I recently bought a Ryzen 7 5800X3D and have read that undervolting it can reduce temperatures while maintaining or even improving performance. Some people recommend setting Curve Optimizer to negative 30 on every core, while others suggest changing additional Precision Boost Overdrive settings. I'm using an MSI B550-A Pro motherboard. Should I only adjust Curve Optimizer, use PBO as well, or make other changes?
4 Answers
A simple approach is to update the BIOS, enable XMP for the memory, and set Kombo Strike to 3. Leave the regular PPT, TDC, and EDC limits alone, and avoid boost-clock overrides because they can interfere with the 5800X3D’s boost behavior. If the system becomes unstable, reduce Kombo Strike to 2 and test again.
Curve Optimizer is part of PBO, so setting every core to negative 30 is already a PBO adjustment. On many 5800X3D chips, starting with -30 all-core works well, but stability varies between CPUs. Test it thoroughly, and if you get crashes or reboots—especially while idle or browsing—try -20 or -25 instead. Kombo Strike 3 generally applies an all-core -30 setting, while Kombo Strike 2 is roughly equivalent to -20.
There isn’t one undervolt value that works for every processor. Try -30 first, then run CPU and gaming stability tests while checking performance. If it crashes or performance gets worse, step back through -25, -20, and so on. Once you find a stable all-core value, per-core tuning can sometimes improve the result further, but it takes more testing.
Undervolting lowered my full-load temperatures by a few degrees, but on my system gaming became noticeably less smooth with severe frame-time spikes. I had to disable it, since the default voltage behavior of my CPU and motherboard was already fairly conservative. Check actual FPS and frame times, not just temperatures—an undervolt is only worthwhile if performance remains stable.
So I can use either Kombo Strike 3 or manually set Curve Optimizer to -30 all-core, rather than needing to configure both separately?