Go back to stock settings, see if performance normalizes.

 

Can you define "normalizes"?

 

What happens if you let it idle for a while and then try testing it again? IDK a lot about OCing ryzen but on a lot of intel systems there are short and long term wattage limits that kick in if left unchanged and will lower the CPU speed to save power after a while.

One thing I do know about ryzen, it can remain stable while also performing lower if it doesn't get enough power. Unlike an intel CPU, ryzen doesn't always just crash when it doesn't get enough voltage. It usually will just run slower. Not really sure why the performance was better for a while and then got lower but I suspect more voltage would help anyway.

 

I feel like people are really going to want more info about what your settings are exactly. There are so many automatic processes going on with the OS and BIOS that it's kind of hard to narrow down what could be causing the loss in performance without actually losing any clock speed. Seems like it might be throwing errors somewhere.

This does happen with bad memory OC's, you will get a significant loss in performance if your memory or infinity fabric is causing errors. Ex. If you have a bad memory OC and run a Cinebench test you can actually see the test go significantly slower. Looks like your running at XMP though(?) 3600 should not be a problem.

There could also be some power saving settings in the BIOS that might cause this. Global C-State Control, PSS Support, Power Supply Idle Control. I'm sure there are several other power saving settings in the BIOS that could also contribute to your situation. I guess if you're constantly running calculations then it should not be going into any type of power saving scenario.

These would be my initial questions:
How did you test for stability?
Do you know how hot your RAM got in those few hours of doing calculations?
Did you change any other voltages/timings?
Does it go back to your initial performance boost of your OC when you restart the PC, have you gotten it to go back to that performance at all?

Maybe I've spoiled myself, but 93C seems extremely hot for 1.1875vcore.

Sorry for being all over the place, just wanted to get all my thoughts out without having to post a bunch of different replies.

 

I feel like people are really going to want more info about what your settings are exactly.

Not really. I mean, it simply seems like thermal throttling.

Maybe I've spoiled myself, but 93C seems extremely hot for 1.1875vcore.

Exactly. Unless ambient air temp is signicanlly higher, sounds like the OC isn't setup correctly.

So - I would follow Imglidinhere's advice. Go back to stock and monitor performance under the same work load. That would help define the OP's baseline. From there we can tweak.

 

 

View attachment 2563328

 

Oh yea, ignore what I said earlier. More voltage might help bring performance up if you were having this issue at lower temps but at 93c your temps are definitely an issue.

 

What CPU cooler are you running?

 

Yup she's dead, uninstall and send to me for proper burial 😂😂😂😂😂

 

The temperature was stabilizing at 93 degrees celcius (200 in fahrenheit).
Then I noticed after a few hours that the temperature had dropped to 65-75 degrees and the performance with the calculations was much less.

I'm glad that some members already pointed this out. The fact that you say, temperature dropped to 65-75 degrees means your cpu is performaing as expected, lowering power consumption to drop temps as it will not sustain work load while at 93c.

 

There are a lot of things working against you. First and foremost static OC on 5950x, fundamentally backasswards. I bet at full stock you have higher performance than the 4.4 static OC. But here are the issues and fixes...

1: Cooling inadequate for 4.4ghz static and the load you're using. You can see "Limited 90c" In Ryzen Master, if you're hitting 93, it's thermal throttling.

2: Using Ryzen Master. Use the BIOS, RM is trashware that lies and gives computed values instead of polled values to make user perception match AMD marketing instead of presenting reality.

3: Ryzen Master Voltage is VID not SVI2 last I checked, 1.1875 SET is not enough GET for 4.4 all core load depending on motherboard LLC settings. Going to make a guess and say it's on Auto, so yeah, you'll be around 1.08-1.14 SVI2 depending on workload intensity... not enough for long term heavy all core loads with high temps.

4: You can't raise voltage to gain stability because cooling is inadequate, see issue 1.

5: SOC voltage not ideal. 1.2 SOC for very conservative memory configuration is wasted energy generating pointless heat, exacerbating issue 1, 3, and 4. Try from 1.1v - 1.125v for that memory configuration. 1.2v SOC is the upper safe limit, not the default recommended voltage...

6: Going to guess you've not tuned Core Optimizer, meaning, you're using considerably more power than necessary. By tuning Core Optimizer, you will see a 20-30 watt drop at the same speed and voltage settings. This and reduced SOC voltage combined may let you use 1.2 SET vcore, and still keep temperatures under 90c.

7: PBO limits are silly, 720/420/480 lol. Try like 240/130/140. This should have you hitting a power limit instead of a temperature throttle limit until you get cooling sorted out. Safer for the chip and more performant than bouncing off the 90c thermal throttling point. Once cooling is sorted, 300/170/140 is enough to run like raped-ape in 99% of tasks out there, and you won't be able to cool a full 300 watt 5950x on air cooling anyways so it's not necessary.

