Guidance Requested - MSI X570 Tomahawk + Ryzen 3950X

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Looking for some advice.

I recently built my first AMD system in over two decades. The specification can be found below:

MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk WiFi
AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
Noctua NH-D15
64GB Patriot Viper Steel DDR4-3600
1TB Samsung 980 Pro M.2 PCI-e 4.0 NVMe SSD
PNY GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB XLR8 Gaming Overclocked Edition
EVGA SuperNova P2 1000W ‘80 Plus Platinum’ PSU

I am running the latest (non-beta) BIOS, Windows 10 20H2, with all drivers up to date.

There are two areas I am struggling with.

1. I was under the impression the Ryzen 3950X had a default vcore of 1.35v. With the BIOS voltages set to “auto” it reports 1.45v. During a PCMark run, HWMonitor reported a maximum vcore of 1.488v (although the number fluctuated a lot). Is this right? I had assumed the “auto” setting would target the default (conservative) voltages.

2. I have been having trouble achieving 3600MHz memory. When I enable XMP, the system simply fails to boot (locks before Windows). Through trial and error, I can get the system to boot at 3400MHz (manually configured), but it fails the PCMark run. 3200MHz appears stable, but a little disappointing considering the RAM XMP is rated at 3600MHz. Are the XMP values not guaranteed? I thought Ryzen 3000 would easily accept 3600MHz?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!
 
Soldato
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  1. Download HWMonitor and check the average voltage over a couple of hours use.
  2. The 3000 series officially support up to 3200MHz and usually hit 3600MHz without issues but i've come across a few systems that hit a brick wall past 3200MHz. Are you running 2 x 32Gb or 4 x 16GB? I would try manually upping the voltage by an increment or two.
 
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Thanks for the comments, greatly appreciated.

Regarding the CPU vcore, which voltage should I monitor in HWMonitor? With this many cores, there are a lot of readings, which are always fluctuating. Should I look at the average of the overall vcore?

On the Memory front, I have two sticks of 32GB (64GB in total). I have confirmed that they are installed in the optimal slots. I have also manually set the fabric to 1800MHz (Memory at 3200Mhz) and confirmed the system is stable. Therefore, does this point to the memory as the bottleneck?

In an attempt to get the system stable, I manually set the Memory at 1.45v. This did get past the POST, but failed to load Windows.

Thoughts? Anything I can do to help get the RAM (general usage) to 3600Mhz as defined by the XMP? If not, should I consider 3200Mhz with tighter timing? Can I achieve the same performance outcome?

Thanks for all the input.
 
Soldato
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You could try 1.4 volts, see it it'll post at 3600mhz. This is the memory voltage not CPU that is.

Also, try again, not saying it'll work but, try leaving the flck at default, set XMP profil to 3600mhz, and try that at 1.4v also.

It's worth giving those a go, but otherwise might have to live with it, your a bit unlucky though, 4 dimms Id say nah your pushing your luck, but 2, bit unlucky to not run 3600 but again, as posted above they are only officially rated to run 3200.
 
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Thanks. I tried 1.45v, unfortunately the system still won't boot to Windows.

However, I am starting to think the issue might be related to the Motherboard/BIOS. For example, if I manually set the timings (same timings as auto) the system fails to boot. That seems like a software bug, correct? Why would the same timing manually set fail to boot?
 
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I've just updated to the latest beta BIOS, hoping it might help (it didn't).

Interestingly, I can boot at 3400/1700. However, the system is not stable under load (screen goes black). I tried increasing the memory voltage to 1.4v and now the system won't POST. I'm confused my more voltage to the memory would result in this outcome?
 
Soldato
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It's wierd.
On mine for example, 5800x but same motherboard as you, if I try to manually change the flck the system will post and boot but run really bad/unstable.

But leaving flck to auto, but XMP profile enabled it's completely fine.

This is 3600 although Zen 3 possibly has a better memory controller I really don't know.

I'm also running it at 1.4v.

My brother has a 1xxx AMD Ryzen, and with 2 dimms he was running, 3200 (I think) but when he added another 2 it wouldn't post unless he clocked it down further.

I think it's just these being fussy for lack of any better explanation. But from what I have read also your results are not too uncommon.

Just try fiddling around and see what you can change to get it as high as possible and stable, but I probably wouldn't push more than 1.4v on the memory for long term use.
 
Soldato
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You are overclocking the ram thus the controller on the CPU also need overclocking. Upping your ram voltage is one thing. The ram controller needs more juice also to run fclk 1800 and get it working in terms of communicating with the ram.

V_soc; V_ccd; V_iod; V_ddg they all matter

In terms of cpu voltage, you should look into PBO settings or you can do all core OC with under volt.
 
