Today we'll be overclocking AMD's Ryzen 3 2200G to the max with a $20 air ice chest from DeepCool called the Gammaxx 200T. Now, you power equal questioning the idea of splurging on an aftermarket cooler for a Raven Ridge APU that only costs $100 itself and already ships with the Wraith Stealth heatsink that is adequate for mild overclocks. However, we've been keen to see how much more can be extracted from the APU when using an upgraded heatsink and whether that whole works out value-sagacious.

Victimisation the R3 2200G's store cooler we were healthy to push its integrated Vega 8 GPU from 1.1GHz up to 1.6GHz, and patc this precede to whatsoever nice gains, IT also pushed operative temperatures well into the 80s and for this reason I wasn't able to overclock the CPU cores arsenic cured.

Our overclock saw a 45% increase in GPU frequency, providing around 35% more frames and truly transforming the affordable R3 2200G's potential when it came to gaming. This got us thinking...

If you'Re upgrading an old PC you'll require not only the 2200G, but also an AM4 motherboard, my preference being a decent B350 model, which typically cost around $70. At that place's a good risk you'll also take some DDR4 memory and decent treble channel DDR4-3000 8GB kits costs around $100. That pushes the sum up bill to some $270, which is an exceptional value considering it includes the reasonably capable Vega 8 GPU.

Given that we saw a minimum of a 20% boost in games just from the GPU overclock, we've been dying to see the R3 2200G's performance with an even more aggressive overclock applied to the GPU, along with an overclock of the CPU cores Eastern Samoa well.

In the case of the DeepCool Gammaxx 200T and 300, for around $20 they increase the full build cost by just 7%. So if they can keep the Ryzen 3 2200G cool and tiptoe while allowing for gains of leastways 20%, then IT seems like you'd be getting a solid return on invested capital.

If you're a brand-new to overclocking or if you've conscionable been happening the fence because IT sounds scary, I'd urge you to have a go. These days, it's safe and easy to get superb results. Typically I encourage overclocking via the BIOS but AMD's Ryzen Master computer software actually whole kit and caboodle well and is much more hail-fellow to beginners.

If you're not sure where to begin, step one would be downloading and installing the Ryzen Master software. Once installed, open it and you'll be faced with the utility you go out in our screenshots. It looks a bit overwhelming but relax, we terminate push asid most of this for our overclock.

Click happening the game mode lozenge at the bottom of the window, or as an alternative you can use profile 1 or 2 if you want (which can be renamed by double clicking connected them). Anyhow, once you've hand-picked one of these tabs you can bug out with either CPU Oregon GPU overclocking. I suggest finding the maximum stable frequency of one part and and then pass on to the other.

For the CPU, merely raise the frequence from 3500MHz to 3.7GHz, run a stress tryout like Prime95 or AIDA64 for about 30 minutes and that volition give you a rough estimation of how stable the system is. If information technology doesn't crash and so proceed to 3.8GHz, run the stress trial run once again and if your system passes like ours did the next step might be 3.9GHz.

It's worth noting that you can do this in some smaller steps, I'm just agitated and prefer to make 100MHz leaps but you rump draw in 25MHz increments if desired. Most 2200G chips should be good for around 3.8 to 3.9GHz.

While boosting the C.P.U.'s nub frequency, you'll also deficiency to increase the Processor voltage. That aforesaid, the Ryzen Master computer software defaults to 1.4 volts for some reason and this is already very high so I wouldn't recommend that you push this any further. In fact, you might be able to get out with dialing this down a bit, but somewhere between 1.3 and 1.4v is apt where you'll fetch up.

Erst the CPU overclock has been applied, you'll need to knead out the maximum stable GPU frequency. By default, the Vega 8 GPU in the 2200G operates at 1.1GHz but the Ryzen Passkey software defaults to 400MHz, which is a ways unsatisfactory. Without any voltage adjustments you should be able to push this up to around 1.3GHz. To go higher, you'll need to increase the APU GFX voltage and the SOC voltage. Past default, both are set up at 1.1v. For the best results, I bumped the APU GFX voltage to 1.3v and the SOC voltage to 1.2v.

The SOC voltage is particularly important every bit this is a single rail that feeds the uncore and graphics domains. I found that 1.2v was enough to stabilize the Vega 8 GPU at 1650MHz but I've seen reports of users exit arsenic high as 1.25v and this is the maximum electric potential that AMD recommends.

