Problem
I’m not sure if this is by design or a bug, but when I’m running my 5950x in Windows 10 with the “Balanced” power plan, despite having a 420mm Arctic Liquid Freezer II with fan speeds around 1000-1200RPM+ in a ~25C ambient room, I’m averaging 60C+ when idling and 80C-90C under synthetic full load. It appears the voltages stay around 1.45v - 1.5v and the clock rate stays around 4GHz-4.5GHz, which seems rather high for idling (seems more like “High Performance” than a “Balanced” plan).
Meanwhile, if I drop the power plan to the “Power Saver” option, my temps become more normalized with 30-35C idles and 60C+ under synthetic full load; unfortunately, the clock rate drops to a min ~2GHz and a max of ~3GHz (0.9v - 1.2v).
Things got a little stranger… I ran prime 95 on small FFTs and the clock rate and voltage went DOWN when the CPU utilization went UP.
I also ran Cinebench R23 and sure enough… the frequency and voltage went down as utilization went up. Check out the CPU Core Voltages…
Before running Cinebench and idling at the desktop (1.487v):
and while running Cinebench (1.038v):
It’s almost as if the Balanced plan is somehow inverted?
I dropped the maximum processor speed to 99% in the Balanced power plan and now it won’t boost above 3.30GHz (or just below the 3.4GHz base), but at least, while idling, my temps hover around ~35C and voltages around ~1.1v.
It also appears when waking from the sleep, the power plan reverts back to Balanced despite being set to Power Saver. I have to set it back to Balanced, wait 30 seconds, then reset it back to Power Saver for the CPU to downclock from 4GHz-4.5GHz/1.45v-1.5v.
Thinking that this is a Windows only issue, I switched over to Linux Mint 20 and I got what I expected to see with the CPU idling around 2.2GHz and boosting to ~4.5GHz during a short burst synthetic full load.
Is anyone getting the same results with their 5950x with an ASUS x570 motherboard?
Specs
Motherboard: Asus x570 Hero VII Wifi (BIOS Rev. 3003)
CPU: 5950x (stock)
CPU Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer II 420mm (Rev. 3)
GPU: EVGA 3090 FTW3 Hybrid (stock)
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-3800 CL14 Memory (XMP enabled)
Boot Drive: Sabrent 1TB Rocket 4 Plus NVMe 4.0
Case: Fractal Meshify 2 XL
To be thorough, I’ve updated the BIOS on my ASUS x570 Hero VIII (tried running everything stock) to the latest version (3003), updated Windows (20H2), installed the Asus chipset drivers, installed the AMD x570 chipset drivers and I’ve tried reapplying thermal paste and reseating my AIO on the CPU socket multiple times… but alas, same high idle frequency/high vCore/high idle temps.