Is it normal for Zen 2 all-core to max out at 4 GHz? My 3900X in games seems to top out there

I do agree that spending money should probably be the last option however we only have limited information about his cooler and we want to remove temperature being a factor in the limitations of his CPUs boosting

I would also suggest not using the EDC tweak/bug, it can bring about instability in the system (I can confirm personally that using the EDC bug caused my system to hang). Stick with getting the bios settings optimised first, so the preferred core options and the power saving options (so the sleep states allow for unused cores to sleep thus saving power and reducing temperatures) and getting those fan curves adjusted - have the fans ramp up earlier, so say your fans are set to increase to 60% speed at 60°c - change that to 50°c, then when the workload has diminished, set a very slow stepdown time.

If however, despite our best efforts, we're still finding temps are high (and I'm sure I'm not the only one here who considers temps, especially for a liquid cooler in the 80°c range, to be high), I would seriously consider investing in better cooling.

@bobnewels I'd like to remind you that the operating specifications for the CPUs is for it to operate at its base clock, the CPU only boosts when there is appropriate headroom to do so and first and foremost when the temperatures are favourable. AMD even shows for boosting, temperatures, despite not being the only factor are incredibly important. https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/cpu-pb2

The $150 CAD for the Liquid Freezer II would definitely be well worth it, considering it will get the temps down into the 50s too... https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3571-arctic-liquid-freezer-ii-cooler-review-benchmark

 

Yeah not here to argue, just making suggestion. OP has a 3900X it is a very good CPU.
I used a $40 Canadian 240MM AIO after rebates on 7 different Ryzen CPU's and not had problem with Temperatures, I do realize that the CPU's vary. It is what it is ,up to OP to do as he want's

 

Thanks for all the advice @bobnewels @Truder @AsiJu, will read over the recent comments more thoroughly after work/perhaps do more experimentation. Much appreciated!

 

What about this:
PBO increases voltage and the time spend in this voltage. (Scalar Setting)
So.. What about setting PBO Scalar to 10X to get the maximum time window.
And use negative voltage offset (like many people do, or what curve optimizer does)
But to get the "optimal" offset value:
Monitor your CPUVID under load with HWINFO and without PBO enabled.
Then subtract this value from 1.5 (PBO's max voltage. I know the actual CPU voltage is lower (because of VDROOP) but the actual VID is 1.5)
// edit
or is 1.48... I have to check this again x)
//
In my case this is ~0.065.
Use that as your negative voltage offset.
So in theory this should allow for longer boost window with lower voltage?

If you have an ASUS board, you try FMAX Enhancer.
It lets my CPU Boost to full boost clocks everytime.
But I need to raise load line calibration to 2/3 or apply positive voltage offset.
But it feels like it lets the cpu clock strech on lower frequencies...
And idk how safe this is...

 

yup
the chart says he needs to keep the cpu around 60 degrees to hit near advertised allcore speeds

 

With a the 360 NZXT X72 and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut my 3700X only hits 60C+ at system load and under stress, when gaming it's under 45C, and that cooler isn't even optimal for Zen 2/3.
I would recommend getting an Arctic Cooling Liquid Freezer II, not to expensive, doesn't come with a lot of bling and can keep them Zen's cool with the new offset bracket that should come with it.
Should get mine tomorrow and can then tell what a difference it does for a 5800x.

EDIT: Just tried the 5800x with the X72, gaming temps are around 40-47C, but things like cutscenes can for some odd reason push the CPU up to 70-76C.
Did some reading and tried curve optimization, which drops the load temps 5-7C and yields higher boost speeds.
Then reduced Platform Thermal Throttle Limit to 60C, CPU stills boost beyond 4.8Ghz with that, so I guess if you want the temps to be as low as you would like them to be for less fan noise, you have to force the maximum allowed temperature.
Some AMD CPU's and motherboards defaults pushes them voltages way to aggressive for cool operation.
Will be interesting to see how those temps look with the Arctic.

 

Tried to install the Arctic Cooling Liquid Freezer II into my system.
Couldn't mount it offset since my motherboard M.2 heatsink collides with it, so installed it as regular AM4 only to see that I couldn't get the big rad to fit on the side of my case.
So I ended up taking it back in the box and reinstalled my X72.

I'm running with some BIOS tweaks instead.
PBO negative curve was no good, it conflicts with GlobalCState, AMD Cool and Quiet or both, need them to turn of everything when the system is shut down and to get the CPU to throttle down to reference speed while idle, with all options running I got something that looks like scheduling delays, very noticeable in Dirt 4 with 1 seconds freezes every 5 seconds or so.
I did run a memtest as well and got errors, so something memory related looses to much voltage, couldn't be arsed to use a lot of time tweaking it for every single core.
ECO Mode works fine, shaves off around 10C but I wanted temperature to go lower.
Tweaking PPT, TDC, EDC and setting max allowed temperature under PBO settings did the trick, hitting max 61C and around 4850Mhz on all cores, no loss of performance across games nor the programs I use.
So I guess the best and fastest option to reduce max temp is to adjust PPT, TDC and EDC, you can use HWinfo64 to read what your CPU uses and then reduce from there.
Curve Optimizer is better if you want to reduce temperatures trough all loads, but to make it work you need to find the best cores and throttle them less than the others, also requires small steps and lot of testing.

 

Sounds like you got the V3, it has this issue.

https://blog.arctic.ac/blog/2021/01/07/liquid-freezer-ii-revision-3-mounting-issues/

your case didn't have room to mount the radiator up top?

 

Yup, can only standard mount it which kinda crushes the idea of having the coldplate on top of the hotspot.

I have a radiator on top for my GPU, mounted on front the hoses won't be able to reach the GPU if I use the 360, with the 240 it will leave a hole open where the 3rth 120 could have been, can't mount anything there except of maybe making a cover.

 

Installed the Arctic (push only) with the V4 kit last night and had my paste settle in a bit, down at 65C now upon load, with games it hovers around 35-40C, quite an improvement from the X72 in push/pull config.
That is with my Alpenföhn fans connected to the 3 headers together with the pump and that chipset fan and setting the boards CPU fan profile manually in between what is recommend as silent and standard, using a softer curve from 40-60C before starting to ramp up.

 

Just an update on this, after the latest series of BIOS updates and getting the newest chipset driver from AMD for Ryzen (as well as updating Windows 10 several times, not sure if that's relevant), I've actually been able to push my RAM further than before so it seems RAM compatibility has been improved?

Previously (I only tested frequency with differing voltage values and tweaked primary timings leaving secondary timings untouched) I was only able to achieve 2933 MHz @1.35V w/ 14/17/17/17/36 timings. Regardless of Voltage or timings I could not get the machine to boot with anything beyond 2933 MHz.

Now (I spent several hours stability testing over the past couple days) I'm able to do 3000 MHz @1.35V w/ 14/17/16/17/36 timings and it's stable according to the Windows 10 Memory Diagnostic tool as well as the Ryzen DRAM Calculator memtest.

For some context I have 2 x dual rank 16 GB RAM sticks rated for 3200 MHz @1.35V 16/18/18/18/38. Also relevant to this post, reattaching the CPU cooler with better thermal compound did improve thermals by maybe 3-5 C which is nice. Thanks,