Question Running 5950x in eco mode

PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
21,756
600
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I picked up one of these during one of the sales to upgrade my unraid server. I was thinking of running it in eco mode to save power/heat since I mostly bought it for the extra cores for VMs. I'm also running an unimpressive x470 motherboard so I wasn't planning on stressing things anymore than necessary.

Anything I should be aware of on this? I actually haven't seen it talked about much in reviews, but some people seem to get 85% performance in the 65watt mode.

Also, how does PBO tie into this? I have a single eco mode 65watt setting in bios but there's also PBO settings of 105, 65 and I think 85. I haven't really paid attention to overclocking much in years outside of ram/XMP so I usually just use defaults.
 

Jan Olšan

Senior member
Jan 12, 2017
538
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They are basically alternative versions of doing the same. You could also limit yourself to just lowering the PPT value (142 W default for 105W CPUs like 5950X).
Eco mode feels like the most straightforward option to use but hard to say what is best tested/validated on that particular board.

I used eco mode with 7950X for a few months recently, seemed to work fine. That was just desktop/gaming, not server use where you want rock-solid stability, though.