Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Control: management of fans, temp/rpm monitoring via soft/hardware

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Freeco
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Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by Freeco » Thu Aug 29, 2019 11:46 am

I recently switched from a 4-year old Skylake Core i5 to an AMD Ryzen 5 3600. My Skylake build was extremely quiet: inaudible during normal activities, only low noise when stressing the CPU over a long period of time.
Again, I chose my new components with low noise in mind, and re-used my Fractal Design R5 case with its stock fans, as I've always been happy with it. Like with my Skylake build I rely on Asus FanXpert to control the 2 case fans and CPU fan based on the CPU temperature. Because the Scythe Mugen Max (140mm fan) has become a bit dated and doesn't support the AM4 socket, I went for the Scythe Mugen 5 PCGH Edition, which should be quite silent according to several reviews although it has 2 120mm fans.

Performance wise I'm very happy with my new build. Acoustically however... it's a step back from what I've grown accustomed to for the past 4 years.
At idle it's still OK, but because a Zen 2 processor auto-overclocks, I do hear the fans spinning up for a short while even at light loads like webbrowsing. It's not extremely load of course, but once you're used to hardly ever noticing fan noise, it does get noticeable quite quickly again.

I'm looking for a bit of guidance how to improve things, while not sacrificing CPU performance by turning off the PBO feature.
I'm thinking there may be ways to better set the FanXpert profiles, using better thermal paste (my tube of Arctic Silver 5 is already a couple of years old), replacing the Fractal Design case fans with something quieter, perhaps replace the heatsink with something even quieter.
I haven't looked at new case fans yet, as the official specs can't be trusted anyway. And unfortunately SPCR hasn't done any reviews the past few years anymore. Luckily there's still this forum for some good hands-on user experience.
So let's have it :) Who's got a quiet Ryzen 3000 build and how have you accomplished that?

edit, I see I should update my signature. It still has the specs from my Haswell build. My previous Skylake build is listed here. And my Ryzen 3600 build is listed here (sorry, Dutch site).

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Aug 29, 2019 12:01 pm

It shouldn't be hard to quietly cool this 65W CPU.

I wouldn't worry about the thermal paste age...and for 65w CPUs and a big cooler, there will only be a few degrees C diff between the best non-metal paste and the worst. If for some reason you still want to replace it, look at MX-4. It's a little better performance and inexpensive.

What kind of cpu temps are you seeing at idle and stress load?
What's the temp loading/unloading profile look like? A slow dropping temp going from load to idle implies a poor CPU/cooler mating.

Some quick things you can look at:
- see if your motherboard is overvolting the CPU...some have aggressive profiles in order to look good for reviews by getting that extra 0.1% of extra performance.
- look at the hysteresis setting (time delay before fan changes speed) for Fan Xpert (are you using the bios level of windows utility?). edit it to a longer time between changes. This can stop the up/down/up/down type of fan speeds for quick /short cpu loads.

After that, it's profile tuning.

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by flyingsherpa » Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:15 am

CA_Steve wrote:It shouldn't be hard to quietly cool this 65W CPU.
If he's using PBO, it's no longer a 65 W CPU... but still, you're right, it shouldn't be that much worse.

OP, that heatsink and CPU should work well. Things to try:

- Tweak fan profile curve... sounds like you thought of that, but this can make a huge difference
- Update your BIOS. Zen2 has had some launch issues where some configs will keep the CPU at higher voltages than the load dictates (basically it doesn't idle properly). Sometimes just having the wrong monitoring program (e.g. HWinfo, though I think they're one of the better ones in this regard) running can mess with the idle, so the CPU runs hotter than needed.

Personally, I ended up doing a fan swap, even on my decently-rated heatsink (Noctua NH-U12S) and it made a huge difference in noise. The Noctua A12 fan is amazing (it replaced the stock F12 which just had to spin much faster so it was noisier).

Freeco
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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by Freeco » Fri Aug 30, 2019 10:42 am

While doing a torture test (Prime95 blend test + FurMark GPU stress test) the CPU temp stabilizes at 76°C after a few mins.
Ryzen Master reports the PPT of the CPU is at 100% of 88W, and I see the individual core speeds drop to 3850MHz.
When I stop the torture test the temp drop back to 36°C quite quickly, and real idling temp is 29° with ambient currently at 24,5°.

