Question Ryzen 7 5800x All Core Boost? Trying to get that last bit of performance.

[SMOGZINN]

I just put together a new system around a Ryzen 7 5800x on an Asus Rog Strix B550-F Gaming Motherboard. The CPU is cooled with a Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120 Plus, with two fans.

Right away when I loaded all cores with Cinebench it hit 95c and throttled. Probably the thermal paste. The paste that came with the heatsink was the thickest paste I've ever worked with, and it did not go on well. So, I bought some Noctua NT-H1 paste. It is good stuff, I've used it before. Now my temps never go above 80c but the CPU still never boosts past 4.56. It should be hitting 4.7-4.8.

The case is open, the fans are spinning. It is cool in my work room. I have Precision Boost Overdrive turned on.

So, what you think. Am I missing something? Should I try reapplying the paste again? Just don't worry about it?

 

[Shmee]

Afaik this sounds about right. You likely will not get highest clocks on a heavier, all core load. Now you could play around with PBO2 and the Curve Optimizer, but it might not make a whole lot of difference. Also, different chips will boost differently to a degree, basically silicon lottery. Motherboard and UEFI settings are factors as well. The expected max boost of a 5800X is 4.7GHz, but I had one that would boost up to almost 4.9GHz out of the box.

 

[UsandThem]

You don't really lose much turning PBO / Asus Performance Enhancement off, and it will save you quite a bit of power / heat on the 5800X.

Even with my 3700x on the same motherboard you have, ran a good amount hotter with that enabled, and the 5800X is a hotter CPU.

 

[SMOGZINN]

You don't really lose much turning PBO / Asus Performance Enhancement off, and it will save you quite a bit of power / heat on the 5800X.

Even with my 3700x on the same motherboard you have, ran a good amount hotter with that enabled, and the 5800X is a hotter CPU.

Hm, I thought it was the other way around, that PBO undervolted the cores. I apparently need to do some more reading and experimentation on that.

 

[UsandThem]

Hm, I thought it was the other way around, that PBO undervolted the cores. I apparently need to do some more reading and experimentation on that.

PBO enabled / Performance Enhancement is pushing the CPU to it's maximum performance and power/heat be damned setting.

Disable that, and both your idle and load temps will be much, much better.

 

[Shmee]

Hm, I thought it was the other way around, that PBO undervolted the cores. I apparently need to do some more reading and experimentation on that.

It depends. The original PBO is generally an all round auto performance boost/OC. PBO2, which is only available on Zen 3 with certain boards I believe, gives you more control, such as being able to set an offset per core for the curve optimizer, which can be - or + in voltage. Commonly - offsets are used for undervolts, which can allow the CPU to run cooler and faster for longer, assuming the undervolts are stable.

 

[SMOGZINN]

PBO enabled / Performance Enhancement is pushing the CPU to it's maximum performance and power/heat be damned setting.

Disable that, and both your idle and load temps will be much, much better.

It depends. The original PBO is generally an all round auto performance boost/OC. PBO2, which is only available on Zen 3 with certain boards I believe, gives you more control, such as being able to set an offset per core for the curve optimizer, which can be - or + in voltage. Commonly - offsets are used for undervolts, which can allow the CPU to run cooler and faster for longer, assuming the undervolts are stable.

Thank you for the info. I am going to dig into this more, I am fairly certain my MB has PBO2, so I'll start the process of tweaking it.
I know it is totally unnecessary, and I'll only get a few percentage differences, but it sure it fun to do.

 

[UsandThem]

Thank you for the info. I am going to dig into this more, I am fairly certain my MB has PBO2, so I'll start the process of tweaking it.
I know it is totally unnecessary, and I'll only get a few percentage differences, but it sure it fun to do.

It's always about that final 5% - 10%. To get that, CPUs are pushed hard.

It's not just an AMD thing either. The 12900K is an example of the exact same thing. To get just that tiny extra boost to 5.2 Ghz (say compared to the 12700K's 5.0 Ghz), you pay for it heavily in power usage and heat.

Some people gladly pay the penalty for their own reasons. Me, I will gladly give up the 5% - 10% every time to save the power and heat. I will never notice the extra 200-300 Mhz in anything outside of benchmarks, and that's just not important to me at all.

 

[SMOGZINN]

It's always about that final 5% - 10%. To get that, CPUs are pushed hard.

It's not just an AMD thing either. The 12900K is an example of the exact same thing. To get just that tiny extra boost to 5.2 Ghz (say compared to the 12700K's 5.0 Ghz), you pay for it heavily in power usage and heat.

Some people gladly pay the penalty for their own reasons. Me, I will gladly give up the 5% - 10% every time to save the power and heat. I will never notice the extra 200-300 Mhz in anything outside of benchmarks, and that's just not important to me at all.

For the most part I would rather have a system that runs cool and quiet. I'll will play with it to see how far it will go, but that is mostly for fun. For everyday running I'll probably pick something lower on the performance curve.
I've been running an I5=2500k for something like 8 years. The last year with only 8 gig of ram in single channel (ram stick died, and I kept telling myself I would just build a new computer and never got around to it). Even at it's worst this will be a huge improvement.