Must turn on OC Tuner to overclock manually in BIOS on Asus Prime B550-PLUS?

[seward66]

I just put together a "budget" rig, first AMD rig: AMD Ryzen 5 4600G, Asus Prime B550-PLUS motherboard, 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3600 with Windows 11.  Everything's working fine so far, including a combination auto/manual overclock from 3.7ghz to 4.1ghz @1.312v.  Ideally, I would do my overclocking manually, but CPU Core Ratio and related voltage settings were inaccessible until I turned on OC Tuner and let the board run at least one auto-OC, to 4.0ghz @1.216v.  After I did that, I manually set the CPU Core Ratio to 41.00 to get my current desktop settings.  I've done some preliminary stress testing (e.g. 1 hour on Prime95) to get a sense of whether I'm in the ballpark, stability-wise.  It would be great to get to 4.2ghz, but I can live with 4.1ghz.  In order to do that, I'll have to lower some volts, I think.

It seems like I can do that now, at least with offsets, and that's okay.  I'd love to see a decent guide to OC Tuner use.  I'm wondering if OC Tuner has to be enabled to overclock this board through BIOS manually.  It's not a terrible inconvenience, but I'd like to do this manually from scratch, so to speak.  I've been wondering about a setting that no one talks about, under Advanced (not AI Tweaker): AMD Overclocking.  You can either Accept or Decline.  I don't know why someone would explicitly void their cpu's warranty, unless there was some benefit, so I'm wondering if choosing Accept would unlock important settings like CPU Core Ratio without having to go through OC Tuner.

That's it, not sure if I expressed myself properly...basically, I'm wondering if you have to go through OC Tuner to overclock manually through the Asus Prime B550-PLUS BIOS, or if you should be able to do it by default, or perhaps by going to Advanced -> AMD Overclock, and selecting Accept.  Or something.  Thanks for any help.

[Murph_9000]

The AMD Overclocking menu is the generic part of the BIOS from AMD, and the OC Tuner and AI Tweaker sections are from ASUS.  All overclocking theoretically voids the AMD or Intel CPU warranty, whether or not it's behind the Accept/Decline prompt.  In practice, however, both AMD and Intel are reported to not be too strict about that in cases of CPU failure under mild overclocking (but if it's obviously been fried by cranking all the knobs up to 11, they could refuse warranty replacement).

In my opinion, the Accept/Decline page is really to make people stop and think about what they are doing, let them know of potential risks if they were to just carelessly crank everything up to the max.

[seward66]

Thanks so much for help!  Do you know if Accepting under AMD Overclocking gets me access to an alternative bunch of settings, or gets me access to those settings in AI Tweaker without having to select OC Tuner?  I definitely prefer overclocking through BIOS over desktop software, and if I can choose between Asus overclocking software and something else, in BIOS, I'd like to at least take a look at the alternative.

Having said that, I feel like I should concede that I've got a pretty decent auto/manual overclock with the help of OC Tuner.  After I got access to overclocking settings in AI Tweaker, by letting OC Tuner do its thing, and after doing some preliminary stress testing for those settings (4.0ghz @ 1.216v), I went back into BIOS and set the CPU Core Ratio to 41.00, and booted.  My manual entry took, and the board auto-set volts to 1.312; I got through an hour+ of Prime95 with ok temps, which is a start.  I think I should lower those volts manually, and it looks like I can do that as long as OC Tuner is enabled (versus default, Use These Settings or something to that effect, which blocks access to OC settings)...but again, if I can use an AMD Overclocking suite of settings, I'd like to at least take a look.  I realize that I may be talking about something, like McDonald Land, that does not actually exist, at least not in my Asus Prime BIOS.

[Murph_9000]

I'm not sure about the B550 BIOS, but I there may be a global OC enable setting in the AMD Overclocking submenus (after you choose Accept).  If memory serves, the X570 BIOS has that.  Turning that on may enable the features you are talking about in AI Tweaker.  The BIOS manual may be of some help, although it doesn't cover the AMD Overclocking menu in detail:

PRIME TUF GAMING B550/A520 Series BIOS Manual

[seward66]

Thanks so much for this!  This is something that I've been looking for but couldn't find.

[seward66 · Accepted solution]

The answer to my question is, you don't have to Accept under Advanced/AMD Overclocking in order to overclock the cpu on this board, and while doing so gives you some extra OCing options, it's not necessary for basic overclocking.  Accepting (which I did) gives you access to a bunch of voltage and other tweaks, some of which are similar/identical to settings in the Asus BIOS AI Tweaker (I think).  For example, in the AMD Overclocking options, here's an igpu overclocking function, which lets you change igpu clocks and volts manually; this is do-able in the Asus BIOS AI Tweaker, with a little more work (and I wonder if I should trust the simplicity of the AMD Overclocking igpu overclocking tool vs Asus).  However, while there are volts/tweaks that seem unavailable under Asus AI Tweaker, it looks like AMD Overclocking, under Advanced in my Asus Prime BIOS, is more of an addition or complement to the Asus BIOS options.  That's okay.  It also looks like I can do what I want in the Asus BIOS, more or less, with or without enabling OC Tuner.  It's all more than I expected from a $99 chip and a $129 board, so I'm good.  Thanks very much for help!  That guide got me around the curve, so to speak.