My AMD experience with Ryzen

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Abula
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Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:22 pm
Location: Guatemala

My AMD experience with Ryzen

Post by Abula » Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:44 am

Its more a rant, but i have now my fair share of testing Ryzen with 5950x and 5900x for more than 6 months, marvelous cpus, faster and more efficient than Intel 10/11gen, its nice to see AMD really putting some hard competition with intel, but not all is great with them.

The problem for me with AMD is that the CPU/motherboards are tweaked into boosting very aggressive even with mid end tasks (have tested MSI, ASUS and Gigabyte), while intel is more down to earth into where it needs to do some aggressive boosting. I know you can do a lot of tweaking, and even undervolting, probably disabling boosting, etc, as for sure the AMD cpus are superior to Intel offering, but the way they come setup is what bothers me.

I'm fine with having noise when a task demands it, like encoding, streaming, transcoding, rendering, etc. But here is where AMD is better, when you use all the cores, the boosting is well done, i never even reach 80c, its like they limit very well the voltages and the clocks so the cpu remains cool and performs very well. My issue is when not all the cores are used, which is most of the day for me, for example opening my Surveillance cameras software, gaming (depends on the game), some rendering of videos that don't use the GPU, its like the CPU knows it will not use all cores and starts boosting very aggressive, i tried to keep my fan profiles as high as i can before load, NH-D15s with NF-A15 at 900rpms idle, this is to sustain the load, and keep them like that for as long as i can, in my case 70C, where i ramp them up, if i don't do this, i wont catch the cpu before it throttles. The problem is i trigger the NxWitness (camera software) and suddenly im at 80C with fans already going into 1250rpms, not super noisy but not quiet, i start doing other stuff, the load increases and so will the fans will punish me with more noise.... all of this with my intel 9900k is less than 55C average 60C peaks, this is with the CPU fans at 500rpms totally silent. So fine, i cant use my surveillance software with anything else with AMD, alright not a big deal, its only one app right. Well with gaming, games like BF5 or APEX will send the CPU to 75C minimum with 80C+ peaks, not quiet again, and you need to drop things on the background to avoid more noise. Who would have thought in gaming i now hear the CPU while i cant the GPU, ironic no?

Im still going to try the dynamic undervolting, but BIOS releases still have been fairly often so im still waiting to see them more stable.

Either way, i can tell you without much tweaking, intel is quieter for my line of use, probably not as capable as the 5900x/5950x, but here is my summary,
IDLE = AMD and Intel are fine
MID LOAD = Intel is much cooler and quieter multi tasking.
HIGH LOAD = AMD is better, here is where intel will do more noise and AMD is more capable and efficient

Take my comments with a grain of salt, people with 5600x/5800x with less cores and lower factory boost clocks, are less likely to encounter temperature/noise issues under the same loads i work with.

PS, AMD 6900XT is amazing, not only is super quiet, never seen it even hit 70C. The way it manages voltages with multi monitor is better than Nvidia, no flickering, no high clocks/temperatures with 3 monitors, Nvidia struggles with this, and its very picky with refresh rates with multi monitor, while AMD seems to do it fine without any issues.

Japanese Capacitor
Posts: 360
Joined: Wed Oct 21, 2020 5:16 am
Location: Warszawa, Poland

Re: My AMD experience with Ryzen

Post by Japanese Capacitor » Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:02 am

There're a lot of complaints about temperatures-noise side of Ryzens, so trying to create best fan curves is for sure PITA. Does any of Windows software you use (e.g. mobo's one) allow to create switchable profiles for cooler and case fans? I mean set default-bios fan curves for idle conditions - quiet, maybe even constant (0-100C) speeds, because you don't need to care about short temperature spikes when e.g. opening many browser tabs. And before load just switch to different profile with adequate to given load fan curves. I've had a lot of tweaking with case fans and just couldn't create one, which never speeds up during webbrowsing, but always cools everything nicely during games due to so much different CPU temps they give. So I gave up on this and before gaming I just open mobo's software and move one dot from constant inaudible speed to constant max and click Apply. Thanks to fan hub this one move switches all three fans, so I use it as beloved voltage fan controller switch I hated my case for not having such.

nomoon
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Re: My AMD experience with Ryzen

Post by nomoon » Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:24 am

I just got my 5950x running a few weeks ago. For graphics, I’m still running on my old tiny R7 360, and I won’t upgrade it until prices are reasonable, which may not be until 2022. I agree that the CPU seems jumpy in regards to temperature spikes.

I’m cooling the 5950x with a DH-15 inside a Fractal Meshify 2. I used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut grease instead of the grease that came with the DH-15. I placed a pad of ¼” neoprene between the top mesh grill and the frame. This works well to reduce noise escaping through the top and is intended to increase positive pressure from the front fans to push air over the MB and the CPU. I replaced all case fans with Noctua 140mm PWN (NF-A14 PWN). I also added a third fan to the front. I’m using a Gigabyte Aorus Master MB.

I’m currently idling the CPU at little over 500 RPM. The biggest source of noise at idle seems to be from the spinning hard drives (6 TB + 14 TB). I noticed that there didn’t seem to be much difference in temperature whether there was 1 core at 100% or all cores at 100%. My best solution so far was to adjust the fan curve in Smartfan in the Gigabyte MB bios. Even at 80C, its now doesn’t blow all that hard. This seems to keep it from getting too loud from the short single core burst from doing simple things like opening an application. Beyond 80C, the curve gets steep for when it really needs it.

Japanese Capacitor
Posts: 360
Joined: Wed Oct 21, 2020 5:16 am
Location: Warszawa, Poland

Re: My AMD experience with Ryzen

Post by Japanese Capacitor » Wed Jun 23, 2021 10:59 am

I see another believer of Gamers Nexus' ,,you can run your fans slower in open mesh case" ;)

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