Question Ryzen 3700X unstable low thread boost clocks at stock

Hi-Fi Man

Senior member
Oct 19, 2013
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As the title says for loads under 4 threads the CPU is not stable. I've been having highly random crashes for months now with this CPU and after going through different motherboards and RAM I've come to the conclusion after testing with memtest and prime95 that the CPU is not working as it should. The CPU has never been overclocked or overvolted previously.

My testing with prime95 shows that whenever I set the thread count to lower than 4 prime95 finds errors within minutes and once I turned off boost (CPU runs at base clock of 3.6GHz) the CPU runs prime95 fine with no errors. Since discovering this I've tried overvolting with an offset thinking maybe the CPU is not getting enough voltage but I'm still getting errors. I'm not sure why this CPU is not stable at boost and was wondering if anybody has seen this before? This CPU was bought at launch so maybe I got a bad chip.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,582
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I would return the chip. That's highly unusual behavior. It's boosting out of its own stability range. Unless your temps are insanely high, I would not ascribe any of that behavior to user error.
 
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Hi-Fi Man

Senior member
Oct 19, 2013
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I would return the chip. That's highly unusual behavior. It's boosting out of its own stability range. Unless your temps are insanely high, I would not ascribe any of that behavior to user error.

Temps are fine (cooler is a noctua U12). I started an RMA with AMD so we'll see what happens. It's just highly unusual after at least a hundred installs over the years I've never had a CPU do anything like this.
 

Campy

Senior member
Jun 25, 2010
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Sometimes parts are just defective, or even somewhere between working and non-working. I had a 3700X that would post just fine but refused to boot anything(it arrived in this condition). At first I was convincend it was the motherboard, but after replacing it and getting the exact same problem I was very surprised. I replaced the CPU and everything worked first try, and I haven't had any problems since.
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
Super Moderator
Aug 22, 2001
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I saw a tech tuber have a weird issue with a 3700x. It would BSOD or lock up on any Gigabyte mobo, but run fine in Asus or MSI. Definitely some wonky chips out there.
 

Hi-Fi Man

Senior member
Oct 19, 2013
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It's possible the chip is bad. I am leaning towards very bad AMD chipset drivers. Have you updated the chipset drivers for your 3700x? Perhaps you should try reverting to an older chipset driver to see if that solves your issues.


I've used and updated to every driver revision available to zen 2. I also tried the different power plans; same results.
 

thor23

Member
Jul 13, 2019
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I've heard this type of problem from a lot of launch zen2 buyers, never anything more recent. Disabling cstates or setting power supply to typical current usually helps.
 
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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,229
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I have a Ryzen R5 3600 CPU, that I bought right at launch, or the night right after. It too, is a bit flaky, at times. 99.99% of the time, it's fine, and usually, I have it under a pretty heavy multi-core load (mining, DC). But every 2 weeks or so, it doesn't wake up the monitor from monitor sleep mode, or sometimes, while I'm actively using it, it just hard-freezes, and the monitor sometimes goes off at that time. Very weird.

I'm also running 2x 1TB PCI-E 3.0 x4 NVMe SSDs (Intel 660p) in RAID-0, and the RAID drivers seem to need a little bit of CPU time. Wonder if sometimes, that hits a "corner case"? Or maybe, hmm.

Does Windows 10 itself, try to read SMART info on the drives, every two weeks or so, to assess disk health? I have one SATA SSD besides, for my backup OS installation on this PC, but no spinners on this PC. When I was first installing them, I was a little usure how to get the RAID drivers installed, and running CrystalDiskInfo would automagically HARD-HANG the PC.

I wonder if that's still what's actually triggering the hang, only Windows 10 is trying to access the same disk-related API calls, and thus driver calls, that CDI was, and hanging because of that. Hmm. I might have just figured this out.

Unless, of course, I run CDI right now, and it runs OK, because I've got up-to-date (relatively) AMD RAID drivers installed. Then I'll know it's not that reason.

Let me try it.

Edit: Hmm, this time, trying to launch CDI, didn't hard-hang the PC, but it simply didn't see the RAID array. Maybe CDI was updated since, to avoid that hang issue with AMD RAID drivers? The only drive that it saw was the secondary SATA drive.
 

Hi-Fi Man

Senior member
Oct 19, 2013
601
120
106
I have a Ryzen R5 3600 CPU, that I bought right at launch, or the night right after. It too, is a bit flaky, at times. 99.99% of the time, it's fine, and usually, I have it under a pretty heavy multi-core load (mining, DC). But every 2 weeks or so, it doesn't wake up the monitor from monitor sleep mode, or sometimes, while I'm actively using it, it just hard-freezes, and the monitor sometimes goes off at that time. Very weird.

I'm also running 2x 1TB PCI-E 3.0 x4 NVMe SSDs (Intel 660p) in RAID-0, and the RAID drivers seem to need a little bit of CPU time. Wonder if sometimes, that hits a "corner case"? Or maybe, hmm.

Does Windows 10 itself, try to read SMART info on the drives, every two weeks or so, to assess disk health? I have one SATA SSD besides, for my backup OS installation on this PC, but no spinners on this PC. When I was first installing them, I was a little usure how to get the RAID drivers installed, and running CrystalDiskInfo would automagically HARD-HANG the PC.

I wonder if that's still what's actually triggering the hang, only Windows 10 is trying to access the same disk-related API calls, and thus driver calls, that CDI was, and hanging because of that. Hmm. I might have just figured this out.

Unless, of course, I run CDI right now, and it runs OK, because I've got up-to-date (relatively) AMD RAID drivers installed. Then I'll know it's not that reason.

Let me try it.

Edit: Hmm, this time, trying to launch CDI, didn't hard-hang the PC, but it simply didn't see the RAID array. Maybe CDI was updated since, to avoid that hang issue with AMD RAID drivers? The only drive that it saw was the secondary SATA drive.
I would not be using any fakeRAID drivers if I were you. Try out Windows storage spaces; I'm using it right now with two 6TB SAS HDDs in a mirror and performance is pretty good and it's portable.
 

Hi-Fi Man

Senior member
Oct 19, 2013
601
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106
Update and resolution:

Just got my 3800X in and it's completely stable and runs 100mv lower at stock on top of running at higher clocks than my 3700X. I got sold probably the worst CPU bin in history; I'm at a loss of words on this one. I've never had a CPU not able to perform to specs like this. In addition, AMD wants me to pay shipping for this return...