The main take-away here is that establishing a “safety” voltage is important, but ensuring that the voltage provision actually equates the safety input is more important. If we’ve decided that “1.3” is safe for SOC, it’s not good enough to just stop incrementing voltage once BIOS reads “1.3.” There needs to be another check.
In speaking with various contacts, we’ve heard a few conflicting (but generally converging) guidelines for safe voltages:
Our understanding is that an AMD-made overclocking video for Ryzen (not Raven Ridge) suggested a 1.2V SOC voltage. This was at Ryzen’s launch, so is potentially outdated.
ASUS once recommended 1.25V SOC maximally.
Gigabyte has suggested that up to 1.3V should be OK, but spiking or maintaining spikes beyond 1.3V could be damaging to the SOC.
Buildzoid has suggested a safety of 1.2V, which also aligns with what most early Ryzen overclocking guidelines suggested; note that this is specifically for Ryzen, not necessarily for Raven Ridge.
Other contacts have suggested between 1.2V and 1.3V.
Even when using supposed “safe” voltages as a maximum input limit for overclocking via BIOS, it’s possible that the motherboard is feeding a significantly different voltage to the CPU. We’ve demonstrated this before, like when we talked about the Ultra Gaming’s Vdroop issues. The opposite side...
docsbay.net
