Heh mine is so similar, just different case and 750W PSU and 3060ti graphics.

 

oh you answer I have missed. Would be cool to get a advice still:

5950x
Gigabyte B550 VISION D (rev. 1.0)
I have 32 gb eec memory. I think it’s Samsung.

the biggest problem I had because the heat past was not well applied. Now I did this again and it became much better and more stable. But I would still be interested in how you set up everything so it’s best for music production. I don’t know if this matters but I use ableton

 

Errr AMD calls it SMT, but anyway no and no. Where this is applicable is gaming. Might give a few more fps and games will do up to 8 cores at most currently. This is another reason why the 8 core X3D cpus sell like hotcakes.
The temps go according to the cpu load. The more load on the cpu cores the higher the temps. Having a good cooler (liquid AIO is recommended) is a must when you rock a 16 core cpu.
Most important, Ableton Live benefits from SMT so just put it back on.

Again no and no. Leave it those at default settings. Temps are never permanent on the cpu. If your cpu overheats it will throttle back its clock speed by itself to compensate for the heat. Also, temps you see in the BIOS come from the hottest core. Only with software like HWInfo64 which reads all hardwired motherboard sensors, you will have a full picture of each core's temp.

Not really. It would have a slight improvement on the overall system's responsiveness, like when inserting new plugins in projects etc etc, but if you already have this ram it's pointless to change.

If you find you don't use all that cpu power, you can use AMD's Ryzen Master to turn on ECO mode easily within Windows environment no need to go tweaking in BIOS. You should think of ECO mode as an "Auto Undervolt" mode. At the 65W setting you will lose about 10-15% overall speed and draw significantly less power, 45-50% less. I have to note here, ECO mode is usually for advanced users who know exactly what kind of cpu loads they will need and know how to use multicore efficiently to overcome the negative bump in clock speed.
I wouldn't do it with a 5950X because you will probably need both the burst speed (instant boost) and the max clock speed for DAW work. But if you find you don't need all these and also rarely turn off your pc, you can use it to lower your power bill hehehe, also power draw and temps accordingly.
Now manual undervolting through BIOS is kinda pointless since you can do it with a couple of clicks with ECO mode and be sure it 'll work, unless you want to overclock your cpu. If that is the case, you leave me a pm and i will help you as i am familiar with AMD's BIOS in all mobos.
Btw, that Vision D mobo, is sweet. And ECC ram is good choice too. Best mobo in the B550 series and the only one i recall with legit TB3. It has a 6 Phase VRM solution in 12+2 power stages @ 60A each. Not too shabby at all, in fact it the best vrm in all B550 Gigabyte boards and most others too and it can sustain overclock with np. But for serious oc you should make sure you have a liquid AIO cooler with a triple radiator to avoid shenanigans with heat and noise etc.
Cheers

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2025

I never had a amd but managed to score a really cheap deal on a ryzen 9 mini pc with ddr5,32g ram i know it'snot the greatest or newest model but looking forward to them delivering it after squeezing every last drop out of my crappy i5 laptop for years usfull amd knowledge in here thanks

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2025

Wow thank you so much! This is really great information about this system. And I’m happy to hear my motherboard choice was good. I bought everything second hand. And the Thunderbolt support was the seller here. But good to know it’s also good in other regards.

I’ll definitely try to put STM back on and make some tests again if I see a better cpu consumption performance. For my project single core performance is actually more important because most often I have less than 20 tracks and use intense plugins. Also this pc is only turned on for ableton so I think I better not choose the eco mode in that case. Also I think it was a article from Steinberg how to optimise for audio production I followed. So windows is already in high performance mode and also I also think this is were I was reading about hyper threading / STM. But maybe the article is old by now and things changed.

Also in my custom pc case, I put this pc inside a big pelican case, is sadly no space for water cooling. I have made not the best choices for this setup. I think a m4 Mac mini (was not released at that time) would have been a much better choice but the lack of touch screen support prevents all osx for me.
I think my cpu cooler not to bad for a air cooler it’s a bequiet dark rock tf (2)


Is there a way to overcook to get lower temps but keep a similar speed? When I’m back home later today I will make some pictures from my bios settings. Maybe you have some ideas how to optimise those settings? But also maybe the temperature are now ok? If I have a ableton project with about 50% cpu load I get temperatures below 80c (for my bad cooling and case maybe good enough?)


