2021 07 16                                 Forte Performance 001

Forte System:

• AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads, 7nm technology
• G Skill Trident Z Neo F4-4000 32GB Memory
• ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero Motherboard
• be quiet brand BK022 Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU cooler
• WD Black 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4 Drive
• WD Gold 10TB Enterprise Class rotating SATA disk drive
• VisionTek Radeon 5450 Graphics card

So far I haven't been able to make the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU work very hard. The highest temperature that it has ever reached, as far as I know, is 65 degrees C. It could easily go up to 85 and higher without harm, but when I tried to manually overclock it a little, the performance got worse, so I set that part of the BIOS back to AUTO.

                           
                  Precision Boost Overdrive

The motherboard has mysterious functions called "Precision Boost Overdrive," which can actually be found in at least three places in the BIOS setup. In all three places that function defaults to "AUTO," with choices of Auto, Disable, Enabled, and Advanced (or Manual):

• One place to find it is Advanced > AMD Overclocking > AMD Overclocking > Precision Boost Overdrive. 
• Another is Extreme Tweaker > Precision Boost Overdrive, where there are five available settings, all set to AUTO, including one called (you guessed it) >
• Precision Boost Overdrive (again!).

When I stress the system with either the CineBench or the HeavyLoad application, every core always shows 100% utilization and the clock frequency of the individual cores can briefly jump as high as 5040 MHz, even though the motherboard is set to the default of 3400 MHz The individual core voltages change as well, as does, of course, the power consumed (and dissipated) by each core. I don't know why the mobo is doing this when, to my knowledge, overclocking is not enabled.

Forte Under Load

I've made changes to the settings of Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) to disable it, in one or two places, but those changes made no difference in the system's performance with CineBench or HeavyLoad. I'm a little perplexed. PBO has officially been left untouched in this system.

Note: Regardless of PBO, this 16-core system's performance in the 10-minute CineBench R23 comparison test is very good indeed, behind only an AMD 32-core Threadripper system, so whatever is going on is OK with me. But I'd like to understand it.

In a previous experience with a slightly different mobo, the ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (not "Dark" Hero), I found a BIOS entry which could limit the CPU temperature. I haven't found that on this Dark Hero mobo yet, but I suspect it's there somewhere. It seems like that's what's happening - the mobo is automatically overclocking the CPU but also protecting it by limiting the CPU's temperature.

                                                                  Precision Boost 2

Enter Precision Boost 2. See https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/cpu-pb2  It looks like ASUS does automatically boost the system's clocks and other parameters when under load, using the mathematics of Precision Boost 2 (PB2), which, curiously, is quite different from Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) despite the similarity in name. PB2 is enabled automagically as the default, and I haven't even found where it's enabled or could be disabled. I think that's where the CPU temperature is being limited, maybe not directly but as a result of some other limitations in PB2, such as current draw, core voltage, or power consumption (current * voltage).

                                                                       EZ System Tuning

In the EzMode screen, in the upper right corner, is EZ System Tuning. Theoretically this allows the selection of "improved system performance," "energy savings," or "normal." It doesn't really work though, as there is something quite wrong with the ASUS BIOS software: Once you have selected "improved system performance," resulting in a CPU clock of 4000 MHz, you can't unselect it again. Even if you get EZ System Tuning to show "normal" again, the CPU clock remains at 4000 MHz, even after a reboot. It's a software bug in the ASUS BIOS, version 3601, Dark Hero.

However, it does improve the system performance. Before selecting "improved system performance" the best CineBench score was 25,076, but with "improved system performance" selected it reached 26,402, an improvement of more than 5%. In my world that's not very important, but it might be important to some gamers. I had to clear the CMOS to get it back to normal, where the CPU clock again starts at 3400 MHz

                                                                     EZ Tuning Wizard

This is not so much a wizard as an assassin. From EZ Mode, I select EZ Tuning Wizard (at the top) > PC Scenario = Daily Computing > Tower Cooler > It says CPU Performance 163% up, DRAM 139% up. That sounds like a LOT, and indeed the computer failed to boot. It tried several times, all by itself, but failed. After I pressed the back panel Clear CMOS button, it booted up OK, no evident harm done, except for clearing all previous selections in the CMOS. The same thing happened when I selected Gaming/Media Editing as the PC Scenario. I'm quite glad that the Clear CMOS button was there. This seems to be another bug in the ASUS BIOS, version 3601, Dark Hero.

                                            "be quiet" brand BK022 Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU cooler

The humongous "be quiet" BK022 Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU cooler is obviously doing a fine job, keeping the CPU down to 62-65 degrees while it is dissipating 125-130 watts of heat. The cooler is huge, but since it's an air cooler, it will never leak water. 😊 By the way, I was ultimately able to add a third fan on the back of that cooler. Thus it has one in the front, one in the middle, and that extra one in the back, all blowing the same direction of course, out the back, where there is a fourth fan, a case fan, mounted an inch and a half away, taking that warm air directly out. Put your hand there, you can feel the warmth.

The entire computer has 12 very very quiet fans, eight of them RGB, either red or blue. I like it.

                                                 Change of Graphics Card and Monitor

VisionTek Radeon 5450 Graphics Card

I don't really understand how the CPU and the graphics card work together, so I though it might be possible that the CPU was somehow limited by the speed or capability of the graphics, and for that reason could not consume more than about 100 watts of power in the cores, preventing it from exceeding a temperature of about 65 C. Forte has a VisionTek Radeon 5450 Graphics card talking to a $70 16-inch TV set in HDMI mode, and my working computer here, Stirling 2021, has an ASUS NVIDIA GeForce GT 710 card talking to two inexpensive 24-inch HP monitors. Neither system is a gamer's dream, to be sure, but at least they're different from each other. Therefore, I wondered if I would see a difference if I swapped Stirling's graphics elements into Forte.

Bottom line - it made no discernable difference. The Forte CPU was still limited to about 65 C. 

                                                        I Give UP

For now. I'm unable to make the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU reach a temperature above 65 C, though it could certainly handle more work and thereby a higher temperature. More research to be done here. In the meantime, Forte is nonetheless a formidable consumer-grade computer.