Last thing: You're CPU will die a slow death bouncing off 90c at high load 24/7. Temperature is the dominant determinant in electron migration based degradation, not voltage. Temperature creates the permissive environment, voltage and amperage accelerate it. Your 5950x will be degraded in a few years doing this without better cooling. If you're ok with that, rock on!

 

3: Ryzen Master Voltage is VID not SVI2 last I checked, 1.1875 SET is not enough GET for 4.4 all core load depending on motherboard LLC settings. Going to make a guess and say it's on Auto, so yeah, you'll be around 1.08-1.14 SVI2 depending on workload intensity... not enough for long term heavy all core loads with high temps.

The voltage requirement for a 5950x is not that severely limited depending in the application/benchmark.. (atleast not for the better samples)
Just for fun i tested a few runs in Cinebench:
1050mv get was needed for 4550/4400mhz in r23, gave me ~30.1k score with everything open

 

@UltraMega @LXP-F @Slaughtahouse @Imglidinhere @TimeDrapery @VPII @tcclaviger @domdtxdissar

Many thanks for all your replies. I will try to answer all your questions in this message.

First let me say that everything seems to be working normal again now, just like that without me making any changes. It's now running at 4.3ghz on all cores with 1.15 volt. 4.4 ghz crashed my PC a few times below 1.2 volt and at 1.2 it would get up to 95 degrees so it was better to tune it down a bit.

I just did some tests with Cinebench 23 and these are the multicore results:
Without OC and without hyperthreading: 20511 points
With OC and without hyperthreading: 22639 points
Without OC and with hyperthreading: 23592 points
With OC and with hyperthreading: 28374 (reached a max of 93.5 degrees with 1.18125 volts (so I tuned down the voltage some more)

My cooling is Scythe Mugen 5 PCGH edition and it's perfect. Yeah I know I will get nowhere near 5 ghz with this cooler but it's quiet as can be and that's more important to me than a 5-10% extra gain whilst sitting in 70 db of noise the whole day. I tried the NZXT Kraken X53 last week and it's 10 degrees cooler, but like I said it's way too noisy and for me running calculations 24/7 and also working on my PC that's not a nice thing to work in.

I tested my OC for stability by letting my PC run calculations for my algorithm (Metatrader 5) which puts the CPU on a 100% load and the memory under a 70-80% load (32GB). I have no idea how hot my RAM got in those hours. What's the best program to check this? I already have Ryzen Master, Aida64 extreme and CPU-Z but I can't find this in any of these programs.

The only things I changed were these:
CPU MHZ to 4400 for all cores
CPU voltage to 1.18 volt
Vsoc core to 1.2 volt
Dram voltage to 1.5 volt (from 1.35)
Dram CL to 15 (from 16)

@tcclaviger
Wat core optimizer are you referring to? I've tried the Ryzen Master curve optimizer, but when I applied the settings my PC kept crashing weirdly enough. I'll lower the vscoc core as well then as you say. From what I understood is that with a higher voltage like that you enable more power for the DRAM. But that's not neccessary with this configuration you think?

I don't know what you mean by PBO limits. My OC skills are pretty basic compared to yours; I just do it once every 3-5 years or so. And it's okay if my CPU dies a slow death in a few years. I might go for the new Ryzen chips later this year anyway. Right now making calculations as fast as possible is of the essence.

Can any of you refer me to the best overclocking guide for the 5950X? I've looked around a bit and found some but you guys seem to know much more than me what's good.

 

My friend, Core optimizer is in the bios under PBO, usually advanced settings for PBO in the bios. What it basically does is that you cen set for each core a negative value between 0 and-30, where -30 is highly unlikely to work. As for my processor -22 on all cores seem to work but the best is to use CTR2.1 (Clock Tuner for Ryzen) as it would show you your best cores see attached picture where next to each core you will see a number between 218 and 153, yours may be different, but the higher that number the better and more capable the core is. Currently with PBO my score in CB23 is 30129 and fluctuating somewhat but there about, also see attached. The clock speed during this run would hover between 4.6 and 4.5ghz and that is just by tuning it and in the screenshot check my core temps, use Hwinfo64 to check temps will also show you your memory dimm temps. You really do gain alot more using PBO with CO set.

 

Here's my thoughts and personal experience. I don't know how I'm supposed to format this for clarity... but here we go.

Cooling and Possible Heat Savings​

The cooler definitely explains a lot. That is your personal preference though. Since you're running it 100% 24/7 it would still be loud with a liquid setup if you don't have adequate A/C in the room. The heat has to go somewhere. You're basically just limiting the setup by dB, which is limiting stability by heat/wattage.