And one more time thank you so much for your help

 

I also undervolted my 5950x with an all core overclock @ 4.5ghz I do get a 30k multicore score with cinebench23 but a low 1.4k something single thread score which is useless so I now have it set to default and get 1.6k something single core score

 

I would be interested in the opposite. Like weaker multicore speed but much increased speed on one or two cores. This would be amazing for some of the demanding virtual instruments I believe. Is this possible? And does it make sense?

 

With diy pcs it is mandatory to prioritize, so first of all:

Oh hehe... Get yourself a proper pc case mate. There are many quality options at 100-120 €/$ that will accept a triple radiator. Something like Lian Li's Lancool 207 (90 €.) or Lancool 216 (slightly larger @ 115€) allow for a 3x120 AIO CLC and both have great thermal performance and air flow even when compared to cases double the price. If you go for one of these, the Arctic Liquid Freezer III 360 goes for ~70€ and will offer very good cooling with low noise. Btw, this:

At 230W max cooling capacity, it 's one of the most capable air coolers although expensive about as a Noctua DH15 and even more expensive than the Arctic AIO. Thing is on cpu load, you will definitely hear it which is not the case with the Arctic AIO where you can set a silent fan curve in the bios and still maintain adequate cooling performance.

For your setting it's just fine. Changing to what i described in real world numbers will give you a ~10 degrees Celcius drop give or take. And beware that it is not only the cpu temps you should be looking at but also the overall ambient temps inside the case. The rest of the components, especially the VRMs which are responsible for the overall voltage regulation and delivery to the cpu, gpu and ram of the system, benefit from a decent airflow and are stressed from the opposite.
(The Voltage Regulator Modules are placed around the cpu socket, typically in an inverted L config and in most mobos except the really cheap ones, are covered with a shroud that contains a cooler to dissipate heat. Some mobos even have a fan on the vrms. A good explanation to understand what they are and do is here: https://www.velocitymicro.com/blog/what-are-motherboard-vrms/ )

Frankly, you 'd be very frustrated with the M4 mini hehehe. Ableton Live doesn't utilize Apple Silicon's Efficiency cores. And by official statement they don't have any near future plans to do so, as they develop their soft with stability in mind at first (their own words not mine). So with the m4 mini, you'd be stuck with its 4 Performance cores and no upgradeable ram too. I strongly doubt you would go far with it, speaking always about realtime performance in the studio, although -truth be told- the M4 mini's single thread boost is impressive and probably better than the 5950X. The MacMini can be a nifty comp for something like Cubase or Logic light/medium projects and handy for live acts too. Overall at ~600 dlrs, it's probably the best mini comp at that price range but not for really demanding tasks. At the end you get what you paid for.

I wouldn't know what you mean here hehe. If you mean undervolt and OC yes that's possible, but first you need to change at least your pc case for a proper one as mentioned. And about what you are looking for, like overclocking specific cores it will be quite a hard task for you since you are novice to this. And it can lead to overall system instability really quick, if only a slight offset in cpu voltage is just a "hair" off.
First you need to check your heavy projects while playing with HWinfo64 (freeware). This will give you a detailed pic of each core's load. Usually software like DAWs "cherry pick" the cores that are supposedly faster first to put load on. In 16 core AMD cpus the die is divided into two 8 core ccds and in terms of "turbo boost" they are not equal. In the case of the 5950X one core will give you the max 4.9 ghz when the cpu load demands it. Two cores will drop to 4.8 ghz and so on. Enabling/using PBO (if you haven't already) you can maintain a 4.4 ghz all core boost which is perfectly fine. Grab AMD's Ryzen Master utility software. AMD themselves have lots of tutorials and howtos, it would be wise to check 'em out, in order to get some better insight (and permanent knowledge in general) as to what your hardware can potentially do.
Lastly, i will humbly again suggest you change your pc case first of all. You don't oc in such a "case". Further more if your biggest project puts a 50-60% load on the cpu, you don't need to OC -period. There's enough more "juice" to it, especially if you intentionally prioritize threads by smartly splitting the load in more tracks. Monitor your cpu's core activity with HWinfo64 while creating in DAW and you 'll understand what i'm talking about.
Cheers

