Custom PC - UK (2020-06)

Setting the CPU ratio to 42 will force all six CPU

cores to run at 4.2GHz

ManuallysettheCPUvoltageto1.325Vusingthe

OverrideMode

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PERFORMANCE AND

OVERCLOCKING

Download MSI Afterburner from guru3d.

com and GPU-Z from techpowerup.

com. Fire up both programs and, in MSI

Afterburner, set the temperature limit

to maximum, the core clock to +170MHz

and memory clock to +600MHz.

We found these frequencies to be

perfectly stable, and resulted in a peak

GPU boost frequency of 1820MHz

compared to 1650MHz at stock speed,

while the effective memory frequency

rose from 7000MHz to 7600MHz.

We also found that 4.2GHz was an

easy target for our Ryzen 5 3600 with the

ARCTIC liquid cooler, although you may fare

better, as it’s a silicon lottery out there. We

first tried out our settings in Ryzen Master,

and then applied them in the EFI.

To get there, we used a vcore of 1.325V

• you need to set the CPU Core Voltage to
  Override Mode, and then input the voltage to
  be specific. We then set the CPU ratio to 42 in
  the OC section. This overclock saw the peak
  CPU temperature rise to 67°C under load –
  you’ll want to be below 80°C here.
  This is a manual all-core overclock, and
  the Ryzen 5 3600’s peak single-core boost
  frequency is also 4.2GHz, so doing this tweak
  won’t result in you losing any lightly threaded
  performance. At stock speed, the CPU usually
  hovers just below 4GHz in multi-threaded
  tests, but we’ve added 200MHz to that
  frequency. To stress-test the CPU, download
  Prime95 version 26.6 from technic3d.com
  and run the smallfft test for ten minutes to
  check stability and temperatures.

At stock speed, our PC scored 172,014

overall in our RealBench test suite, but

this figure rose to 195,632 once it was

overclocked, with a big increase in the image

editing score. The Cinebench score rose from

3,423 to 3,741 too, which is an increase of just

under 10 per cent. It was in games that we

saw the biggest benefits, though, with a 10fps

boost to the minimum 99th percentile frame

rate in Far Cry New Dawn at 2,540 x 1,440,

and 9fps at 1,920 x 1,080.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider wasn’t quite

as responsive, seeing 5fps added to the 99th

percentile result at 1,920 x 1,080 and just 2fps

at 2,560 x 1,440. The gains were achieved

with a power draw that rose from 288W under

load to just 328W, which gives over 200W of

headroom on our PSU for future upgrades.

Use MSI Afterburner to overclock your

GPU – there’s plenty of headroom