The Ryzen 1700x and 1800x report a temperature that can be up to 20 degrees C warmer than the chip is actually experiencing. That means the chip is much cooler than it reports. But Why?!?
The thermal inertia! In this video, we walk through it. The heatsink must be kept as cool as possible on those chips to provide the thermal headroom to be able to get the XFR boost.
Interesting. Your explanation makes sense, but it still seems like a silly thing to do.
Clever solutions to unique problems often seem silly in the short term.
It sounds like a reasonable thing for AMD to do, but I find it odd that the reporting to the end-user wasn't sorted prior to launch and that this wasn't explained by AMD at some point. If it was planned then they must have known this would confuse people and become something of a problem in certain scenarios.
Maybe they'll see you explanation and go "Uhhhh, yeah of course that's what we meant. That is exactly our reason, duh. What else could it have possible been? Totally planned out to help OEMs. nervous chuckle"
lol @wendell Title should have been "It's not a bug... it's a feature!"
Good explanation though. Now I'm wondering if thermal throttling goes off the reported temp or the actual. Doesn't BIOS still have a shutdown thermal limit? (been working on old systems recently, ribbon cables and such)
I don't doubt that it is happening because reviewers were like it says its 80C+, but there isn't as much heat coming off the rad that should be for a 80C+ cpu. It also explains why the 1700 was overclocking so well compared to the 1700x and 1800x
As for the reasoning. IDK, it kind of seems like it would of been better to simply work with manufacturers of motherboards to have more aggressive cooling for the 1700X and 1800X. Up until now it has probably done the opposite of what was intended, and lowered the max performance of the 1700X and 1800X. It also seems like taking the temp, falsifying it, then using software to correct for the falsification will probably be less accurate than if they simply didn't falsify it in the first place. Its also an area where i would think consistency and reliability are paramount.
Other AMD docs indicate that 60 degrees is the temp that allows maximum overclock/XFR.
Having the chip idle and report 60 deg basically ensures that those "features" are not ever available unless you find some near or below zero cooling solution that doesn't leave condensation everywhere.
Maybe AMD expects everyone to AIO water cool and put the Rad in an ice bucket?