# Is it possible to get low idle power with Zen 3?



## Air (Dec 31, 2020)

My 5600x idles at around 32 W (package power), but reviews like Anandtech and Tom's Hardware listed 12 W and 13 W respectively. Is there any setting I can change to get this low? I've tried a lot of things and the only one that had some effect is leaving the memory at the default 2133 MHz, instead of the XMP 3600 MHz. This lowers around 13W in idle power, but obviously thats not a good solution, and besides, reviewers also used high speed memory. This is very annoying as i get high idle temps and lower multi core performance because there is less power avaliable to the cores.






Does anyone have similar numbers to reviewers?


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## Air (Dec 31, 2020)

yotano211 said:


> If you want less power numbers, get a laptop.


Thanks for the answer, but I would like to keep my desktop. And turned on, preferably.

I do not need ultra low power, but having lower temps and power consumption in idle would be nice. I think it may be possible, given the reviewers numbers.


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## INSTG8R (Dec 31, 2020)

Well Zen 3 no longer requires a “special“ power plan in Windows so you could try Balanced and see how that goes. If you’re on the latest AGESA 1.1.9.0 BIOS you turn on PBO there is a setting called Curve Optimzer which will let you lower your overall voltage start small like -5 not sure what the limits are my 5600X should be next week so I can only go by what others have been using.


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## harm9963 (Dec 31, 2020)

Check what's running in the background .


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## Devon68 (Dec 31, 2020)

Did those reviewers show their setting so you can replicate them?

EDIT: How is your minimum temperature over 50c?


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## Blue4130 (Dec 31, 2020)

Air said:


> . This is very annoying as i get high idle temps and lower multi core performance because there is less power avaliable to the cores.


This part makes no sense. You want lower power, but then complain that there is less power? 

If you are idle, you don't need power available for multi-core performance.


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## AusWolf (Dec 31, 2020)

Balanced power plan with the Power Mode slider dragged all the way down to Best Energy Savings.


Just out of curiosity: what cooler are you using? Is it mounted correctly? 50 C with a 30ish W power consumption seems insanely high.


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## Zach_01 (Jan 1, 2021)

Idle power of 35W is not responsible for your idle temp of 50C. That’s cooling to blame. CPU cooler and/or case and ambient temp.
My R5 3600 also idles at 30-35W and around ~30C.

Please fill your profile with details of your system.

Where a Ryzen will power idle is depending mostly on power plan. BIOS and chipset drivers may also involved. Usually all systems I’ve seen are around 25~35W for CPU PPT.


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## yotano211 (Jan 1, 2021)

Air said:


> Thanks for the answer, but I would like to keep my desktop. And turned on, preferably.
> 
> I do not need ultra low power, but having lower temps and power consumption in idle would be nice. I think it may be possible, given the reviewers numbers.


I've heard putting your desktop in a bathtub filled with ice cold water can really lower the temps.


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## Caring1 (Jan 1, 2021)

yotano211 said:


> I've heard putting your desktop in a bathtub filled with ice cold water can really lower the temps.


Next time you're taking a bath, try it for us and let us know how that works out.


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## yotano211 (Jan 1, 2021)

Caring1 said:


> Next time you're taking a bath, try it for us and let us know how that works out.


I dont have a desktop. I'll give you this toaster to try it on yourself, I'll need your address, the shipping is on me.


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 1, 2021)

Zach_01 said:


> Idle power of 35W is not responsible for your idle temp of 50C. That’s cooling to blame. CPU cooler and/or case and ambient temp.


It is not the fault of the CPU cooler (assuming it was mounted properly and is working properly). Case cooling, for sure. If there is not enough "flow" of cool air through the case, it does not matter how efficient the CPU cooler is. And for sure, if the ambient (room) temperature is high, you might as well be blowing a hair dryer on the processor. I am also assuming, of course, the CPU's heat sink is not caked with a thick blanket of heat-trapping dust. 

For sure, despite what many seem to think, you NEVER have to replace TIM (thermal interface material) *IF* it was applied properly in the first place, and *IF* the cured bond has not been broken. If it is possible it was not applied properly (to include thoroughly cleaning the mating surfaces first and NOT applying too much TIM) and if the cured bond has been broken - perhaps due to rough handling of the computer or  twisting the cooler too hard to see if loose, thus breaking it loose! - then a fresh new application of TIM might be needed. 

