OC & Modding Clock speed and power consumption

nitin_g3

nitin_g3

Adept
Hi

I'm planning on overclocking my Ryzen 5 3600.
Before doing that I have these questions in my mind, hope someone can answer those:

1. Does power consumption of the processor vary with the clock speed or the cpu utilization?
2. If I set my processor to a fixed speed (say 4300mhz), does that mean it will constantly consume power at it's full TDP even when there's very less CPU utilization?

Thanks
 
I assume you're not doing PBO?
I'm going to attempt OC on mine so not the best person to answer this yet, but I think higher clock speed = more power consumption. Doesn't sound very efficient to have it pegged at higher clocks when usage is low. Is that even possible? Usually it scales I believe

Tech subforum might be appropriate for this.
 
1. Yes, obviously when there's load on CPU you'll see voltage being dropped to maintain temperatures and avoiding your CPU from frying and the power shooting up. There's a lot more to it which you can research yourself.
2. No, at little to no load you'll see max voltage (whatever u set) but low power, yes fixing speed will increase the idle wattage but nowhere near max TDP.
 
nitin_g3 said:
1. Does power consumption of the processor vary with the clock speed or the cpu utilization?
Click to expand...
Both matter. Just setting a high clockspeed deos not mean the CPU will use more power all the time.
nitin_g3 said:
2. If I set my processor to a fixed speed (say 4300mhz), does that mean it will constantly consume power at it's full TDP even when there's very less CPU utilization?
Click to expand...
No. It means that it will now maintain that clockspeed all the time, including when idle. But the difference in power should not be much compared to stock speeds. I have my 3600XT overclocked to ~4.4Ghz all cores and it consumes 25W when idle (CPU PPT in Hwinfo), compared to 20W when everything was at stock and it was idling at around ~2.5Ghz. Keep in mind this isn't true idle (where Ryzen can idle at 800Mhz or so) since I measured this with discord, slack and some other programs open in the bg, but then again I didn't need true idle because my PC is never going to be in that situation.
So basically, power consumption scales with utilisation, clockspeed and voltage. Just increasing clockspeed and voltage without utilisation should not affect power too much
 
roofrider said:
Someone got a link to a good Ryzen OC guide Zen 3/MSI?
Click to expand...
Here's a PBO guide by Buildzoid himself:
Although it's for listed for Asus, most options are present in almost any AM4 motherboard as well.
Watch at 2x :p
nitin_g3 said:
I'll try setting it fixed at 4300mhz clock and undervolt to try my luck
Click to expand...
Wouldn't recommend that, using auto voltage of mobo for fixed clockspeeds is a bad idea. It'll massively overvolt the CPU under load (going over 1.4-1.45V at load). Undervolting won't solve the problem since using heavy undervolting would crash the system at idle or lighter loads.
I recommend you find out what voltagr the CPU uses at everything stock and 100% load (preferably prime95 or occt linpack, and ensure you have thermal headroom), note that "safe voltage" (can be anywhere from 1.25V-1.35V), set that safe voltage in bios and see how high you can push your oc with those. Zen 2 has different overclocking principles compared to Zen ( and Zen+) - AMD never specified a "safe voltage" for Ryzen 3000 series (as it had done for Zen and Zen+ at 1.35V), so it is recommended you find limits of each CPU individually and apply it.
 
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nitin_g3 said:
Hi

I'm planning on overclocking my Ryzen 5 3600.
Before doing that I have these questions in my mind, hope someone can answer those:

1. Does power consumption of the processor vary with the clock speed or the cpu utilization?
2. If I set my processor to a fixed speed (say 4300mhz), does that mean it will constantly consume power at it's full TDP even when there's very less CPU utilization?

Thanks
Click to expand...
1.Yes,it will .
2. No ,it will still be lower than tdp.
however you can set an offset manually ,just to make sure the voltage and power consumption drops when usage isnt high.
 
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