Hi,
Could anyone please confirm what are options for setting max TDP for Framework Desktop (Ryzen AI Max 385 / 395)?
The AMD specs mention “Configurable TDP: 45-120 W“.
I have HDPlex linear PS (the old one that has only 100 W) that I would like to use. I would ideally limit TDP to the minimum (45 W).
Does BIOS allow TDP settings? Is the feature at least planned? Thanks
I haven’t encountered a TDP selection in the bios yet.
You probably know, but just for everyone else who might read this:
Your PSU seems to support only 5-7A for 12V. FW recommends at least 32.5A for the 12V rail (source)
Also:
I did a quick test via ryzenadj -{a,b,c}45000. The 395 gets crippled below it’s baseclock of 3GHz on MC CPU load and the GPU to ~54% of it’s capabilities (average 47 fps vs 87 fps on furmark-knot-vk).
The bios has no power settings but the power management settings in your OS have 3 meaningful power settings when using the Framework Desktop
powersave (~50W TDP sustained, it is roughly half as fast as in “balanced”, my experience here is in line with mOgg’s)
balanced (115W TDP 10 sec boost / 100W TDP sustained)
performance (140W TDP 10 min boost / 120W TDP sustained)
Of course, with ryzenadj you have much more freedom and can choose anything in between or even slightly beyond. But below approximately 80W TDP you are starting to seriously cripple the performance of the 395 at least. So, you can run Strix Halo at 45W TDP but the question is if you want to.
PS: I am operating a 395 64GB on balanced power settings on a HD-Plex 250W GaN with no issues so far (other than a bit of coil whine during GPU loads and only during GPU loads)
Much appreciated information!
I wasn’t aware of the recommended 32.5A for the 12V rail. It is good to know that the HD-Plex 250W GaN with its 20A works!
Thanks for the ryzenadj tip. Sounds like the solution I was looking for.
The warning of the significantly reduced performance is appreciated as well. I have tried to find the information regarding how the performance scales with power, but I wasn’t successful.
Thanks again, you were very helpful!
Is the coil whine coming from the HDPLEX PSU or APU/motherboard?
There is definitely some of it coming from the PSU, I do think that some is also coming from the board, but I can’t say for sure. I’d have to disassemble my custom build for finding out and I really very much prefer to not do that unless I absolutely have to 
Thanks! Ha, I won’t ask you to do that 
. Technically speaking, a small microphone might help locate the source. Just some random thoughts. Not an ask.
Coil whine is a bit like “Fine vertical artifacts” in 3D printing. It is such a finicky hit and miss thing that can vary even from machine to machine and the precise use scenario. It is possible to get rid of both but you can drive yourself crazy over it.
I just decided that this won’t be the hill I am going to die on.
Especially as I have spent already plenty more than is reasonable on my machine.
Why does everything have to turn into a speaker when you run dozens of amps through it in small bursts XD
It remains a mystery. The industry standard solution appears to be to have simply fans that are louder than the coil whine.
If fanless designs were mainstream, maybe producers would actually care about reducing coil whine but that’s not exactly where the industry is moving towards, is it?
More like they just ignore the problem, you can’t really cover up coil whine with fans unless it’s extremely weak.
They kind of are, problem is power-draw (and burstyness of workloads) seems to be escalating faster than their mitigation of coil whine is, I don’t want to know what the power delivery design of a gtx680 would sound like scaled up to 600W XD. They do have generally better components and designs these days but workloads just got worse faster.
It may also mess with some of the numbers some marketing people are obsessed with, maybe we don’t use the power stages with the biggest marketing numbers on them but more weaker ones or just better ones with without inflated marketing numbers.
There is also expensive production steps like gluing down components and stuff that can help but evidently manufacturers think that is not worth it.
I know next to nothing about power stages but I would assume that if someone would seriously try to optimise for minimal coil whine, and choose power stages design and components and production processes accordingly, one could get a long way. But it is probably a tricky path, one that is getting increasingly harder due to escalating power requirements and “burstyness” of workloads.
My ASRock Industrial 7640U Mini-PC board certainly manages to stay completely coil whine free (the external power brick does not but it is silent enough that one cannot hear it up from the floor through the desk). Achieving that with a 28W TDP power limit is certainly much easier though.
I agree, the task is getting increasingly difficult, yet there doesn’t seem to be much of market, even for a niche product. Unless we are talking about something specifically used in sound production but there the best solution is probably to simply have everything setup in another room, other than inputs and screens and maybe even have everything sound isolated except for the microphone.
Certainly but that would be expensive. It also kinda depends on the rest pf the system (especially the psu), it is perfectly possible to have a set of psus and gpus that are perfectly quiet in one configuration and raise absolute hell in the other.
A 7840u barely pulls any power in the grand scheme of things.
It is at least a somewhat common point in gpu reviews and does cause returns so manufacturers at least try to keep it down.
Edit: it is also possible this gets better in the future if gan and stuff comes to gpu/cpu power delivery as those allow much faster switching frequencies shifting that noise much further outside the audible range (also a bit of extra efficiency and needing smaller inductors as abonus).
My PSU is GaN though and still has coil whine. But it is quite heavily used, given that it has a max 240W at 12V. So possibly the 500W version would not have that issue, but that is not an option anyway (and has a fan as well, unlike the 250W version).
I don’t even have the 7840u but the 7640 but I am very impressed with its CPU performance. It is incredible what that thing can pull off at just 28W TDP. Single core performance is maybe 10-20% less than the 395 and multicore is at roughly 45%. It is the iGPU that is limiting and app. 3-times slower than the 8060s but that is still good enough for quite a few things, including some older 3D games. All of that in 28W TDP for the APU.
The reason I got the Strix Halo was because I wanted to build a fully passive system, that does not heavily struggle even at low settings in modern games but can actually play everything fairly competently, at the least at 1080p, most games even at 1440p and that’s what it does, even at 100W sustained TDP.