I'm already on the latest BIOS version. I didn't tinker too much in the BIOS. Everything is pretty much stock (auto), except for my RAM XMP profile as I have a kit of 3600MHz @ 1.35V.
I have the latest AMD chipset driver. And I have the Windows power profile set to AMD Ryzen Balanced.

The fan speeds are controlled by Asus FanXpert, which is set in the BIOS. For my day to day stuff I'm running Windows with a non-admin user, so the Asus AI Suite 3 can't start (needs admin).
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I had the settings more 'relaxed' before, cause these fans can spin way slower. But then the very frequent speed changes would become very noticeable. So I decided to set the baseline at a higher fan speed. It's better, but still not as I'd like it to be.

The hysteresis, would that be the "Smoothing Up/Down Time" option? It's set to the default 0sec for all 3 profile (cause I don't really know what it means).
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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by CA_Steve » Fri Aug 30, 2019 11:05 am

hysteresis = fan smoothing. Set that to 5 sec for the CPU and 30 sec for the case fans for a start and relax the fan curves back down where they were. see what happens.

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by CA_Steve » Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:48 pm

You might try benchmarking the performance of an app you care about with PBO on and off and see if it makes a noticeable enough difference in speed and temps to make it worth it or not.

Abula
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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by Abula » Fri Aug 30, 2019 1:42 pm

I'm looking for a bit of guidance how to improve things, while not sacrificing CPU performance by turning off the PBO feature.
What i would do first is see if the Asus FanXpert2 CPU temperature is the same as your Tctl/TDie (from HWinfo), just to reference if its accurate both in idle and load, in the past Asus have done their own algorithms in terms of temperature arguing it was more accurate that way, personally for me its a pain, as it never matched nor had a straight delta that i could adapt, but if you establish its the same, what i would do is

1) Check the temperature where light usage peaks, for example opening webrowser, watching a video, opening a spreadsheet, etc, the usual things that are not heavy loaded.
2) Establish the highest fan speed you can run the CPU fan without it being audible (same with the case fans).
3) Set your fan expert matching your fan speed and temperature, this way you ensure the highest cushioning in cooling while still remaining inaudible (this will also remove any breathing effect on peaking and dropping that happens a lot on air cooling).
4) From there plan your next breakpoints as you see fit, how much temperature you are willing to let the CPU vs the rpms/noise you willing to take.

From there you have to do a lot of testing, like usual browsing to see if you are sustaining the temps and rpms where its inaudible. Also run Aida64 or Blender to stress the cpu to the max simply to see how your fan curve is working. If you are not happy with the noise/performance you have some option,

1) Re install the CPU cooler, and see if you had good contact, Sychte mounting is very good, even if you apply extra paste it will be push out due to how it mounts.
2) A mild undervolt and repeat the steps above.
3) Disabling PBO.
4) Upgrade the cooler, something like NH-D15S (with dual fans) will give you slightly lower temps or same temps and lower rpms/noise.

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by teodoro » Sat Aug 31, 2019 12:54 pm

on my x470-f gaming (and I assume all modern asus motherboards) the fan control has a 'feature' in which 1.) if the upper temperature is exceeded, the fan goes to 100% speed and 2.) the maximum upper temperature value is 75C. so if you want to rely on bios fan control, I would suggest setting the upper temperature for every fan to be 75C and to set the cpu fan max duty cycle to whatever speed is required to stay <= 75C during sustained workloads. my asus board also seems to pump the voltage even with pbo disabled, so I use a -0.1V offset. I'm running a 2600x, though, and undervolting zen 2 is a different beast.

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by Tzupy » Sat Aug 31, 2019 2:39 pm

Arctic Silver 5 is outdated, there are much better options now. Check this recent Guru3D review:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/g ... 019,1.html

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by CA_Steve » Sat Aug 31, 2019 4:36 pm

Tzupy wrote:Arctic Silver 5 is outdated, there are much better options now. Check this recent Guru3D review:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/g ... 019,1.html
"Much better" might be overstating it a bit. If you are a rabid overclocker/overvolter, then every degree C matters...but for normal operation, there's only a few degrees C difference between the non-metal pastes..even with the overvolted and overclocked baseline that Guru3D uses.

