Best tool for monitoring Ryzen vcore under load

[trents]

Got a R7 2700, MSI B450i gaming plus AC, and GSkill FlareX 3200 ordered. Stuff should be here by end of week.

Question: What is the best tool to measure the vcore under load for Ryzen?

Was playing around with my wife's Ryzen 1600 system this morning and found that different programs report different values.

Ryzenmaster seems to only report what the vcore is set to in bios, which is 1.285.

HWMonitor reports CPU vcore at 2.5 something. That can't be right.

CPU-z reports it a 1.323 while running a stress test but it doesn't fluctuate as I would expect. When I stop the stress test CPU-z reports a brief jump to about 1.35 (which I assume is due to rebound from vdroop) but then quickly settles into something like .57 which seems way too low.


So when AMD recommends staying under 1.35 vcore to prevent degradation, how, where and what is that being measured?

 

[Johan45]

As I have said my favorite for monitoring Ryzen is HWinfo64, tells you all you need to know and as far as I can tell the voltage is fairly accurate close enough that it's not going to make any difference when overclocking. Pretty sure your board will be your limiting factor. I had the b450i gaming AC for a bit trust me unless the BIOS has changed they won't let you overvolt by much. So your question about degradation isn't likely relevant. 1.35V up to 1.45V says AMD with the latter possibly affecting longevity that being said I have seen an 1800X that has been at 1.6V for over two years

 

[Zerileous]

I second HWifno64. Not sure who originally indicated it on the forums, but I remember reading that HWMonitor was not accurate on Ryzen.

Regarding the board, strange that they would build a 6 phase vcore VRM and then restrict voltage heavily. It's not as though this is a particularly budget board. Hope you have better luck with it. What do you plan to use for cooling?

 

[trents]

Yeah, I did a lot of research and not only is the board a popular mini ITX one with good reviews from customers on Egg and Amazon but also from more pro-oriented tech sites like Anandtech who were getting 4.2 OC on this board with a 2700x. Yes, it's supposed have a better power phase rating than a lot of ASRock mini ITX boards which has been my go to brand. We'll see I guess. They do have some newer bioses out now, Johan with the newest one being last month, A6. Nice big heatsink on VRM. guru3d.com review says the VRM holds up nicely with an overclocked 2700X even stressing with Prime95:

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-b450i-gaming-plus-ac-review,20.html