I had to replace my home office computer quickly, and I was broke, so I put together an AMD Ryzen 5 4600G cpu, Asus Prime B550-PLUS motherboard, and 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3600, with Windows 11 OS (couldn't recycle my Windows 7 license). I was happy just to get to desktop and go online, because that meant that I could continue to eat. Then I learned that I could overclock this cpu on this board, like I'd done years ago with Intel chips, and that cheered me up, because overclocking is fun. Then I learned that newer chips, even unlocked ones, have so much built-in performance enhancement (particularly AMD, with Performance Boost Overdrive) that it's "almost pointless" to overclock them; the benefit ("a few extra frames per second") wasn't worth the cost to the chip in possible physical degradation.
But overclocking really is fun, if you have the time, and these aren't the most expensive parts, and there's not much on the new hard drive if things go pear-shaped, so I overclocked the 4500G to 4.2 ghz @ 1.312v (BIOS setting), RAM @ DOCP settings (3600), fclk = 1800. 12+ hours Prime95, haven't done any other stress tests yet. Temps were surprisingly low with decent air cooling (DeepCool AG400 on cpu).
![Font Screenshot Rectangle Parallel Number]()
![Font Rectangle Screenshot Software Parallel]()
![Font Screenshot Rectangle Parallel Number]()
![Font Rectangle Screenshot Software Parallel]()
I need to do some performance tests like Cinebench...I got lazy over the years, stopped running those. I'll try to remember to put some scores up comparing stock vs overclock. I should say that it sounds like I ought to be prepared to see much less of a performance increase than I saw in previous overclocks of Intel cpus from more than a decade ago - dual cores, q9550, 2500k (that's the one that got me from 2010 to 2023). I play old games, and Fraps says that I've gained a couple of frames per second in old games like StarCraft 2 and SupCom 2.
I didn't jump straight to 4.2; first, I went to 4.0 using Auto volts, then 4.1 ghz (Prime95-stable @ 1.282v BIOS setting). I've actually gone back to 4.1, and I hope to bring the volts down a little. At the moment, I feel like it's a good idea to not force 1.312v to the cpu (but I may change my mind!). AMD is new to me, and it looks like fclk and SOC voltage are settings that are somewhat similar to northbridge/southbridge settings - they can complement the simple "raise cpu clock, raise cpu volts" formula, which I got a little too used to after it became somewhat standard a little over a decade ago. I don't feel the urge to go past 4.2 ghz at this voltage, but I'd like to learn about that stuff. I think it's fantastic that you can do so much with inexpensive boards today.
Circling back, I'd like to reiterate that I'm not sure that overclocking a cpu today, particularly an AMD Ryzen 5 with PBO, is really defensible as a practice that gives benefits to offset the costs, but it really is fun to overclock cpus, even the parts where you're sleeping while Prime95 is running. It's fun. Also, stock is boring.
But overclocking really is fun, if you have the time, and these aren't the most expensive parts, and there's not much on the new hard drive if things go pear-shaped, so I overclocked the 4500G to 4.2 ghz @ 1.312v (BIOS setting), RAM @ DOCP settings (3600), fclk = 1800. 12+ hours Prime95, haven't done any other stress tests yet. Temps were surprisingly low with decent air cooling (DeepCool AG400 on cpu).
I need to do some performance tests like Cinebench...I got lazy over the years, stopped running those. I'll try to remember to put some scores up comparing stock vs overclock. I should say that it sounds like I ought to be prepared to see much less of a performance increase than I saw in previous overclocks of Intel cpus from more than a decade ago - dual cores, q9550, 2500k (that's the one that got me from 2010 to 2023). I play old games, and Fraps says that I've gained a couple of frames per second in old games like StarCraft 2 and SupCom 2.
I didn't jump straight to 4.2; first, I went to 4.0 using Auto volts, then 4.1 ghz (Prime95-stable @ 1.282v BIOS setting). I've actually gone back to 4.1, and I hope to bring the volts down a little. At the moment, I feel like it's a good idea to not force 1.312v to the cpu (but I may change my mind!). AMD is new to me, and it looks like fclk and SOC voltage are settings that are somewhat similar to northbridge/southbridge settings - they can complement the simple "raise cpu clock, raise cpu volts" formula, which I got a little too used to after it became somewhat standard a little over a decade ago. I don't feel the urge to go past 4.2 ghz at this voltage, but I'd like to learn about that stuff. I think it's fantastic that you can do so much with inexpensive boards today.
Circling back, I'd like to reiterate that I'm not sure that overclocking a cpu today, particularly an AMD Ryzen 5 with PBO, is really defensible as a practice that gives benefits to offset the costs, but it really is fun to overclock cpus, even the parts where you're sleeping while Prime95 is running. It's fun. Also, stock is boring.