 

hey, i used to do all core static overclock for a while, now i'm back to pbo2. i installed new arctic fans(5 pack pwm pst) ,set the intakes(3) to constant 65%, exhaust(2) to 40% so they never ramp up(or down). PPT-TDC-EDC all 140, modest +50 boost override, curve optimizer(CO) -10 on the 2 best cores and -15 on the rest. i use HWiNFO to find best cores (usually core 0&1). i'm around 22C idle(Ireland) and 30-40C under load(Cubase 14 & Ableton ), in gaming 55-60C(pc is on a table,cold fresh air). im using a 5 pipe single tower Thermalright cooler on my 5700x. on the 5950x i'd go with a double-tower design(Phantom Spirit), no need for water cooling. enjoy your rig

https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/op0puh/pbo_or_allcore_on_5950x/
https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/tmo75z/ryzen_9_5950x_overclocking/

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2025

I bought a second hand one some 4-5 months ago for an Aorus B450 v1 board. 32GB RAM, 3 x 1TB SSDs, RTX 3600 (12GB edition). It replaced an aging Ryzen 7 1800x and the difference it made with DAWS and DSP was awesome. My DAC can do SPDIF optical, coaxial and USB but on USB, it ran like a dog, even with the buffer at 2048. I'd say for a second-hand CPU, the bang for buck is really, really good. You'll need a decent cooler too.

 

I'm still not decided on what's the optimal compromise between noise/temperatures - high airflow meshy cases with lower rpm fans VS. obstructed dampened cases with higher flow/pressure fans

 

I can not buy a different pc case because I used a plastic travel case and put in the lid some midi controller a stream deck and a 23 inch touchscreen. And in the base of the case I have some synths model d and neutron and a ableton push. I made space for the pc underneath it. It would make more sense to switch the whole pc setup to something less hot than to change the case. But because it’s actually ment to be used in loud environments anyway it doesn’t matter so much if the fans get loud. I even put in some 90mm fans with up to 3200rpm so it can sound like a jet engine

but it’s actually working good now and since I reapplied better heat paste and also more (I think before it just was not enough to put a big drop in the middle. This time I put one bigger in the middle and 4 smaller in every corner and it made a huge difference.
It’s still running hot but it’s possible to have big ableton sets without thermal throttling. And I don’t need this pc for 3d rendering or other 100% all core tasks.


I already use HWinfo64 and I also tried pbo and to lower the individual cores. And increase again until the system becomes stable again.
But I’m still not confident this system will be running stable always. how do you check if the overclock is definitely stable always? I tried some benchmark software. But I have not done a long stress test what program do you suggest for intensive testing. I need to be completely save or I will be to stress to use this on stage.

And again thank you for taking the time and giving me so detailed feedback

 

Prime95, Aida64. HWInfo has its own stress test as well. Let either of them run for 2-3 hours and you 'll know what gives
As for the case itself, you can diy drill some holes on that custom build of yours and add at least a couple of fans one for intake and one for exhaust. Read on please if you wanna a bit more.

Well. I can see your concern. I find more problems with the sealed/insulated cases than solutions. I have tried extensively both and even still now i have a few rare clients that prefer low consumption cpus to make builds in older BeQuiet insulated models just to have an unnoticeable level of noise.
The major problem(s) with insulated cases is:
How do you get a proper air intake/exhaust in a closed dampened case. Put simply, having a couple of holes in such a case, defeats the obvious purpose for all this noise dampening. On the other hand, colder air has to come from somewhere. Having a fan blowing towards components in a tightly sealed case without taking air from from a colder ambient source, doesn't do anything, it just recycles warm air no matter how much static pressure (within a reasonable margin) it can produce.
Now, the little side vents on front panels, typical of many insulated cases, allow for a tiny amount of room ambient air to be sucked in, but again one, i found it is barely enough to properly cool the interior and two, they are still holes that will make whatever noise produced inside immediately more apparent.
My conclusion with these cases is that they can be used when you have a system that needs very little cooling by itself, like a Ryzen 5/i5 cpu and low power gpu or no gpu at all. But again, such a system will be quiet in almost any case given the user done their research properly and insulated cases are still more expensive than airflow cases anyway. Also such a low power system can be passively cooled allowing for a no noise solution whatsoever.
When i can, i always go for airflow cases in both my own and client builds the past ten years. They offer the best ratio in the equation of noise vs system stability/longevity vs price.
Going to a cheap airflow case like ie a Lancool 216, allows for excellent airflow and if you take the time and small extra cost to switch fans for something like Arctic PWM which are cheap and can be very low noise when set at low speeds, will keep your system at around 30db given you have a low noise cpu cooler and gpu too. Noctua fans excel of course but are expensive and people who would use them would probably go for a more expensive case anyway. Measured in temps by yours truly, Arctic's 5 pack that costs somewhere around 40 euros have about 90% Noctua's efficiency and low noise which cost about 400% more hehehe. I 'd still go for Noctuas if the build is high end.
Cheers