You could be getting errors from too much heat from the Memory. I'm not sure what kit your using, I thought I saw it in the thread somewhere, but I don't see it now. I feel like 1.5v should not be needed for 3600mhz, that is really going to depend on your Memory kit though. I think memory starts throwing errors at 50c. You can get something like HWiNFO64 to monitor all kinds of parameters of the system, including Memory. Although I think monitoring software sometimes messes with Ryzen Master (or vice-versa?) last time I checked since they poll on the same sensors.

You can probably save some CPU heat/wattage headroom by turning down that Vsoc voltage. Have you tested Vsoc at 1.1 or 1.12? It won't save much at idle, but it will be by a significant amount at load. I am not gaining any stability by using 1.2 vs 1.1 on the newest BIOS w/ Agesa 1.2.0.7. If you end up saving a lot of heat from turning down Vsoc you may be able to increase your CPU clocks, raising Vcore if needed since you would now have more heat headroom.

The same actually goes for your Vcore, it seems you've done your fiddling, but if you don't actually throw any errors with less voltage, you might as well turn the Vcore down more too.

FYI, if you update BIOS, you will want to test all of your new limits and stability since it's pretty common to have performance changes with updated BIOS.

Side note about Gear Down Mode (GDM)​

Memory has a setting called Gear Down Mode (GDM), GearDownEn in Ryzen Master from your initial picture. This setting will raise certain odd numbered timings, your CL15, to an even number, CL16. So I'm not sure if you realized this yet, but your Ryzen Master picture actually shows CL16. You would only be able to go to CL14 with GDM enabled. It is notoriously hard to turn GDM off successfully since it is a setting that adds stability to the Memory during specific Memory operations by using 2 clock cycles instead of 1, hence the need to have an even CL as well as a couple other timings that I'm not 100% sure of.

Overclocking 5000 Series Ryzen​

As far as manual overclocking goes, it's not really much different from past Ryzen CPUs and is highly dependent on what your BIOS allows you to change. Your setup is still just limited by heat. Most of the "OC" guides you will find for 5000 series, and even 3000 series are how to set PBO and Curve Optimizer settings, and/or how great the out-of-the-box algorithm is and to just leave everything on auto. I'm pretty sure PBO settings are just limits for amps and watts that the automatic algorithm uses to determine your power/heat limits anyways, and yours appear to just be set to the motherboard limits.

Here are the current methods I see people using to OC that you can find general instructions for pretty easily:

Manual OC

Manually find and set the highest stable (no crashing or errors during stress testing) clock speed at the voltages you can adequately cool to prevent throttling. Basically what you're already doing. You can potentially get even more performance out of this option if you clock your CCD's individually. Ex. One of my CCD's cores will all do 4850mhz under load just fine, but the other CCD has 2 cores that only boost to 4700mhz without crashing. So if I set an all-core overclock it is capped at 4700mhz on the current BIOS. Unfortunately I can't set per-core clock and voltages or I'd have at least 3 cores set to 4975mhz .

CTR 2.1

Use the program VPII recommended (CTR 2.1) to automatically find optimized settings for the on-board algorithm to use. This software will even change settings on-the-fly based on load, you would probably want to disable this auto profile switching feature and just run whatever profile it gives you for the best all-core workload though. You can do all of this manually with PBO settings and Curve Optimizer, but there's really no need to waste your time, just use the program if you choose this route.

Note. CTR 2.1 might be better than Manual OC for tasks that don't require all of your cores since the cores that can boost higher will boost higher, but from all my testing the actual average speed of all cores will be lower than a manual OC... If it's worth your time I would try both and see which one works better with your program.

Curve Optimizer?

Pretty much the manual version of using CTR 2.1 from above.

Here's a simple overview because I don't know every aspect of tweaking AMD's algorithm, but it works ok as an "Auto" OC with a few wiggle-room settings for personalization.

-Leave CPU clock/Vcore on auto and adjust Curve Optimizer (CO) settings and max boost offset. These settings adjust a table(?) in the boost algorithm that says "Use ____ volts when going ____ghz". If you set a negative offset for the Curve Optimizer it will result in less heat which results in a higher frequency because it's pretty much a feedback loop and boosts higher if cooler, to a point. The cores themselves will still only boost to a safe clock, for that specific core, for the workload. At a certain point the core just won't boost any higher. You can also set this too much into the negative and lose stability because the voltage ends up being too low to sustain the boosted frequency. This setting also only goes to a value of 30, so some cores might be able to handle lower voltages, but the algorithm only allows you to offset it by so much. I'm also not sure what the actual value of this setting stands for, is -30 = -.03v? IDK.
PBO settings adjust your power limits. Not sure if they can be used to add more of an undervolt in conjunction with the Curve Optimizer or what else the PBO settings would even be good for OC'ing-wise.
Note: Curve Optimizer will do nothing if you're running a set clock and voltage because you've manually overwritten clock and voltage settings at that point.

I'm 99.99% sure that not everything written here is 100% correct, so it's best to do your own research. But I tried, and hopefully something in here helps. It was fun to write it up either way.