R5 1600
MSi Tomahawk B450
Adata Gammix 3000
Wraith cooler (stock), 3 x 120mm in, 120 + 92(?) + 80(?) out
Fooling around with OC for the first time - performace on R5 1600 @ 3.4 (from 3.2 w/ MSi game boost) and 2933 (provided XMP profile #2) has been more than adequate for my purposes, but I got bored the other day and decided to see if these could be pushed a little. Currently seem to be running stable at 3.9 across all cores, 3.2ghz on RAM. I didn’t grab screenshots of benchmarks when I tested @ 3.4/2933 (3.6 boost on 2 cores?) - but they were pretty much exactly on par with expected/average - i.e. there is a notable improvement of 8-14% w/ current config. Questions:
- While sys became unstable (one crash during stress) @ 4ghz, temps and voltage seemed excellent - what other variables prevent CPU from achieving speed beyond a certain threshold? If I’m stable at 3.9 with low/efficient voltage and good thermals I’m happy with that and probably won’t push it further anyway - just curious.
- Recommendations from online sources suggest running stress for 8+ hrs or up to overnight… 10min-ish/double the time necessary for temps to plateau seems like it should be sufficient to test variability of performance, particularly considering my greatest demand is running circa 2016 games at 60fps. Doesn’t this unnecessarily ask a lot/why cook it so long?
- There’s s a ton of “warnings” online about overclocking RAM. I’ve seen it suggested that even memtest won’t necessarily always identify/produce issues. Is there actually any real worry here beyond sys instability/crashing if pushed too far? I don’t competitive game/this machine is only for leisure/no work, so a crash/loss of data isn’t a big deal.
- Is voltage as reported from uefi/bios (MSI) generally accurate? I left voltage “automatic” and increased CPU ratio dramatically and RAM speed significantly, and sys shows little to no increase in voltage from the step(s) up - I don’t know if this is unusual?
- Any general (or specific) warnings or recommendations for the [mostly] uninformed casual user screwing around with this?
Edit: rough avg 35C idle, 70C stress