SOLUTION/POSSIBLE EXPLINATION FOR NOISE:
Ok so I have dedicated far more time than one should ever have to dedicate on something like this but I have found a solution after hours of research and testing.
Potential origin of the problem: To understand whats going on here I think its prudent to understand precisely what your buying with this CPU's. Notably, Intel chips don't even ship with their own cooler, and frankly the reason this is the case is because Intel has extremely high standards when it comes to quality control. The downside is the end product is expensive, albeit reliable, and clearly trying to ship a cooler whilst maintaining those high standards with their already expensive chips is simply not something Intel is willing to do. They would rather the customer buy their own and leave it up to 3rd parties who can do it far better than themselves and at a better price.
In short, it appears that while convenient, including coolers with AMD CPU's means AMD necissarily must find ways to keep the price down, and this is appears to be acheived by making concessions on materials and manufacturing. As such, the prism cooler's quality isn't great overall. - For the price, good. But as the old addage goes: You get what you pay for.
It's also important to remember that the 3000 series are still very new chips, and I think there is still a long way to go before all the bugs are ironed out from a software/firmware standpoint. And unfortunately much is left up to the pioneering consumers of this new tech to try and work out how to make these CPU's work as advertised. This isnt entirely AMD's fault, the chips have to work happily with a myriad of different 3rd party motherboard manufacturers etc and clearly there are still issues being worked out.
The first problem I noticed upon installing the new CPU, was this frantic, annoying, constant fluctiation of the fan. The CPU seemed to go from idle, to max RPM every 5 seconds or so and for no apparent reason. At first I didn't think it was normal but then again these are completely new CPU's so, I didn't think too much of it at the time, I just assumed this was how the chip naturally needed to operate, as all tests seemed to indicate the chip was operating as advertised. Performance seemed to be good, despite the noise being annoying as hell.
None the less, the constant, violently fluctuating RPM bothered me a lot, even if it was by design. It just didn't seem to be a good thing for the unit as a whole. So before just going out and buying a new cooler, I decided to try and solve that first problem which was this rapid fluctiation.
> Once I started to tackle the noisey crazy fluctiations in RPM problem, it dawned on me that perhaps it wasn't in fact normal, and that the constant violent fluctuation between idle and max rpm, for no apparent reason, was actually doing the prism cooler damage over time. I noticed that the sound actually seemed to happen only after the machine had been running for several hours. At which point I'm assuming the mechanical stresses inside the cooling module, began to take a toll on the device. Perhaps expansion due to heat or other mechanical stresses due to this violent fluctuation in RPM.
So I spent some time seeing if I could first solve the fluctiation problem and see if I could tame the noise while still keeping the CPU cool.
SOLUTION: I have solved the buzzing problem without resorting to buying a new cooler, I did this buy fixing the manic fluctuations in RPM, via a power poilcy in windows, and adjusting the fan curve slightly. - I think the damage has already been done, and every now and then I get a very low level, but acceptable "grunt" which I think either has something to do with the fluid/gas inside pipes, or possibly something to do with the bearings, so I believe some damage has been irreversably done at this point, however because the fan isn't constantly going from idle, to crazy every 10 seconds, I think the pressure on the prism cooler as been reduced to such an extent that now the stress doesn't exaserbate the problems with the prisms build quality which combined perhaps with some issue with the firmware, or even software that makes the fans accelerate and decelerate rapidly for long periods of time, is in fact the root cause of the issue. Either something from the bearings, or the pipes, or possibly even just mechanical vibrations coming from the plastic enlosure due to heat/stress.
I could type the solution here, but I think if you have made it this far you're probably tired of reading so I'd recommend watching this video all the way through as this guy probably does a better job than I can at explaining what needs to be done to stop the manic RPM fluctuations which in turn has solved the buzzing problem for me at least.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA84hwqLUWs
the accompanying reddit post can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/eng1y8/ryzen_3700x_high_iddle_temps_and_fan_speed/?utm_source=...
> My machine is running significantly quieter, the temperature is somehow LOWER, and I haven't lost any noticible performance so far on my 3900X. The main thing is since applying this fix, the "buzzing" sound is completely gone. *NOTE, once you apply the fix, you will have to restart your machine for it to be applied. - At first nothing happened, it was only when I restarted my machine did the CPU begin to act civilized. - The fan will still, for no apparent reason turn into a jet turbine, from time to time, but the frequency in which it does this is far more spread out, and as such is now tolerable. And again I think within the prisms ability to deal with stress, which I'm almost certain was causing the issue that was first described in this thread.
If someone from AMD is looking at this, I would love to know what you think. I think someone should definitely take a look at this issue because clearly it's effecting a lot of people.
Any comment from an AMD tech, Specifically these settings would be apprcieted, as I'm not entirely sure what they all do, only that they seem to be optimal for 3000 series owners, perhaps this might shine a light on the problem for engineers:
powercfg -duplicatescheme %SCHEMA_ID%
powercfg -changename %SCHEMA_ID% "AMD Ryzen™ Custom"
powercfg -setacvalueindex %SCHEMA_ID% SUB_PROCESSOR PERFINCTHRESHOLD 85
powercfg -setacvalueindex %SCHEMA_ID% SUB_PROCESSOR PERFINCTHRESHOLD1 95
powercfg -setacvalueindex %SCHEMA_ID% SUB_PROCESSOR PERFINCPOL 1
powercfg -setacvalueindex %SCHEMA_ID% SUB_PROCESSOR PERFINCPOL1 1
powercfg -setacvalueindex %SCHEMA_ID% SUB_PROCESSOR PERFBOOSTMODE 1
powercfg -setacvalueindex %SCHEMA_ID% SUB_PROCESSOR PERFAUTONOMOUS 0 powercfg -setactive %SCHEMA_ID%
My system for reference:
AMD 3900x
Gigabyte B550 Pro
Windows 10
