2021 08 06                         Forte Performance 002

Woohoo! ASUS has solved my problem. Until a week ago I couldn't make my new, hot computer work hard enough to get its CPU temperature above 65 degrees C. 

Enter ASUS BIOS Version 3703 for the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero motherboard. Now we're getting somewhere. It's almost as if ASUS was reading my blog (which I'm pretty sure they're not!).

Again, here is the computer:

• AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads, 7nm technology.

  

  Generic OC Parameters

  
  
• G Skill Trident Z Neo F4-4000 32GB Memory.
• ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero. Motherboard, BIOS Version 3703.
• 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.

Water-cooled OC Parameters

The ASUS BIOS now has two sets of preset overclocking (OC) parameters. I don't think that those were there before this BIOS version. I swear they weren't there! Since I've overwritten the previous BIOS version, I can't tell. However, they're not in the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero, BIOS Version 3601, which is very similar to the Dark Hero BIOS. 

They're accessed as follows: Extreme Tweaker > Overclocking Presets > (Load Generic OC Preset) or (Load Water-cooled OC Preset). Two choices. I tried them both, along with no presets at all. The detailed results are documented in a table below.

Bottom line:

Using these presets, the CPU can easily reach temperatures exceeding 85 C, and up to 90 C. With the CPU working that hard, the performance in the CineBench 10-minute test increases from about 24,974 at the default presets to about 28,395 with the generic OC presets, or 28,410 with the water-cooled presets.  In both cases, the overclocking improves the CineBench score by about 13.7%. That might be enough to make a difference in some applications, including gaming. 

Note that there is only a trivial difference between the results from the two different presets. Therefore the "generic" version is to be preferred because it is much simpler.

Results Table

Disclaimers:

1. This computer may not be telling the whole truth, however. While I believe that the humongous 3-fan Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU air cooler is equivalent to a decent water cooler, it may not be. I don't really know. Or I may not have made the best thermal connection from the CPU to the cooler, who knows. Further, version 3703 for the Dark Hero motherboard is intended to work with several different AMD CPUs, so these results are specific to the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU, not any other AMD CPU.
2. This BIOS version is a Beta version. Included in its description on the ASUS website is the following: "Please note that this is a beta BIOS version of the motherboard which is still undergoing final testing before its official release."

No matter. I don't really have a destination for the Forte computer yet, so for now it's set back to the default presets, which limit the maximum CPU temperature to about 65 C. 

BIOS Version 3703 Bug:

There is another issue with the BIOS Version 3703 on this motherboard with this CPU: In the EzMode screen, upper right corner, is EZ System Tuning. Theoretically this allows the selection of "Improved system performance," "Energy Savings," or "Normal." It doesn't work properly, though, because once you have selected "improved system performance," resulting in a CPU clock of 4000 MHz, you can't unselect it again. Furthermore, you can't select "Energy Savings" at all. Even if you get EZ System Tuning to show "Normal" again, the CPU clock remains at 4000 MHz, even after a reboot. It seems to be a software bug, and it existed in the previous BIOS version as well.