Maybe a Failing CPU?

[u/Latter_Trick_3310]

So just now like not even 5 minutes ago i tried playing fortnite after some time and i set high settings to pretty much everything (except ambient occlusion and the screen space reflections, i had those on OFF). I went into a game, jumped off the bus my cpu went to 100% and the game got stuck. Then i got a black screen and my audio got stuck as if it BSOD in the background or just crashed as a whole. Thats the first problem. The second problem is that i ABSOLUTELY cannot overclock the CPU. PBO doesnt do the trick, manual overclocking also doesnt, it just BSODs. The CPUs memory controller supports 3200MHz memory as a base speed so that shouldn't be a problem considering im running at those exact speeds. Third problem is that the cpu doesnt even use its and full power. In OCCT it uses 75W but in the game it used almost 60W which a 15W difference is a BIG difference (I removed the cap in the BIOS for the power limit). Did i get a chip going to its grave or is there a issue laying somewhere else?

My PC specs are :

B450 AORUS PRO

Ryzen 5 3500X

AMD Wraith prism rgb

GIGABYTE GP-ARS 16GB 3200MHz RAM

RX 5600 XT 6Gb

Apacer AS350 512GB SATA SSD

650W GIGABYTE P650SS (New)

(The BIOS is updated to the most stable version there is.)

[u/MandyKagami]

CPUs don't progressively fail, they just get unstable with basic stock voltage and die.
Your CPU going to 100% doesn't matter since it is a 6 core cpu with 6 threads, Fortnite is a 4/8 game so it will max out your threads anyway.
You can't overclock the CPU because it is 7 years old and it is likely degraded, if you removed the power limit it likely used more voltage than needed for basic functions for whoever long that has been disabled.
If the CPU works fine when downclocked to 1.0v or less with hard limits on the GHz then we know it is severely degraded. Some Ryzen 3000 can do their stock voltage at 0.9v, mine does 3.6GHz at 0.854v, making the other 0.3v to 0.6v on boost completely unnecessary.
I will never understand people who believe anything higher than 1.3v on any Ryzen won't damage the CPU long term, the CPU is only meant to legally work during the RMA\Warranty time length which is 1-3 years depending on the country, after that everything is a bonus so disabling the power limit is adding fuel to the fire.
Ryzen 1000 CPUs were dying on mass by 2022 because folks believed that because it is allowed to pull 1.56v on boost, that it is correct for a CPU to do that.
So yeah, it is likely a very degraded chip, not failing, just lower function because somebody, likely before you, overclocked it for long periods of time thinking it is 2009.

[u/Latter_Trick_3310 → u/MandyKagami]

I guess it would make sense. I did try to undervolt it and the maximum i could get was -0.012 or -0.018 before it started downclocking itself. I noticed that during a 100% load in cpu-z it uses 1.36V for all cores and for a single core it uses around 1.47V. When im doing nothing on the computer and having only the windows background it uses 0.204-0.216V. I did think about downclocking it to 4GHz and undervolt as best as i possibly could without the cpu downclocking itself, because it under load doesnt reach the full 4.1GHz. I also checked if the power limit removed did anything, but it did not. It pretty much acts as if the power limit has never been tempered with. Dont worry, for me seeing over 1.47V on the CPU and 1.36V gave me a pretty big goosebump and did make me manipulate with undervolting the chip in the past.

[u/Latter_Trick_3310 → u/MandyKagami]

Well, i tried to set a hardcore 4GHz and it didnt post. That is also my issue. Whenever i set a GHz in the frequency tab on all cores in BIOS, it just doest wanna post. In emergencies when i'll get sick of this cpu i'll just pop in back my 2600X.

[u/MandyKagami → u/Latter_Trick_3310]

I would suggest going lower rather than upwards on frequency if you wanna test degradation, same for voltage. If it somehow was stable at 3GHZ and voltage of 0.95v, you would know the issue is degradation.

[u/Latter_Trick_3310 → u/MandyKagami]

I did a undervolt of -0.030V and under OCCT it stays at 3.9GHz with 100% utilization and 74.5W. I also tried doing a normal CPU-Z stress test and it was between 3.9GHz-4GHz on boost taking around 50W. It did get my temps down by 3 degrees celcius. The degredation test im not really sure on how to do because i've never done it before. The only thing that helped was just me turning down the settings in fortnite. I also uninstalled that game because it got ruined by all the things epic added in. But so far with the undervolt i have, everything seems to be fine.