What are your temps when the system is taxed? What case and how is your case cooling configured?


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## Air (Jan 1, 2021)

INSTG8R said:


> Well Zen 3 no longer requires a “special“ power plan in Windows so you could try Balanced and see how that goes. If you’re on the latest AGESA 1.1.9.0 BIOS you turn on PBO there is a setting called Curve Optimzer which will let you lower your overall voltage start small like -5 not sure what the limits are my 5600X should be next week so I can only go by what others have been using.


Im currently running PBO with curve optimizer set to negative 20 on all cores. This makes no sensible difference in idle power.



harm9963 said:


> Check what's running in the background .


Damn I envy that 18W. My load curves are not as flat as yours, its never at 0% usage, but I'm not sure if i can find anything else to close. Your first screenshot actually made me notice that my SoC voltage was at 1.2 V. Turns out if I set my memory speed at 3600 MHz the mobo increases the voltage to from 1.0 to 1.2 V. *I set it back to 1.0 V and it lowered SoC power by ~7W and total package power at idle by ~9 W!* Thanks! I wish i could get as low as 18 W too though... did you set anything special at bios?



AusWolf said:


> Balanced power plan with the *Power Mode slider dragged all the way down to Best Energy Savings.*
> View attachment 181803
> 
> Just out of curiosity: what cooler are you using? Is it mounted correctly? 50 C with a 30ish W power consumption seems insanely high.


I never noticed that slider... lowering it saves 1 or 2 W, but Im not sure if it affects performance? Will test later. Thank you.



Blue4130 said:


> This part makes no sense. You want lower power, but then complain that there is less power?
> 
> If you are idle, you don't need power available for multi-core performance.


I guess i did not explain that enough. The more power my SoC is using, the less power is available to the cores within the power budget. The ~7 W I was able to save lowering the SoC voltage increased my Cinebench R23 score from 10464 to 11275 (+6%), CPU-Z score from 4860 to 5000 (+3%), because the cores can boost higher with the extra power available. Sure its not that much, but still... it's free performance at the same power consumption.

*About my idle temps and cooler:* It's a NH-D9L, case is Ncase M1. Layout is 2 bottom 120 mm intake fans attached to an EVGA GTX 1070 with the stock fans removed, CPU cooler exhausting at the back, one 80 mm intake fan with ghetto duct mounted at the front top. Ambient temperature here yesterday was at 30 °C. Today its at a "chilly" 27 °C and the CPU is idling around 45 °C. It starts at low 30s and slowly creeps up to 45 as the heat sink heats up (it was around 35-40 on my old haswell i5). I was not that concerned because I almost never reach 80 °C on load and I though the high idle temps were due to abnormal high idle power. In the screenshot I've attached you can see temps after one cinebench run. Should i try to remount it?


Zach_01 said:


> Idle power of 35W is not responsible for your idle temp of 50C. That’s cooling to blame. CPU cooler and/or case and ambient temp.
> My R5 3600 also idles at 30-35W and around ~30C.
> 
> *Please fill your profile with details of your system.*
> ...


Done. Im using the last bios and chipset drivers available, so i think that's not something i can do anything about unfortunately.

But anyway, I'm actually pretty happy now, with minimum power at 22 W. Not that great but acceptable to my made up standards. That you all for the replies.


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## jesdals (Jan 1, 2021)

Hmm I cant help to wonder if it would make a difference if you mounted the middle fan on the other side of the cooler, if your compute unit is under that part of the cooler it may make the difference, but not sure if it makes a difference but why not try - like the small build by the way. My 5950x runs like this on a 360AIO


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## tabascosauz (Jan 1, 2021)

Air said:


> Im currently running PBO with curve optimizer set to negative 20 on all cores. This makes no sensible difference in idle power.
> 
> 
> Damn I envy that 18W. My load curves are not as flat as yours, its never at 0% usage, but I'm not sure if i can find anything else to close. Your first screenshot actually made me notice that my SoC voltage was at 1.2 V. Turns out if I set my memory speed at 3600 MHz the mobo increases the voltage to from 1.0 to 1.2 V. *I set it back to 1.0 V and it lowered SoC power by ~7W and total package power at idle by ~9 W!* Thanks! I wish i could get as low as 18 W too though... did you set anything special at bios?
> ...



