Let’s understand how you can optimize the performance of AMD’s new Ryzen 7000 processors by manually adjusting the operating voltage, while reducing their power consumption
Chipmaker AMD recently launched its Ryzen 7000 desktop processor series accompanied by motherboards. Here you can find our review about the new processors. A new architecture and a new platform mean that there will be a new set of rules for the behavior of the processor and its dealing with heat sinks.
When we say heat sinks, we also mean the processor cover itself, which is a very important and sometimes main part of the heat transfer between the pieces of silicon on the printed board to the heat sink that we install on the processor.
To remind you, with the Ryzen 7000 processors the rules have changed and the concept of how a processor should run has also changed, at least in its thermal sense. The new AMD processors are actually aimed to “want” and run at a temperature of 95 degrees Celsius for the hottest core, when in order to get there the working frequencies and internal voltages rise, as does the power that accompanies a higher working temperature.
It’s not for nothing that AMD recommends using advanced water cooling kits for its Ryzen 9 processors with 12 and 16 cores. The power of these processors is high, and partly because of the processor cover there is actually a bottleneck in the heat that is emitted from the silicon pieces and reaches the heatsink.
As mentioned, part of the reason for this is that from the beginning AMD wanted to adapt the Ryzen 7000 processors to heatsinks that were originally designed for the AM3 bracket and especially for the AM4 bracket that accompanied us until now. Compatibility comes in the form of identical spacing between the holes in the motherboard around the processor, and in the plastic pieces on both sides to hold the heatsinks.
It is important to clarify that many heatsinks will not fit the new bracket if they come with their own back plate. The fit is for heatsinks that use a plate that comes standard with AM4 motherboards.
Hurry up – heat for performance
Now that we understand that the processor will always want to run as close to 95 degrees as possible, we need to know the relationship between what the heatsink can do and the result that the processor can produce with the same heatsink.
In our case we use the Ryzen 9 7950X and the ASUS Ryujin 360 II cooler. When we tested the processor without messing with the settings at all, we saw that it reached 95 degrees Celsius and produced performance at a certain level, however it is important to remember that processor tuning by the manufacturer regarding the relationship between voltage and operating frequency is relatively rough compared to what can be done by manual tuning.
There are two tools that the user can use to tune the processor, and the process is very simple this time, at least as far as the advanced processors in the series are concerned, the Ryzen 9. The first tool is our bios, which we access through booting the computer, the second tool is AMD’s Ryzen Master which allows tuning in real time through the operating system. You can only use one of them all the way, you can use both to save time.
AMD’s PBO or Precision Boost Overclocking technology is designed to allow the processor, based on operating temperature and power, to occasionally raise frequencies to improve performance. Although, the new AMD processors put this technology in the back seat thanks to the high operating temperatures.
Therefore, the recommendation would be to allow the processor to receive lower voltages in order to generate less heat. Thus, we gain a few degrees Celsius that get automatically translated to higher frequencies.
Specifically, we use the ASUS ROG X670E HERO motherboard, but this rule also applies to motherboards from manufacturers such as GIGABYTE and MSI. We access the adjustment area in the bios and there we can lower the voltage of the processor cores, the Core Voltage. We choose the option of Offset Mode which is based on a given state and directed from there, choose the minus sign, and lower 0.05 volts.
From there, you can save and restart your computer.
In the Ryzen Master software it will soon be possible to perform this operation soon, and by choosing a personal profile on the side you can set the operating voltage to an Offset of minus 0.05 volts as well. Now in our opinion it is better to work with the bios.
From there, you can use high load software like wPrime or Cinebench to measure stability, temperatures and also CPU performance. It is generally important to monitor the performance of the processor, both in multiple cores and in a single core to check that the overclocking is doing its job without wasting performance.
On this occasion it is important for us to point out – we did not activate any option in the bios other than lowering the operating voltage for the processing cores. In addition, the lowering from Offset Mode is not the dictation of the operating voltage, but only a recommendation to the processor for our desire for a lower operating voltage. With the reduction of the operating voltage, the power is also more and consequently the performance.
We conducted tests for the various modes of lowering the voltage entering the cores and discovered something very interesting. As you can see in the graph above, lowering the voltage of the cores by 0.05V to 0.1V not only resulted in a reduction in power and temperature, but as a result also improved processing performance. At the same time we also tested the single core results and they in return did not change than in default mode.
It was only when we reached a setting of minus 0.125 volts or less for the cores that we began to see a gradual slowdown in processor performance as a result of too low an input voltage. Although, even then the slowdown was not dramatic at all. In the extreme mode of minus 0.2 volts, the rendering performance for all cores was reduced by 10 percent. In single-core tests, we saw the Cinebench R20 score drop from 760 to 710, which is 7 percent less.
We know that every processor and every piece of silicon is different, so our recommendation remains to experiment, measure and see where the point is where you can both lower the power consumption and increase the performance. This recommendation is especially valid for users whose default Ryzen processor does reach 95 degrees as planned. Regardless of whether using a luxury water cooling kit or standard air cooling, the same recommendations apply to all users.
The voltage controllers in modern processors are very smart, and you have to work hard or adjust the wrong settings to get into instability and crashes. Test for a few minutes between each restart and when you think you’ve reached the golden ratio between input voltage cleanup and performance, verify stability by longer tests. All these tools are free and simple to operate.
The effect we are experiencing here is a familiar effect in the silicon world, it is something we have experienced in Intel’s 12th generation processors, and in a multitude of video cards as well. Sometimes carefully tightening the input voltage leads to the opposite effect of increasing performance, especially when the operating temperature is high in standard mode.
With our Ryzen 9 7950X CPU we found that a cleanup of 0.05V or a bit more results in a better overall user experience, and it’s completely free. For him, these are the real performance of the processor, even if the improvement is only a 2-5 percent increase in performance. When paying for an expensive piece of silicon, every cent counts.
When we review the cheaper Ryzen processors in the future, we will present a guide to overclocking and tuning for them, including the Ryzen 5 7600X – worth staying updated!