Friday, April 28th 2023
AMD Ryzen 7000X3D Power Consumption Spiking Beyond 100 W in Idle Mode
According to investigations undertaken by Igor's Lab and Hardware Busters this week it seems that AMD's problematic lineup of Ryzen 7000 & Ryzen 7000X3D CPUs are consuming unexpected levels of power in short bursts when running in idle mode. In conducting more in-depth tests over the past few days, Igor Wallossek and (outgoing TPU PSU expert) Aristeidis Bitziopoulos have both found that that the aforementioned AMD processors are producing (to the testers' slight concern) power spikes in situations involving minimal computing activity. It is not currently known whether the sharp climbs in power consumption are in any way related to the burnout issues experienced by unlucky overclockers this week.
Aris/crmaris (at Hardware Busters) says that he has tested many of the affected processors in the past, but was not privy to any major problems relating to burnout or power consumption spikes. By running new tests this week, using his own Powenetics v2 board, Aris has found out that: "There are some interesting facts here, which I didn't pay much attention to during the reviews because I only look at the average values and not the peak ones in idle. In the 7950X3D, there is a high spike during idle at 130 W, which is unjustified because the peak CPU load is only 3.53%. Even with the Curve Optimized enabled and a -15 setting, the idle power spike is close to 125 W, so something is happening there. On the 7800X3D, the spike during idle stays low, but this is not the case for the 7900X, which has an idle power spike at 109 W, while the peak CPU load at idle was at 5.12%, so these 109 W are not justified, either."
Video coverage of the matter has been provided by Hardware Busters in their "AMD Ryzen 7000 Series burn issues? Our Findings!" upload to YouTube:
Igor does not get dramatic about the latest findings, and suggests that AMD should not be judged too harshly: "Aris (crmaris) and I are of the opinion that these load peaks (which I could reproduce 1:1 in the meantime, by the way), primarily have nothing to do with the described CPU dying - we put a lot of emphasis on that to avoid a false panic. But on the other hand, such transients are nothing you need for a really stable system. Aris has also already spoken to some of his industry contacts, who have told him that the overall RMA rates of the 7000 series are actually lower than those of the 5000 series. This should avoid panic and also not discourage anyone from buying a new AMD CPU."
Sources:
Hardware Busters, Igor's Lab DE
Aris/crmaris (at Hardware Busters) says that he has tested many of the affected processors in the past, but was not privy to any major problems relating to burnout or power consumption spikes. By running new tests this week, using his own Powenetics v2 board, Aris has found out that: "There are some interesting facts here, which I didn't pay much attention to during the reviews because I only look at the average values and not the peak ones in idle. In the 7950X3D, there is a high spike during idle at 130 W, which is unjustified because the peak CPU load is only 3.53%. Even with the Curve Optimized enabled and a -15 setting, the idle power spike is close to 125 W, so something is happening there. On the 7800X3D, the spike during idle stays low, but this is not the case for the 7900X, which has an idle power spike at 109 W, while the peak CPU load at idle was at 5.12%, so these 109 W are not justified, either."
Igor does not get dramatic about the latest findings, and suggests that AMD should not be judged too harshly: "Aris (crmaris) and I are of the opinion that these load peaks (which I could reproduce 1:1 in the meantime, by the way), primarily have nothing to do with the described CPU dying - we put a lot of emphasis on that to avoid a false panic. But on the other hand, such transients are nothing you need for a really stable system. Aris has also already spoken to some of his industry contacts, who have told him that the overall RMA rates of the 7000 series are actually lower than those of the 5000 series. This should avoid panic and also not discourage anyone from buying a new AMD CPU."
58 Comments on AMD Ryzen 7000X3D Power Consumption Spiking Beyond 100 W in Idle Mode
One is that boards are ignoring their own OCP safeties, the other is that the boards are raising SoC voltages to stupid levels - some get worse over time, as high as 1.5v in these reviewers tests.
If the CPU is in a 'crashed' state because the system cant post, the CPU's safety features cant be activated - and if the motherboard doesnt use any of its OVP or OCP protections at this stage that is 100% on the motherboard.
As their video showed, 400W in the same error state as a board with no CPU detected is insane and should never have happened.It's not guidance, they chose to do that themselves.
They chose to do that, to help overclock RAM higher on their boards when EXPO was enabled - not because AMD ever said it was a good idea.
The faults with voltages being higher than expo or the user sets are the biggest issue here, and that needs more investigation.
B) Steve pretty clear cut that EXPO isn't the issue since it litterally can't set volts that are being effected, he says as much in the vid
Basically the mobo vendors could've easily screwed up multiple times and that would explain things just fine.
We already know for instance that Gigabyte had a bug where user settings were being ignored. MSI had a different one too. Steve also pretty clearly stated there are other bugs at play and they didn't have time for them in the video too.Sure but that has nothing to do with AGESA, AMD, EXPO, or the idle power consumptions spikes (the latter of which is the actual topic of this thread) so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
Multiple threads on multiple related issues on AM5 right now, and people are mixing them up all over the place.
As people are testing and finding out WTAF is happening, more and more comes down to some specific motherboards being the problem - you enable EXPO, they run DRAM voltage as SoC voltage.
Enable PBO, they disable OCP and OVP.
Finally found the relevant thread here on TPU, of an example of this happening on AM4 as well
5950x and PBO overheated something or busted custom loop? | Page 2 | TechPowerUp Forums
The board makers have been cheaping out. They've been relying on the CPU safeties and not using their own.
1usmus mentioned something about knowing of this and other problems but being asked not to talk publicly about themnot to long after this story broke on twitter. Can't find the link right now. Point is its been insider knowledge for a while though.
Amazes me they let this problem sit and fester for so long. Especially since apparently it can be either fixed or made safe through a BIOS update that only takes a week or 2 to whip up and doesn't seem to have significant negative impacts on anything!
Someone, probably several people since there different bugs at play and they can differ depending on the mobo, have been acting real stupid for a long time here.
They'd never do something as ask an enthusiast who found a high severity problem lingering through generations of hardware to keep it hush. They're our FRIENDS and we should TRUST them, because Jensen Huang likes leather jackets (and he probably eats meat, the horror!) and Pat Gelsinger is literally Darth Vader.
Whoever even brings the mere notion that AMD and motherboard partners did anything shady up is a traitor and an Intel shill, with their fate sealed in blood. That this issue suddenly came to light was literally a coordinated and paid act of sabotage by Pat Gelsinger and has JHH's direct involvement.
Pure evil, how is poor little AMD ever going to recover from such coordinated acts of sabotage against it? Yuri should be banned from the industry for daring accuse anyone asked him to keep that hush.
...yes, this is obviously satire with an unhealthy dose of sarcasm.