In the never-ending hunt for performance and efficiency, the free software Clock Tuner for Ryzen (CTR) will soon be making a big update for Zen 3 available to the public.
CTR 2.1 brings a whole host of updates, so in this article I’ll provide you with some of my own thoughts and recommendations—including comparisons to AMD’s native offering with Precision Boost 2 and Curve Optimizer!
Let’s get tuning!
Often, motherboard product pages and online forum users mention a motherboard’s VRM and how many power phases it has. Being a somewhat technical topic, VRMs aren’t an easy topic to get into. So today, we will introduce the concept of the VRM and these so-called power phases as simple and straightforward as possible, so that you can easily discern what a motherboard product page is telling you (and when it matters).
Often, PC enthusiasts will speak of overclocking the way car enthusiasts discuss high-performance engines, with megahertz and voltage taking the place of horsepower and torque. Overclocking is often a relatively simple way to squeeze out extra performance from computer components; however, problems sometimes do arise. Luckily, most problems faced with overclocking are easily fixed with some basic troubleshooting techniques.
For our purposes, we’ll look at issues affecting the components that are overclocked the most: the CPU and GPU.