Ryzen 5500 OC Potential

[Zerileous]

MicroCenter gave me a $25 off any CPU coupon. Ryzen 5500 is $90. Basically this is more of "can I have fun OCing a $65 CPU?" than "major performance upgrade OMG." In terms of a realistic upgrade, I don't think it will make much difference and if you were to say, just get the 5600G at $130, I would say just get the 5600 at $140 or the 5700x at $190. I can afford it I just don't see the benefit being worth it. A cheep CPU that is more fun to OC, I have a backup if I go too far, and maybe get a little performance boost to boot, sounds like it might be fun. Or sounds like I might be wasting my time. I can't make up my mind.

So stock this CPU is basically a side grade more than an upgrade compared to my 3700x. It uses the Cezanne APU with the iGPU removed (7nm monolithic die). It's basically a 5600G with no G and 200mhz lower clocks. Some people have these hitting 4.7Ghz and running memory at 4200MTs. I'm not sure with my 4x8GB single rank b-die if it will handle those speeds.

Anyone think this is worth doing? Pros are gaining 200-300Mhz max speed, 600-700Mhz all core speed, 400MTs memory and fabric speed, fun of playing with it. Cons: potentially waste of money (but similar price to lots of games, a decent dinner), waste of time and effort, losing 2c/4t (which probably not much I do uses), half the L3 cache, potential problems getting the motherboard (in sig) to run it. Things that don't matter (to me, because x470): PCIe gen 4 absence.

 

[Mr.Scott]

It's not a 'X' processor so your OC will be hugely limited. Not worth it IMO.
Better off with a 5800X.

 

[freeagent]

With the way AMD bins their CPUs, I would go with an X myself..

 

[Zerileous]

My understanding was that more recently the X has referred to a higher power budget, and manually increasing those limits (PBO) almost universally lead to performance that was within 100Mhz of the higher spec chip. In other words, basically a part like a 5800x wouldn't have a lot of headroom.

My idea was to do an old school overclock and not worry a bunch about degradation since it's an inexpensive part. I figured with only 6 cores it would be easy enough to power up to 1.35v and get within spitting range of the high end parts.

My second thought is Cezanne vs Vermeer and whether the increased memory clock of the monolithic APU core is able to compensate for the cut down L3 cache. With the 5700G running $20 cheaper than the 5700x with the same boost clock, it seems to be an interesting question if you already have the memory for it.

 

[Mr.Scott]

The 'X' refers to an unlocked multiplier. OC will be easier and higher.
No 'X' is bclk OC only, which is limited and very small. Not to mention bclk will affect your ram and fabric frequencys also. Harder to OC decently.

 

[Zerileous]

My understanding is the X is not required to change the multiplier on AMD systems. It's not so much the AMD equivalent to a K as it denotes a higher default TDP and higher stock clock ranges. In theory those are binned to perform better (and probably do somewhat), but the main thing is the difficult to change max boost target (irrelevant to all core OC). x570 has the ability to increase by 200MHz, it but x470 doesn't (maybe with newer BIOS but I think they were holding that out as another carat to upgrade). To my knowledge the only Ryzen CPU with a locked multiplier is the 5800X3D.

AMD Ryzen 5 5500 Specs

Cezanne, 6 Cores, 12 Threads, 3.6 GHz, 65 W

www.techpowerup.com

HWBot reports the average OC on water for the 5500 is 4634MHZ - https://hwbot.org/hardware/processor/ryzen_5_5500/
The 3700x averages 4.2 to 4.3 GHz all core, and the 5800x is around 4.8 GHz.

Still probably not that great an idea, it's probably so inexpensive for a reason.

 

[freeagent]

I can do 4700 static with my 5600X, most loads stable. I have benched as high as 4900 or so. With PBO under Linpack load I can maintain ~4600MHz, and all core boost to 4850 for lighter stuff.

When running static clocks on this CPU I have seen OTP kick in 15-20c early, so they are smart.. I can see why you have to keep them cold.



Don't mind the memory, it barely runs in this system. It was literally the cheapest stuff I could find in the city because I didn't want to break up my B-Die setup

The CPU is stable at 2000 1:1 though.