PC Processors

[vr234btxx]

I just got a 5600x. This is my first AMD homebrew build and am proud to have a Zen 3! I could use a little direction here though, I want to run Linux, PopOs with this system and I would like to optimize the bios settings. I am using an MSI MAG z570 for the motherboard. I just want to know if anyone here is rather familiar with configuration settings in bios with this cpu and MSI boards. Perhaps they are aware of a guide or such material I can go through? Is there a AMD overclocking tool for Linux?

Any help is appreciated! Ill be posting on the MSI forum as well. Thanks!

[hitbm47]

Hi @vr234btxx 

Sorry, this website just lost my whole 5 paragraph message I wrote for you, very frustrating. I'll see if I can get the gist of it again.

EDIT:

So what I was trying to say I have tried PoPOS several times on both my MSI 990FXA and MSI B450 Tomahawk, and there are no BIOS Settings you need to optimize; it could even interchange between the motherboards if I remember correctly.

The only thing you might need change in the BIOS is your boot order, depending on which OS you would like to have as your default startup OS. Otherwise, you can just directly go into the BIOS and boot from the drive Linux is installed on.

As for overclocking, your 5600X is a beast, the IPC of 5000 series Ryzen CPUs are from an alien world. There is no need to overclock that thing, but I have never tried overclocking on linux and here is a link of someone also asking the question: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/kvxg2y/equivalent_to_amd_overdrive_for_linux/ I usually overclock in the BIOS, but I know the new overclocking GUI (think Ryzen Master) on Windows is probably what you are asking about.

On that note, I would just like to say there are much less official utility programs on Linux than on Windows, if you are still going to have Windows on a drive, you might try activating the overlock in Windows with Ryzen master and save it, restart, then try to directly boot into PoPOS from the BIOS, since it should at least save it for one reboot.

Also be aware, that your drives have to be in proper format to ensure better compatibility on Linux, something like ext4 I think.

EDIT #2: When installing Linux from a Flash Drive, remember to use the back-side USB ports, and likely USB 2 ones, not that I think new motherboards have USB 2 any more, but I had trouble installing Linux through the front-panel USB ports, it only installs properly through some of the back ports.

Kind regards

[kheper]

cpupower is a suite of command-line tools - which allows you to select the power governor for the cpu, to set the min and the max frequencies of the cpu, to monitor the frequency of the cpu, etc.

https://linux.die.net/man/1/cpupower

https://linux.die.net/man/1/cpupower-frequency-set

https://linux.die.net/man/1/cpupower-frequency-info

https://linux.die.net/man/1/cpupower-monitor

Install cpupower with the package manager of your distro. There is - also - an available GUI front-end to cpupower, named: cpupower-gui.

[hitbm47]

Hi @kheper 

Just a quick question, although it might be mentioned in your links. Does this program allow for manual/automatic voltage manipulation as well to aid the frequency increases?

In contradiction, I still do not see the reason to overclock a Ryzen 5 5600x except maybe in five years time.

Kind regards

[kheper]

"Does this program allow for manual/automatic voltage manipulation as well to aid the frequency increases?"

cpupower does not provide for manual voltage manipulation. If you increase or decrease the cpu frequency, the processor's voltage will shift automatically.

There are some apps that allow manual voltage manipulation, but it's best to use the BIOS for that. For example, zenstates is not well maintained.

https://github.com/kevinlekiller/amdctl

https://github.com/r4m0n/ZenStates-Linux

[vr234btxx]

Thanks you two. I don't actually want to increase voltages, rather I would like to see if I cant undervolt a little while increasing frequency if possible. My main intention here is to make my cpu energy efficient and stable. I noticed at times I get high % cpu usage and fans speeds/temps. At 100% usage the cpu gets around 70* with stock cooler. (I plan on getting a nice cooler)

I will check into the thing you mentioned.

[hitbm47]

Hi @vr234btxx 

I see, personally I have never been able to increase frequency with lower voltages.

Furthermore, 70C is amazing with a stock cooler on that CPU; which runs much higher than 4.0Ghz if I am not mistaken; and the thermal threshold of your CPU is 95C which is the only time it starts to thermal throttle, thus you are 25C away from safe-gaurds kicking in.

I would recommend leaving your power plan to balanced; contrary to, where people recommend "Maximum Performance" power plan, since this can actually reduce your performance slightly with higher power usage. The best possible scenario is to leave your power plan on "Balanced Performance", since this will be the best worlds between stable power efficiency and performance. The reason being, most applications are still mostly single threaded so this will allow one of your six cores to boost to 4.6Ghz when submitting draw calls in a DirectX11 game, while the other can achieve the same amount of work somewhere between 3.7-4.3Ghz probably which will save power.

On the other hand, setting to maximum performance will likely push everything to say 4.4Ghz with less boosting to 4.6Ghz which reduces single threaded performance and increases power consumption.

I might be slightly wrong about this, but this is my personal experience from reading up about power plans and experimenting with it on my own.

If you get 70C stock, you will get around 40-55C with a H100i liquid cooler under load. In addition, CPU's with SMT/HyperThreading get slightly hotter than CPUs without SMT/HyperThreading, because the throughput on each core is increased due to much faster task/process switching/execution when SMT is enabled.

Lastly, your CPU only uses 65W at default clocks as seen here: https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-5-5600x which is insanely impressive, that is what my Ryzen 5 1600 uses at default and my FX 8350 used 125W at moderate load.

Kind regards

[mauser1891]

Hello,

Those familiar with older generation processors know that we could change parameters in order to change their performance. These days the performance we get is pretty much set by the designed parameters. One isn't going to get too much more from hardware or software overclocking them, unless one goes to LN. So best we can do is keep them cool and let them perform the way their designed to. Steve Burke covers this pretty good in the video content @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g94rNe4XSGU 

[kheper]

"I would like to see if I cant undervolt a little while increasing frequency if possible"

The BIOS is the best place to decrease the voltage.

My current cpupower config sets the lowest frequency (to the second lowest frequency supported) and uses the  schedutil governor.

cpupower frequency-set -g schedutil -d 1700MHz

A break-down of the governors:

conservative = scales the CPU frequency to load

ondemand = scales the CPU frequency to load

userspace= runs the CPU at a specific, user-given frequency

performance = runs the CPU at the max frequency

powersave = runs the CPU at the min frequency

schedutil = runs/scales the CPU frequency based on a scheduler