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by teodoro » Sun Sep 01, 2019 4:51 am

indeed, that 3-4 degree difference between arctic silver and the top paste will only narrow at more reasonable voltage. silicon lottery will play a role, but my 8700k could hold 4.7 on all core at ~1.19V and stock speed at ~1.13V. I wouldn’t buy more AS5 today but for a 65w tdp cpu I doubt you’re going to see more than a degree difference.

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by Freeco » Mon Sep 02, 2019 3:44 am

ok, thanks guys. I have some options to play with.
(If I don't forget) I'll update this topic with my results.

Correct, AC5 is outdated (I had read that same review) and my tube is already a few years old (as mentioned).
I'll have a look which good alternatives are available on Amazon, and probably buy some new paste when I need something else there in the future. Just in case...

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by Abula » Mon Sep 02, 2019 7:16 pm


Freeco
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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by Freeco » Tue Sep 03, 2019 11:45 am

Interesting theory about the heatpipe orientation vs chiplets location
However, my 3600 only has 1 chiplet, so I should be good either way

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by Freeco » Thu Sep 05, 2019 10:47 am

Turns out it's mostly the exhaust fan that I'm able to hear. Makes sense I guess, cause its noise is pretty much going undampened straight out the back of the case.
Although I've done it the other way around for years, I've focused on keeping that one's speed as low as possible. In contrast, I've increased the baseline speed of the intake and CPU fans a little.

I've come up with these fan profiles:
Intake:
low temp: 45°C @ 60%
mid temp: 55°C @ 70%
high temp: 65°C @ 100%

CPU fan:
low temp: 45°C @ 65%
mid temp: 55°C @ 75%
high temp: 65°C @ 100%

Exhaust:
low temp: 45°C @ 55%
mid temp: 60°C @ 65%
high temp: 70°C @ 100%

question: would it be OK if I move the exhaust fan to the front, as it's less audible there? The R5 has room for 2 intakes.
Would it be much harder without an exhaust fan to push the heat out of the case? Instead of doing a push/pull.

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Sep 05, 2019 10:59 am

Just wondering...is the rear of your case near a hard surface (eg: back of desk or a wall)? If so, you are hearing the reflection of noise off of the hard surface. Fixes are:
- move the case further away :)
- make the surface less reflective

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by Abula » Thu Sep 05, 2019 1:50 pm

Freeco wrote:question: would it be OK if I move the exhaust fan to the front, as it's less audible there? The R5 has room for 2 intakes.
This is for you to test and decide, move it and see how it goes in terms of temperature, there are cases like Raven/Fortress that are design only to use positive pressure and work well only with them, but each case is different so its the hardware, so unless you test it, you will never know if it would better or worst, my guess is that it will slightly worst, but very likely quieter.

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by NeilBlanchard » Fri Sep 06, 2019 5:12 am

Freeco wrote:question: would it be OK if I move the exhaust fan to the front, as it's less audible there? The R5 has room for 2 intakes.
Would it be much harder without an exhaust fan to push the heat out of the case? Instead of doing a push/pull.
Heat rises, so working with this is usually better. And also working with the air flow inside the case - consistent and smooth without stagnant pockets or eddies. I try to get it all flowing in one direction, so having all the exhaust together opposite the intake.

Is the exhaust fan simply a noisier fan? Is the exhaust more restricted than the intake? What is the balance of the flow?

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by Freeco » Sun Sep 08, 2019 1:55 am

The case is indeed with it's back near a brick wall. There's about 20cm of space between the back and the wall.
I could try and test moving the back fan to the front next time I open the case. No real urgency. I'm still evaluating the current fan profile.

The back and front fan are the same model. There's always slight production variation of course. I think the max speed of the back fan is a bit lower than the one in the front.
The one in the front is more restricted, as there's a dust filter right in front of it, and it also needs to suck air through the side vents of the case. The one at the back just has the metal honeycomb in the way, but that's quite open.

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Re: Quiet down Ryzen 5 3600 in FD R5

Post by CA_Steve » Sun Sep 08, 2019 7:57 pm

simple thing: try temporarily attaching a thick towel to the brick wall and see if the noise level noticeably drops. If it does, then you can consider modifying the wall surface with something more cosmetic.

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