 

Last edited: Jan 23, 2025

Prime95 - serves as a stability test after overclocking www.mersenne.org/download/

Prime95 for checking system stability / CPU stability

 

Wow 24 hours. That’s long. And have any of you done prime95 for a longer period? What frequencies does the cpu clock to in a very good case?

 

My friend who does hard oc (20-25%) constantly, does a 24hr just to be 100% sure. Even a 24 hrs test is overkill really but my mate is absurdly meticulous on every little detail in his systems. He also runs a 24 hrs memtest. I 'm not aware of anyone doing more than 24hrs stress hehe. I never do more than 2-3 hrs but i never do perm hard oc. Only mild ones. If anything's wrong, it is 99% shown in the first two hrs of stressing. Fyi, Prime95 is quite an "unreal" test, under normal operation it is impossible to see a constant 100% load on all your cpu cores. But this is also what makes it useful when oc'ing, it will reveal any possible errors.
Cheers
PS: It has happened that memory showed errors in the 21st hour of memtest. As for Prime95, i am not aware of cpu errors/failures exhibited past the first 8 hrs of stressing, but there may be examples out there, i just haven't witnessed anything similar in person.

 

Last edited: Jan 23, 2025

And when you do a stress test with a 5950x what is a typical clock frequency. I think because of thermal throttling my clock speed dropped a lot. But does it actually matter if it never does this using ableton. And this pc only real purpose is running ableton?
also good to know that 2-3 hours are enough to be very confident about the pc stability.

 

First lemme just say, a cpu stress test like Prime95 and ram stress test like Memtest86, are used across the entire diy pc building community, no matter if you oc or not. These softies are precautionary steps that show the stability of the system and will reveal potential defects or build errors.
Btw, with Prime 95 and no oc, there is only what the all core factory clock is. Under oc it is expected the set core clock(s) to be met. Prime95 works by putting an artificial load on all cores, enough to run any cpu to the max.
I can't express any more opinions as to how you could proceed, until i see some detailed pics of how it is all laid out within the case.

 

Last edited: Jan 24, 2025

thank you for all your help. I think I found the issue. A few days ago I had a very bad crash. Like if someone would have pulled the power cord. And after it happened ones it did again and again shut off brutally. I tried Memtest86 but it showed no error. Maybe because of the eec architecture of the memory? So I thought maybe the cpu is dome. But yesterday I tried to remove one of rhe two memory sticks. And now it’s working stable and also much much cooler. So I believe the the issue was the whole time that memory stick! Is that possible. That a faulty one makes the cpu struggle? Or is it also possible that maybe the memory slot is broken? How can I find out if it was the memory itself or if it is something bad like the cpu or motherboard?

would you get a replacement memory kit and try it that way?

 

Hello @Noael, it's better to proceed systematically using the process of elimination. First we want to check whether your RAM is OK.
I think you have inserted it correctly and the clips are closed and they are firmly in place.

1. Go to the BIOS and reset your settings to factory settings
2. Download and install the following program and run it
3. MemTest86
The standard for memory diagnostics
- Boots from a USB flash drive to test the RAM in your computer for faults.
- Utilizing algorithms that have been in development for over 20 years.
www.memtest86.com

P.S.: If you have crashes or a blue screen, it is helpful to write down the entire error message on a piece of paper, this makes it easier to find the errors.

Computer POST and beep codes: www.computerhope.com/beep.htm