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I just spent a couple of weeks taking a $99 cpu from 3.7ghz to 4.2ghz on a $129 motherboard (Asus Prime B550-PLUS) with some decent performance RAM (2x8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3600). I haven't overclocked a new chip for over a decade, and I didn't put this build together to overclock. The priority was having a working home office computer for less than $400 (I already had some parts, including a very over-powered Antec 1200 psu). But I educated myself about the cpu and board and was happily surprised to find that they could do stuff, so I went into BIOS and did stuff, and ran Prime95, made adjustments, and did it again. I ended up at 4.2ghz with 1.312vcore (BIOS), with RAM running at DOCP settings and fclk at 1800 (temps are good, peaked at mid-70s; I have a DeepCool AG400 air cooler on the cpu). I started with setting cpu clock ratio to 40 with Auto volts, then went to 4.1ghz with 1.28v (manual), and eventually 4.2ghz at 1.312v, with 12+ hours of error-free Prime95, which is at least a good start in terms of stabilization and tweaking, the general goal of which will be to lower voltage. I've actually backed off from 4.2ghz to 4.1 ghz 24/7, primarily to keep volts low.
That sort of brings me to the other part of this post. I've been away from the OC scene for a while, and I was pretty uninformed with regard to what chips and boards do now. In particular, and specifically with regard to AMD, it sounds like cpus now have built-in performance-boosting functions like Performance Boost Overdrive which make overclocking sort of pointless. The general sentiment seems to be that these built-in or BIOS-driven boosters, when considered along with the relative fragility of 7 nm chips, makes turning up the volts and heat for "just a few more frames per second" not worth the cost to the chip's long-term performance and lifespan.
This is my first AMD build, and it looks like there's some stuff in BIOS, like SOC voltage which is perhaps similar? to old northbridge/southbridge settings as complements to cpu clocks and volts, which could be used to lower vcore. Those might be helpful if I want to go higher, and also to get cpu volts down at present clocks. I enjoy doing these things, and I tell myself that I am getting a few more quality frames per second..,but I haven't run any performance tests yet, like Cinebench, got tired of them a decade ago, but they're legit ways to measure performance and show it to others, so I'm gonna do them, at least to compare stock settings to this overclock. But I'm wondering if I should be prepared to see very little change or improvement? Is overclocking as a way of unlocking otherwise-inaccessible levels of performance in cpus no longer really needed, because of things like PBO?
That sort of brings me to the other part of this post. I've been away from the OC scene for a while, and I was pretty uninformed with regard to what chips and boards do now. In particular, and specifically with regard to AMD, it sounds like cpus now have built-in performance-boosting functions like Performance Boost Overdrive which make overclocking sort of pointless. The general sentiment seems to be that these built-in or BIOS-driven boosters, when considered along with the relative fragility of 7 nm chips, makes turning up the volts and heat for "just a few more frames per second" not worth the cost to the chip's long-term performance and lifespan.
This is my first AMD build, and it looks like there's some stuff in BIOS, like SOC voltage which is perhaps similar? to old northbridge/southbridge settings as complements to cpu clocks and volts, which could be used to lower vcore. Those might be helpful if I want to go higher, and also to get cpu volts down at present clocks. I enjoy doing these things, and I tell myself that I am getting a few more quality frames per second..,but I haven't run any performance tests yet, like Cinebench, got tired of them a decade ago, but they're legit ways to measure performance and show it to others, so I'm gonna do them, at least to compare stock settings to this overclock. But I'm wondering if I should be prepared to see very little change or improvement? Is overclocking as a way of unlocking otherwise-inaccessible levels of performance in cpus no longer really needed, because of things like PBO?