The majority of your idle power draw comes from the I/O die, so the lower you can get VSOC without compromising Infinity Fabric and RAM stability (random crashes, reboots, WHEA errors), the better. However, Vermeer and Matisse are both chiplet-based CPUs, so there's no way you're getting below about 15-20W idle package power due to that large 14nm I/O die. The CPU cores on the chiplets can power gate themselves down well below 1W each, but the I/O die will hold steady at about 10-15W at the very minimum.

My 4650G will idle at less than 10W regularly, but it's a whole different animal on design. My 3700X does the exact same as your 5600X, because Vermeer is just better CPU cores pasted onto the same substrate design with the same I/O die.

As for your M1, that ghetto taped fan isn't doing a lot. Where is your side bracket? Put a 120mm on that over where the PSU is. Your bottom intake feeds only your GPU and isn't doing anything for your CPU. Your ghetto fan is running against natural convection (as soon as that 1070 starts loading, the substantial heat that builds up is desperately trying to make its way out the top). Don't ask me how I know, I used to have a 1070 and 2060 Super in the M1. The exact same 1070 ACX, in fact.

D9L is also a weak cooler by today's standards. You can slap a 3rd 92mm on it and it won't make a difference, not enough heatsink mass. You can easily get a couple degrees difference moving to a U9S or C14S, but you first need to get that airflow moving from a fan on the side bracket.

I had a D9L on my 4790K in the M1 for years, ditched it after finding that it was still hotter than I'd like on the 3700X. Went to a U9S push-pull in the M1 and never looked back.


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## harm9963 (Jan 1, 2021)

Air said:


> Im currently running PBO with curve optimizer set to negative 20 on all cores. This makes no sensible difference in idle power.
> 
> 
> Damn I envy that 18W. My load curves are not as flat as yours, its never at 0% usage, but I'm not sure if i can find anything else to close. Your first screenshot actually made me notice that my SoC voltage was at 1.2 V. Turns out if I set my memory speed at 3600 MHz the mobo increases the voltage to from 1.0 to 1.2 V. *I set it back to 1.0 V and it lowered SoC power by ~7W and total package power at idle by ~9 W!* Thanks! I wish i could get as low as 18 W too though... did you set anything special at bios?
> ...


Just a offset ,auto for Ram.
also the longer i run ,using less watts.


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## INSTG8R (Jan 1, 2021)

Have you run Ryzen Master. It’s the only program that will truly show what your CPU is actually doing. See if your cores are actually idling and some should even be  sleeping it will at least give you an accurate picture of what your CPU is doing and maybe help you possibly find a way to lower your activity further.


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## _Flare (Aug 2, 2021)

@Air
i posted yesterday on a similar topic








						Ryzen 5600x - SoC Power +60% when VDDCR SoC, CLDO VDDP/G are set manually.
					

When I was tuning memory I noticed that SoC Voltage has increased by a huge margin.  I thought about it and went ahead and tested 2 configurations to confirm my hypothesis that manual voltage setting causes SoC Power draw to go up.  1. Stock config, memory set to XMP. SOC - Auto VDDP - Auto VDDG...




					www.techpowerup.com
				




this seems to be the stock 2133 RAM data for the voltages
mem vddio 1.2
mem vtt 0.6 (seems to be automatically 1/2 of the vddio)
*vddcr soc 0.9*
cldo vddp 0.9
cldo vddg 0.95

The problem occures from Mainboard-Behaviour if any RAM-Speed higher than 2666 is used, beside that even on 2133 some idiotic Boards use over 0.9Vsoc
I use a Ryzen 2700 and i talk about that *useless too high vsoc* since 2018 or so, but nobody cared.
My stock Vsoc is 0.815 ... but if i activate XMP it jumps to 1.050 and my idle packagepower goes to 16W from 8W
my board only allows me to set useless positive offsets, so i had to use the AMD CBS settings for VSOC VID to "72" wich is 0.819V and 100% stable with XMP-on (2x 8GB 3000 CL16)


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## GerKNG (Aug 2, 2021)

the 30ish watts at idle is from the I/O Die and will never change.


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## yotano211 (Aug 3, 2021)

With a AMD 5900hx processor.


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## Tetras (Aug 3, 2021)

_Flare said:


> @Air
> i posted yesterday on a similar topic
> 
> 
> ...



