In the past, talking about overclocking was something very scary, because, in addition to basic knowledge, you had to understand how to set up the BIOS with an interface that often looked very “scary” and had confusing acronyms. But now, overclocking with AMD CPUs has become much simpler with Ryzen Master software released by AMD itself.
Compared to traditional overclocking with settings in the BIOS, Ryzen Master has the advantage of allowing you to easily return to default settings if something goes wrong. If the settings in the BIOS and the clock level are unstable, you need to reset the BIOS, which requires disassembling the device, which is very time-consuming.
Using Ryzen Master has a downside compared to traditional overclocking in that if you restart your PC, the overclock is erased and the CPU returns to its default clock level. Fear not, however, as re-enabling overclocking is as simple as a click of a button. The advantage of this is that you can set your PC to overclock for gaming or heavy tasks, then return it to factory settings for the rest of the time to avoid wear and tear on components.
You still need some basic understanding of overclocking, but this software makes things a lot easier.
Table of Contents
What is overclocking?
Overclocking allows you to increase the CPU clock speed beyond its advertised specifications. Increasing the clock speed makes your CPU work faster and thus, improves performance. CPUs need to be unlocked to be able to overclock, and all AMD Ryzen processors are unlocked by default. For comparison, Intel only unlocks processors with the code ending in K, their other CPUs are locked and cannot be overclocked.
Overclocking the CPU can show improvements in general performance and improved performance for CPU-intensive tasks. For gaming, it may or may not help increase fps, depending on whether your game mainly “consumes” the CPU or GPU.
All CPUs have at least two advertised clock speeds: base clock and boost clock (also known as boost clock). The base clock is the fastest speed at which the CPU will run for light and medium-intensity computing tasks or tasks that require the entire core to be active. The boost clock is the highest clock speed that the CPU will automatically raise when having to handle powerful tasks that require a few cores, such as playing games or editing videos. Overclocking beyond the boost clock is what overclockers aim for.
For example with the Ryzen 5 2600 CPU, we can see on AMD’s website that it has a base clock of 3.4 GHz and a maximum boost clock of 3.9 GHz. Therefore, when overclocking we will aim for a minimum mark of 3.9 GHz and more.
What do you need to overclock?
A good power supply
Before overclocking your Ryzen CPU, you need to prepare a few things. First, is a power supply unit (PSU) whose real power is much larger than the CPU’s consumption when not overclocked. Corsair recommends in a blog post that component power output should be between 50-80% of the source’s maximum capacity.
If after adding up all the components and your power supply there is about 20-50% capacity left, feel free to try overclocking. If your power supply has about a 10% surplus, overclock with more caution than usual. If your source doesn’t have any extra power, forget about overclocking until you upgrade to a better source.
A good motherboard
Next, make sure your mainboard is a good one, if you are using X470 and X570 mainboards, you have nothing to worry about. If you are using a B450 or B550 mainboard, you should check to see if your mainboard has enough power phases for the CPU before overclocking. If you are using an A320 mainboard, overclocking is very risky. If you are using an A520, you should forget about overclocking.
For example, in the picture is a good B450 mainboard, with this mainboard you can comfortably overclock Ryzen 5 CPUs and below.
A good heatsink
Next, you’ll need a better heatsink than the Wraith one that comes with your Ryzen processor. Overclocking makes the CPU run hotter and the accompanying heatsink will not be able to handle it. If it’s light, the fan will be loud, if it’s heavy, it will damage the computer. It can be said that the more expensive the heatsink, the more effective it is.
For example, if you have a Ryzen 5, you should consider COOLERMASTER HYPER 212 SPECTRUM coolers or higher or any 240mm AIO cooler. If you have Ryzen 7 then you need NOCTUA NH-U14S sized airsinks or larger or any 360mm AIO cooler. If you have a Ryzen 9, consider NZXT KRAKEN X73 or larger AIO coolers or Custom water coolers.
Ryzen CPUs
You must be using a Ryzen processor (as this software will not work with Intel CPUs). You can download Ryzen Master software from AMD’s website. In this article, we will use the standard Ryzen 5 2600 CPU, and you can also overclock Ryzen CPUs with integrated GPUs (e.g. Ryzen 5 3400G). Ryzen Master can even let you overclock the integrated GPU, but we’ll cover that in another article.
Let’s download some useful free software: Asus Realbench, Cinebench, Core Temp, and OCCT. They are for benchmarking and monitoring CPU temperature.
Finally, you need a little patience. The overclocking process with Ryzen Master will be very fast, but benchmarking and checking clock stability takes extremely long. The ultimate goal of overclocking is to find the highest clock level at which the CPU runs stably for a long time, not to push the clock to a very high level, and then not be able to turn on the computer.
Get acquainted with Ryzen Master
Before you start changing any settings in Ryzen Master, open and run the latest version of Cinebench and use the multi-core and single-core CPU tests. Each test takes about 10 minutes to run. Remember to record your scores for each test, as they will allow you to compare unclocked and overclocked CPU performance. During the benchmark, turn off any other running programs and all wireless and wired connections (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Ethernet) to get more accurate results.
Once you have finished running the 2 benchmarks, open Ryzen Master and see the basic interface. You will see a column on the left with menu items. At the bottom, you have several tabs, including Current, Creator Mode, Gaming Mode, Profile 1, Profile 2, and some other tabs.