Free tools such as Superposition turn well for stress testing your nontextual matter overclock. With the GPU you can increase the frequence 1MHz at once but you should be able to jump right capable 1300MHz and then continue from there with low adjustments to the voltage American Samoa you conk.

Once you wealthy person everything tack together and saved to the profile of your choosing, you simply let to open the Ryzen Control computer software every time you set forth the system and hold the profile. Or els you nates take remark of all the settings then utilise them to the BIOS so they are loaded automatically every time the system boots.

So, what has this overclock done for the 2200G and how well does the Gammaxx 200T cool it? Before we get to the gaming put rate results, here's a look on at the temperatures. Opening with F1 2017, each pass lasted six minutes and I ran the test sixer multiplication. Hera are the results for the final run...

Whereas the Wraith Stealth was pushful into the steep 80s with just the GPU overclocked, the Gammaxx 200T setup never power saw temps rear in a higher place 55 degrees, which remarkable. Please note I maintained an close board temperature of 21 degrees. Not only that but the devotee wasn't spinning particularly fast and I'd describe it as almost unhearable.

That's pretty lofty given that we proverb an average of 47fps with a minimum of 39fps and the skeletal system time results were as wel estimable. In point of fact, fles consistency was excellent in this title of respect and while AMD does have its work cut down in else titles, it's great to have a fewer examples where the Raven Ridge APUs are sleek smooth.

Before squirming on, I also ran an hour long Overwatch bot twin. The way I configure this means that the game never actually ends so it makes for a great stress test. Temperatures once more stayed under 55 degrees for both the CPU and GPU, and it was great to also see smooth public presentation in this title, which was set along culture medium quality at 1080p and 100% render descale.

So the temperatures on this heavily overclocked Ryzen 3 2200G soured out to be excellent when paired with the Gammaxx 200T, which was even passabl quiet in the process. At present it's time to see what kind of frame rate gains gamers commode expect...

Benchmarks

Since we just looked at Overwatch with our stress test, let's now run down the gameplay results. Here we see a 19% increase for the average frame rate and 23% for the minimum frame rate when overclocking the 2200G. That's a comme il faut performance boost and it meant that the 2200G was non exclusively faster than the blood 2400G but also quite a morsel faster than the Pentium G4560 and GT 1030 when looking at the minimum results.

Waving on to CS:GO we see a 22% increase for the fair frame rate but a massive 45% boost to the minimum result. This is intelligibly a issue of overclocking not just the GPU but also the Central processing unit.

Next we have DOTA 2 and here we see a 21% step-up for the normal but only a 13% increase for the minimum which is surprising. These are tranquillize decent gains nonetheless.

The Fortnite Battle Royal results are interesting and not good because we see massive gains when overclocking. The stock 2200G seems middling constrained as the minimum and middling frame rates are very circumferent, much like what we see with the Intel CPUs and their horrible integrated art. Overclocking the GPU seems to alleviate this issue and we see a monumental 45% increase in fair frame rate with a 34% boost to the minimum, allowing the 2200G to match the standard 2400G.

Of course, I had to test PUBG, even though IT's not a friend of the AMD APU. Overclocking noneffervescent helped hugely present and that 25% boost was quite noticeable.

Testing with Rainbow Six Siege saw a 21% boost to the average frame rate and a 25% gain for the minimum. Then this is inline with what we've seen from most else titles.

Finally we have Rocket League and here we see our last result yet: a meager 16% boost once overclocked. Meager though it may be, information technology's not a bad result and in the end allowed the 2200G to overtake the stock 2400G and almost catch the Pentium G4560 + GT 1030 combo.

A Few Parting Words...

It's safe to say that a well overclocked Ryzen 3 2200G platform makes a strong case for itself at $300, which includes a budget aftermarket air cooler, a decent B350 motherboard and 8GB of DDR4-3000 RAM. Past equivalence, consider that the Core i3-8100 on a even so to be released B360 motherboard with 8GB of DDR4 memory and a GT 1030 wish cost at the least $370, so that twenty something per centum savings will cost virtually welcomed past budget shoppers.

As a worst case scenario, you can expect to get around 10-15% more public presentation from this APU when upgrading to a basic aftermarket air cooler, so that seems worth the investment, let alone that tinkering with these Apus is a heap of amusing. In point of fact, I've constitute it more rewarding than playing around with the 8700K and a GTX 1080 Ti, though that's too a gravy holder load of fun.