I also heard this, that memory above 2666 significantly increases Ryzen idle power. It's possible to get sub 40 watt (whole system) with Ryzen and a dGPU, but it needs a little more care than Intel, where sub 30 watt isn't at all hard.


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## _Flare (Aug 3, 2021)

Anandtech seems to have used stock 2133MHz JEDEC and look at this number ... 11W Package Idle








						AMD Zen 3 Ryzen Deep Dive Review: 5950X, 5900X, 5800X and 5600X Tested
					






					www.anandtech.com
				







*I just emailed Dr. Cutress to get clarification about the used RAM speed, hoping he replies.*
Now, that email came fast. *He wrote: "3200MHz as specified in the test section"*

I almost cannot believe that, but maybe absolute top-end boards don´t alter the VSoC.



yotano211 said:


> With a AMD 5900hx processor.
> 
> View attachment 211020


@yotano211  Is that with high RAM speed?

Monolithic at 5.5W minimum idle ... NICE
So 11W for a IO-Die plus 1 Compute-Die would be 100% on track with my expectations.


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## londiste (Aug 3, 2021)

Monolithic has easier time with low power, basically all the APUs and mobile Ryzens. My 2400G idled at about 2W, around 5W with background tasks.
Now that I checked my 5600X also idles (with background tasks) at around 28W, RAM speed is set to 3800MT/s.


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## yotano211 (Aug 3, 2021)

_Flare said:


> Anandtech seems to have used stock 2133MHz JEDEC and look at this number ... 11W Package Idle
> 
> 
> 
> ...


It's 16gb 3200mhz ram. But I'm changing it to 64gb 3200mhz next week.


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## tabascosauz (Aug 3, 2021)

_Flare said:


> Anandtech seems to have used stock 2133MHz JEDEC and look at this number ... 11W Package Idle
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Monolithic APUs are not a very good comparison for chiplets - they should _always _be under 10W package at idle, let alone a laptop APU. My 4650G runs 2100MHz Infinity Fabric and 2250MHz iGPU at 1.2V VSOC and VDDCR_GFX and it idles at 5-8W. And that's with DF Cstates disabled as well.

I made it down to about 10-15W idle on my 3700X at around 1.1V VSOC. Unfortunately, it was also a turd CPU that required DF Cstates disabled to stop throwing WHEA 19s even at 3600MT/s, so in practice it idled at about 25W. My 5900X idles at about 25-30W minimum, because 2CCD.

3200 should never need much VSOC anyways, I'm hard pressed to say that 3200 should ever need more than say 0.95V, even. Always run the lowest stable VSOC you can. Boards and their firmwares will always differ as to the VSOC they call for at any given memory speed. Same with VDDP and VDDG, always varies. 

You should be able to shave off a few watts of IOD draw with 50mV less VSOC - difference between 1.038V and 1.1V on my 5900X is about 3-4W. Subjectively 5000 seems a bit easier to work with than 3000 in terms of optimizing VSOC, the system should make it pretty obvious to you when you've shaved off too much VSOC.

400-series Gigabyte BIOSes......left a lot to be desired, at least that was the experience on my former B450I Aorus Pro Wifi. Is there no VSOC control in Tweaker tab? I vaguely recall that being the case.


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## Frick (Aug 3, 2021)

GerKNG said:


> the 30ish watts at idle is from the I/O Die and will never change.



My 2600x is at about 13W at desktop idle...


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## Selaya (Aug 3, 2021)

Isn't Pinnacle Ridge monolithic ... ?


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## mtcn77 (Aug 3, 2021)

Mods, is it not a little harsh to flag the OP inquiry just because - I'm presuming - he used the word 'annoy' in his explanation...
I'm going to flag myself if required, just waiting to get a reply for now.


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## yotano211 (Aug 4, 2021)

Selaya said:


> Isn't Pinnacle Ridge monolithic ... ?


I dont they are, those are Zen+ cores.


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## Tetras (Aug 4, 2021)

Selaya said:


> Isn't Pinnacle Ridge monolithic ... ?



Afaik, all the APUs are monolithic, but the desktop (sans-GPU) are all chiplet.


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## Selaya (Aug 4, 2021)

I was under the impression only with Matisse (Zen 2) did they become chiplet? (Yes, they had CCX subdivision before too and some kind of proto-IF, but the die in itself is monolithic with everything being a complete SoC.)


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