By default, when you open Ryzen Master you will be on the “Current” tab, you will be greeted with a table showing all the current clock speeds for each CPU core as well as some statistics, including the current CPU temperature, maximum clock speed, total power consumption, and many other parameters.
Then, below those two sections, we have what is called “Control Mode,” which includes Auto, Precision Boost Overdrive, and options Manual. Those are all the items we will use in this article. We will not touch the “Memory Control” or “Additional Control” section.
Perform overclocking
Theory
You should slowly increase the clock speed to 50 megahertz at a time and then check if it is stable using benchmark software and see if the temperature is within the appropriate range. If it’s ok, increase the clock speed and check again. If you notice that your CPU is not overheating, but at the new clock speed, it is unstable to the point of freezing, or crashing applications when benchmarking, then you may need to supply more voltage to the CPU, aka to inject Vcore.
To slowly increase the voltage, click the up arrow once in the “Voltage Control” section, which will tell Ryzen Master to increase the voltage level to the next mark. A general rule of thumb with Ryzen CPUs is to keep your CPU voltage below 1.35 volts, with 1.45 volts being the maximum. Using a voltage exceeding 1.45 volts may reduce the life of the CPU.
But in part 1 (click here if you haven’t seen it yet) we mentioned “Overclocking beyond boost clock is what overclockers aim for”, so you can start by pushing pulse up horizontal pulse boost. Then slowly increase the voltage until the CPU is stable. If the voltage reaches 1.45 volts but the CPU is still unstable, then sorry, your CPU cannot be overclocked, it is better to leave it running at default.
If your CPU is stable at the boost clock, the voltage has not reached 1.45 volts and the CPU temperature is below 80 degrees after running the benchmark, you can continue to increase the clock speed by 50 MHz at a time, until it reaches the unstable threshold then turn it back on reached the stable mark first and only increased by 25 MHz, then 10 MHz, then 5 MHz.
Practice
Now, let’s get started. In Ryzen Master, click on the “Profile 1” tab at the bottom, this is where we will make our changes. Then, select “Manual” in the “Control Mode” section.
Now, unclick the buttons next to “Additional Control” and “Memory Control” (if they are green) so you don’t accidentally change anything.
Next, go to the “Core Speed (MHz)” section and click “All Cores”. This button means that any changes to the clock will be applied to the entire core. You can overclock individual cores, and Ryzen Master has helped put a star next to the one with the best overclocking potential, but in this article, we’ll just overclock on all cores.
To change the clock, click on the number below any clock. Change the available number to a higher number and press “Enter” on the keyboard.
Next, click “Apply & Test”. This will perform a very short test in which the Ryzen Master will try to see if this clock level is stable or not. This test is not good enough to believe that your CPU is stable at this clock level — but if you fail this basic test, then the clock level is not stable on the CPU, you need to increase the voltage more or reduce its Pulse away.
Assuming you pass the Ryzen Master test, continue running the test with Cinebench, both to see the stability and to see how the performance increases. At the same time, you must run Core Temp to monitor the CPU temperature.
During the benchmark process, you want to pay attention to two things: your CPU temperature does not exceed 80 degrees Celsius (keeping it at 70 is better) and Cinebench does not freeze or crash the application. If your PC can run this 10-minute benchmark without problems or the processor isn’t overheating, you can go back to Ryzen Master, increase the clock, and run Cinebench again. Keep doing this until you get some instability, then try increasing the CPU voltage and running the tests again.
If your CPU fails the Cinebench test or the clock temperature is too high, you should return to the previous stable clock level but only increase it by 25 MHz. If not, return to the stable clock level and only increase by 10 MHz,… so on until there is no more increase.
After overclocking and testing about a dozen times, taking nearly half a day, we overclocked the Ryzen 5 2600 to 4,100 MHz (4.1GHz) in Ryzen Master, with a voltage of 1.34375 volts. We strongly recommend that you do not use these parameters for your CPU, including identical code names. All processors, even when purchased from the same place, have different overclocking capabilities, because of a process called binning, which is why it is called “silicon lottery”, and also because That’s why overclocking is interesting. If everyone could set the same pulse level, this subject wouldn’t make so many people fascinated.
Check stability
Once you find a stable pulse level, it’s time for a more in-depth test. First, do a final thermal check using OCCT, one of the free stability testing software.
Run OCCT with a small data set for about 30 minutes. If your temperature is below 80 degrees Celsius (preferably below 70), then we move on to phase two. If not, go back to Ryzen Master to lower the clock or increase the CPU voltage.
Assuming everything goes well, it’s time for the final test. Run the Asus Realbench “Stress Test” for four to eight hours and use half your system RAM. It’s best to do this during the day, without the air conditioning on, and make sure the temperature is always below 80 degrees Celsius.
If after the above time, your temperature is always below 80, you can rest assured that this pulse level is stable. Now, run Cinebench again, this time turning off all other software and disconnecting all network connections. Then, use that score to compare the overclocked versus unoverclocked performance that you ran before. In our case, we increased the Cinebench multi-core score by almost 800 points.
Remember that Ryzen Master is not a permanent overclocking application. After each system reboots, the clock will be reset to default. You just need to simply select “Profile 1” and click Apply Settings.
Now, it’s time to enjoy the results of your overclocking, edit, render videos, or play your favorite game. Or you’re addicted to overclocking and now it’s time to overclock “Profile 2” individual cores or play around with other settings.