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You are overclocking the ram thus the controller on the CPU also need overclocking. Upping your ram voltage is one thing. The ram controller needs more juice also to run fclk 1800 and get it working in terms of communicating with the ram.

V_soc; V_ccd; V_iod; V_ddg they all matter

In terms of cpu voltage, you should look into PBO settings or you can do all core OC with under volt.

Thanks for the response.

To help me narrow down the the bottleneck, is it safe to assume that if the system is stable with FLCK 1800MHz, that the memory is the limitation? Or could it still be the memory controller on the soc?

I attempted memory 1.45v Memory and 1.2v Vsoc. Still no success at XMP settings (both auto and manual configured).

Any other thoughts?
 
Soldato
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Are you trying to get above 3600MHz or just get it stable at 3600MHz.

you need to change more than Vsoc. Also I wouldn’t go to 1.45V ram yet. Stick 1.4V on that and set you ram to 3600Mhz and fclk to 1800 and then leave all the timing for ram to auto ie 0 and let the motherboard figure itself out. Remember you you need to dial up all those voltages I mention for the memory controller to work.
Once system post it will have some horrendous timing. But at least you have a starting point, at which point you can dial in the primary timing of the ram in to see if that works.

if that fails then I suggest you RMA the ram and get another set.
 
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Yep, looking to achieve a stable 3600MHz (not above). Hoping to achieve the XMP values of the memory (18-22-22-42) at minimum.

Regarding the different voltages, any suggestion for safe starting values: V_soc; V_ccd; V_iod; V_ddg.

Thanks for the support.
 
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Looking for some advice.

I recently built my first AMD system in over two decades. The specification can be found below:

MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk WiFi
AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
Noctua NH-D15
64GB Patriot Viper Steel DDR4-3600
1TB Samsung 980 Pro M.2 PCI-e 4.0 NVMe SSD
PNY GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB XLR8 Gaming Overclocked Edition
EVGA SuperNova P2 1000W ‘80 Plus Platinum’ PSU

I am running the latest (non-beta) BIOS, Windows 10 20H2, with all drivers up to date.

There are two areas I am struggling with.

1. I was under the impression the Ryzen 3950X had a default vcore of 1.35v. With the BIOS voltages set to “auto” it reports 1.45v. During a PCMark run, HWMonitor reported a maximum vcore of 1.488v (although the number fluctuated a lot). Is this right? I had assumed the “auto” setting would target the default (conservative) voltages.

2. I have been having trouble achieving 3600MHz memory. When I enable XMP, the system simply fails to boot (locks before Windows). Through trial and error, I can get the system to boot at 3400MHz (manually configured), but it fails the PCMark run. 3200MHz appears stable, but a little disappointing considering the RAM XMP is rated at 3600MHz. Are the XMP values not guaranteed? I thought Ryzen 3000 would easily accept 3600MHz?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

Same motherboard here. Ryzen 3600. 2*3600 Ram with timing 16-18-18-something.
I can run it at that pace with XMP and auto, but only with PBO off, and it does still crash sometimes. Its rock solid at 3200.
 
Soldato
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Yep, looking to achieve a stable 3600MHz (not above). Hoping to achieve the XMP values of the memory (18-22-22-42) at minimum.

Regarding the different voltages, any suggestion for safe starting values: V_soc; V_ccd; V_iod; V_ddg.

Thanks for the support.
SoC 1.1
IOD and CCD 1.05
DDG 0.95

see what happens. I am nervous to go 1.2v on SoC. some boards pump more socket voltage in than dialled value in bios like a +offset. So you risk degrading the silicon if there is too much

I think you posted in Memory section also and someone suggested an alternative set of ram. Which I think is probably what yo you are looking at. It is just one of those compatibility thing.
 
Soldato
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Try rolling back the bios to one from around June last year as a lot of the bios since they added 5000 support have had issues with FCLK and memory stability.
 
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I have just build a very similar system with the MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk wifi, Ryzen 9 3950x and 64GB (2x32GB) RAM. The only difference being I am using TOUGHRAM DDR4 3600MHz. I found this thread because I'm having the exact same issue.
The BIOS shows that the RAM is rated at 3600MHz but is only working at 2666MHz, which is super annoying because I went out of my way to find RAM with a higher frequency.
 
Soldato
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I have just build a very similar system with the MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk wifi, Ryzen 9 3950x and 64GB (2x32GB) RAM. The only difference being I am using TOUGHRAM DDR4 3600MHz. I found this thread because I'm having the exact same issue.
The BIOS shows that the RAM is rated at 3600MHz but is only working at 2666MHz, which is super annoying because I went out of my way to find RAM with a higher frequency.
you havent enabled XMP profile
 
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