User Guide

55931 Rev. 1.20 February 2018

AMD Ryzen™ Master Overclocking User’s Guide

AMD Ryzen™ Master Application

5.5 Disabling Cores

The AMD Ryzen Master application allows the user to disable a select number of CPU cores.

This may improve overclocking headroom for the remaining CPU cores or can be used to reduce

the overall CPU power consumption. Please refer to Chapter 7 for further information on AMD

Ryzen processor core configuration.

By default, the CPU runs with all cores enabled. AMD Ryzen Master supports disabling cores in

groups. For example, an 8-core AMD Ryzen processor model can be configured to disable two,

four or six cores. A 16-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper processor model can be configured to

disable four, eight or twelve cores. Disabling all cores is not supported since the product would

cease to function with no enabled cores. Note that disabling cores will disable the Windows Sleep

option. When you want to restore all cores and the Windows Sleep option, use Windows Shut

down, then restart.

Figure 9. System Restart Pop-up Message

Since Core Disable requires a system reboot the above pop up message will appear. Click “OK”

to reboot the system or “Cancel” if you do not wish to disable the cores now.

Once the system has rebooted back to the Operating System, AMD Ryzen Master is automatically

launched. It is important to give the OS and AMD Ryzen Master a few moments to initialize after

this step. Do not re-start AMD Ryzen Master manually or you will get the message that another

instance of AMD Ryzen Master is already running, either the automatic one or the one you

opened, and the second instance cannot start.

Note that since the disabled cores have been hidden from the OS, they will not appear as idle or

parked in any Windows resource-monitoring application until enabled.

Note also that most applications that report the number of cores or threads, such as benchmarks,

sample the CPU resources only when first started and will not register changes to CPU core count

or frequency that you change via AMD Ryzen Master. Always re-open such monitoring

applications after AMD Ryzen Master changes are applied.

Certain CPU monitoring tools are able to track dynamic changes initiated by AMD Ryzen Master.