i tried raising SOC to 1.125V and RAM to 1.41V but it wouldnt stabilise - i tried CPU voltage up to 1.41V but again no pass on that test - thought all core 4500Mhz was too good to be true TBF - not sure how to stabilise it, it will boot into Windows - run Cinebenceh, run Ptest but AIDA 64 causes BSOD with various errors like IRQL not less or equal etc.

The RAM seems stable at the settings however so i have kept those - getting 53000MBs Read 30000MBs Write and 48500MBs Copy

with the all core 4.5ghz - HWinfo suggested that the package was pulling 161Amps and 102Watts so maybe the amps is tripping it up, i set the PBO to 160Amps after all ???

 

[WanderingNomad]

OK, well anything above 4400mhz wont seem to go without BSOD so i suspect some driver level thing in PBO may be stopping that - im minded to think that without PBO activated - better overclocks may be available - i decided to stick with a 4400mhz all core overclock at 1.385V in BIOS or around 1.36V with V droop -my settings and timings on this micron E Die, eventually i will buy another 16GB so ill have fun trying to stabilise 4 slots populated but im sure its manageable having run several 4 slot configurations on various motherboards succesfully, 2T usually becomes the sacrifice for 4 DIMMs populated

my Timings are 16-18-16-34-52 TRFC@597 TFAW@26 with 1.41V on RAM and 1.1V on SOC

With this 4400mhz im getting a higher score in PTest but not reaching the Cinebench R15 heights

 

[APW]

Don't do pbo on all core OC.
From what I remember, I settled down on mine for 4.35ghz all core on lower volts as the difference in temps and volts for that last 100mhz just wasn't worth it.

Maybe try that and play with RAM timings instead, might get better result.

 

[WanderingNomad]

Hi, i can run 4400mhz all core using Asus AI suite when i need to, the beauty here is that it doesnt set the timnings in bios so when i reboot its back to using the pbo etc, however if i need the all core 4400mhz i can jsut set the voltage and speed in AI suite - i set the volts to 1.38V and it droops to 1.36V to sustain that 4400Mhz all core - normally i run the ryzen balanced power scheme and the clock runs 2220 up to 4300 then in games i use the ryzen high performance scheme with the power management set to 95% to 100% this is giving me 4400mhz on the active cores with a negative voltage offset in BIOS of 0.0375 the BIOS is using about 1.41V to run that with PBO but not all cores are stressed so its not taxing the CPU too much - BIOS likes to set 1.45V for things i notice which definitely higher than i like.

i think there is some more room in the RAM timings - i started lowering TRFC and TFAW will go lower, also i think CAS 15 may well run TBH, but its fractions at this stage, already the RAM is 66Ns latency - id like to stabilise 1900 UCLK FCLK MCLK but not sure my CPU likes it, im happy overall though with this chip especially as i got it on sale for £150 and its now back to £190
Cheers for reply

 

[WanderingNomad]

Am more than happy with the Ryzen 3600, its the best CPU ive had for sure, the RAM Bandwidth is great - its very stable, the PBO clocks quite high and it runs 4.4ghz all core at around 1.356V which is all good - i know the 5600X is even better but at a premium - this chip is still cheaper than the 10600K and when you factor motherboard costs, its great value, seems there is a bit more OC fun to be had with these later Ryzen and 4.4Ghz is pretty darn fast in the games i play.

Considering i picked up the Motherboard for £50, the RAM for £66 and the CPU for £150 - i already had a good 850W PSU and a case and a GPU so this has been a great reasonable build.. next step is some RGB !! hahahaha