Gigabyte Aorus AX370 Gaming 5 review - Overclocking With The Ryzen 7 1700

Overclocking

With so many cores in the system we never can resist overclocking. We're keeping things relatively simple. We need to take a couple of steps if we want to overclock. First tip, always invest in good hardware by the way (MOBO/PSU/Memory/Cooling), the cheaper motherboards often are not well tuned for enthusiast overclocking. Also get yourself a good power supply and proper processor cooling. Overclocking with any 8 or more core processor (doesn't matter if that is Intel or AMD) is far more difficult than you expect it to be. 

In this review we use the affordable Ryzen 7 1700 priced at 329 USD. The processor has a 3.0 GHz base clock and can Turbo (binned) to 3.7 GHz.
  

We did a number of heatpipe based overlclocks in other reviews, hence for this one we are now switching towards liquid, LCS cooling. The Cooler is a 240 rad based EK Predator kit with Socket AM4 water-block.

Overclocking 8-cores on a high clock frequency is a tough job, but can be managed relatively easily from the BIOS. You can also use AMD's software tool of course. The Ryzen 7 1700 has a base clock of 3.0 GHz and a boost frequency of 3.7 GHz. During our measurements by trial and error we found that at 1.375~1.450 Volts you will end up at roughly ~4.1 GHz (that is on all eight cores!). And yes, that is not a lot over the default Turbo, but again this is 8-cores. We recommend you leave CPU voltage at the bios auto setting.

BIOS Overclocking

The Guru3D reader-base overclocks mostly from the BIOS to try and find the maximum stable limit. The generic overclock procedure for multiplier based overclocking is as follows:

• Leave base clock (bus) for what it is right now (100 MHz)
• Set the per core multiplier at a maximum of your liking:
• Example 1: 100MHz x 41 = 4100 MHz
• Example 2: 125MHz x 33 = 4125 MHz
• Increase CPU voltage; for the Gigabyte motherboard the AUTO does not work well, pelase select a manual CPU voltage. For a target at 4.0~4.1 Ghz start at 1.350 volts and work your way upwards into a state of equilibrium in perf and cooling temps. We needed 1.45 Volts for a stable 4.1 GHz on all eight cores.
• Make sure your processor is properly cooled as adding voltage = more heat
• Save and Exit BIOS / uEFI 

Here is an example at 4000 MHz @ all cores

For this tweak we test the OC EK Predator LCS cooler. We have been able to sustain a stable 4.1 GHz on all cores of this Ryzen 7 1700 processor.

Basically 4.0~4.1 GHz on all cores number seems to be the sweet spot that I'd like to recommend to you. Overclocking however always varies per system, PC, ASIC quality, cooling and sure... a bit of luck as well.

Power Consumption

Back to that tweak; adding that some extra voltage on the CPU for the OC also has an adverse effect on the overall energy consumption. Under stress and overclocked we do use roughly ~200 Watts under full processor load. That is power consumption for the whole PC measured at the wall socket side including a GeForce GTX 1080 in idle. All characteristics we observe, measure and see look pretty similar to the 8-core 6900K in terms of heat, power consumption and clock frequency wise.