Overclocking Your Ryzen Threadripper processor
Overclocking
Overclocking and tweaking then. Always invest in good hardware by the way (MOBO/PSU/Memory/Cooling), the cheaper motherboards often are not well tuned for enthusiast overclocking. Also get yourself a good power supply and proper processor cooling. Overclocking with a more core processor (it doesn't matter if that is Intel or AMD) is often far more difficult than you expect it to be.
Overclocking multi and many cores on a high clock frequency with Threadripper is an easy enough job, and can be managed relatively easily from the BIOS. You can also use AMD's software tool of course. Threadripper is using binned dies, they only use the top 5% of dies.
BIOS Overclocking
The Guru3D reader-base overclocks mostly from the BIOS to try and find the maximum stable limit. The generic overclock procedure for multiplier based overclocking is as follows:
- Leave base clock (bus) for what it is right now (100 MHz)
- Set the per core multiplier at a maximum of your liking:
- Example: 100MHz x 41 = 4100 MHz
- Increase CPU voltage; though AUTO works fine on many motherboards you can do it manually as well. Start at 1.35 volts (or voltage offset (start with +200Mv)) and work your way upwards into a state of equilibrium in perf and cooling temps.
- Make sure your processor is properly cooled as adding voltage = more heat
- Enable XMP/ DOCP on your memory kit (ours does 3200 MHz CL14)
Ryzen Threadripper likes fast memory, so with this quad-channel setup we really can recommend higher frequency memory like the 2933 and 3200 MHz kits used. Save and exit, and you will boot with all your cores tweaked into Windows.
We've reached 4.2 GHz on all cores which pretty much is the all core threshold for all Threadripeprs, that requires more Voltage (~1.450) on the processor and that also means more heat and power consumption. Memory wise we had 3200 MHz CL14 stable.
Yeah, let's call that 5000 points with all cores at 4100 MHz. Coming from ~4350 at defaults.
39 seconds for a full prime 1024M run coming from 43.
And sure, this is dynamic local mode and not game mode (which I'd recommend power consumption wise), but we also gain a healthy number of points in Time Spy.