Performance/watt matters. You can just set TDP to what you want with throttling choices.

If you want a 45W TDP from the 3700X, you can just pop into Ryzen Master and ask for a 45W TDP. Boom, you're running in that envelope.

I think shopping based on TDP is not the best, because it's not comparable between manufacturers and because it's something you can effectively "choose".

How do you do that? Is it a setting in the bios? Or can it be done runtime? If so, how? It sounds interesting if I can run a beefy rig as a power efficient device, for always-on scenarios, and then boost it when I need.

> How do you do that? Is it a setting in the bios? Or can it be done runtime?

On AMD, it's a utility you run. I believe you may require a reboot to apply it. On some Intel platforms, it's been settings in the BIOS.

> It sounds interesting if I can run a beefy rig as a power efficient device, for always-on scenarios, and then boost it when I need.

This is what the processor is doing internally anyways. It throttles voltage and frequency and gates cores based on demanded usage. Changing the TDP doesn't change the performance under a light-to-moderate workload scenario at all.

Ryzen Master lets you change some of the tuning for the choices it makes about when and how aggressively to boost, though, too.

Ryzen Master doesnt seem to be available for linux so you end up with bunch of unnofficial hacks that may or may not work. I run sff setup myself, originally wanted to get 3600 but it was out of stock, and the next tdp friendly processor was 3700x.

That's an annoyance, but on Linux you have infinite more control of thermal throttling and you can get whatever thermal behavior you want. Thermald has been really good on Intel, and now that Google contributed RAPL support you can get the same benefits on AMD-- pick exactly your power envelope and thermal limits.

Yeah but can I get a metric ton of benchmarks at that 45w setpoint?

I don't really see the reason in paying for a 100w TDP premium if I'm just going to scale it down to 65w.

> Yeah but can I get a metric ton of benchmarks at that 45w setpoint?

Yup, they're out there.

> I don't really see the reason in paying for a 100w TDP premium if I'm just going to scale it down to 65w.

You might want the core count or peak performance for the very short term. When I was looking, running 65W parts in the 45W envelope was only about a 7% penalty, so you get a bunch more performance/watt.

I'm running a 2400G in a Mellori-ITX. Another issue is sizing the power supply.