AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT review

Processors 199 Page 27 of 29 Published by

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Overclocking and tweaking

Overclocking and tweaking by BIOS

When you plan to overclock the processor, always invest in good hardware. And that includes a proper motherboard, power supply, memory and of course, cooling. Cheaper motherboards are often not well tuned or designed in terms of power delivery for enthusiast overclocking. That can translate into a lesser power delivery (phases) design quickly warming up the related components, causing instability. Also, never underestimate the benefits of a quality power supply. Most Silver rated ones we can recommend.

When you tweak a processor, depending on what you are trying to achieve, you often need to add voltage to the processor, which in turn creates more heat. Ergo, proper processor cooling is mandatory. Overclocking with a many-core processor (doesn't matter if that is Intel or AMD) is often more difficult to accomplish. If you overclock by BIOS (which 99% of us do), really it all comes down to the quality of the BIOS (mobo brand), and merely a few registers you need to fiddle with. 

Remember that we're going for an all-core overclock and that means a lower clock frequency than the highest Turbo bin offers. What you need to do:

  1. Enable and start at 4100 MHz (41 Multiplier)
  2. Apply ~1.40 to the CPU (or simply leave it at auto)
  3. Work your way upwards from there until the system becomes unstable and then back down at least 100 MHz.
No Bueno
We halted tweaking this processor as we could not yield tangible results, at best we could go for an all-core 4200 MHz, but barely. Often the scores in say Cinebench would be lower than the default score values. it has everything to do with voltages and heat. For example with the multiplier set to 43 and the rest of the BIOS set to auto (incl voltages) we'de hit temps that exceeded 95 Degrees C, using a 280mm LCS cooler (Kraken X63).  So, unfortunately, we had a very poor processor for further tweaking. Hey, that happens in a real-world purchase as well. Tweaking and overclocking is a bit about luck when you cannot further bin the processors.

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