Renoir Mobile Tuning 1.0.0 quick test: overclocking and underclocking the Ryzen 4000H/U APUs

AMD Ryzen 4000H/U laptop owners can now take advantage of a neat little application called Renoir Mobile Tuning developed by reddit user kbsk1. This tuning tool allows users to modify power and thermal parameters in order to boost the performance by raising the thermal limits and boost clock times. Alternatively, users can also lower the TDPs and temperature targets to prolong battery life.

The tuning tab of the RMT v1.0.0 application includes PL2/PL1/PL0 TDP modifiers, along with PL2/PL1 boost duration modifiers and TCTL temperature limiter, plus TDC and EDC amperage modifiers. It also offers a comprehensive monitoring tool that reports per-core thermals, power draw, power state, clock speed and effective clock speed, along with system-wide power consumption, thermals and details on the GFX, SoC, Infinity Fabric and memory speeds.

For the overclocking scenario, the TDPs can be slightly increased, which in turn would allow the boost duration to be increased. This, however, may upset the thermal balance set by the laptop OEM and could lead to overheating due to improper cooling, so this is most likely intended for advanced users. Additionally, overclocking the APUs may reduce battery life.

Since the Ryzen 4000 APU can get pretty hot by default, users may try to reduce the TDPs and lower the boost duration. This procedure is trading some performance for reduced APU temperatures and reduced cooler noises, with the added benefit of extended battery life.

Of course, the application is not without bugs, as we have tried to run it on a RedmiBook 16 laptop powered by a Ryzen 5 4600U (credit goes to Klaus Hinum) and we kept getting greeted by a few error message every time we opened up the app.

We first tried to overclock the APU by raising PL2/PL1 limits to 55 W with max temp 95, but we could not see any performance improvements over the default 48W/37.5W settings, although the CPU temp did increase by 5 degrees to reach the 95 limit. In this case, package power still remained locked to 34 W, same as default, so we suspect this is the upper limit of the U-series. The H-series may offer a bit more room for overclocking.

Underclocking seems to be working properly, on the other hand. We lowered the PL2/PL1 to 25W/15W and the temperature limit was considerably lowered to 64.4 degrees C from the default 90. As expected, performance took a hit, but the drop was not that big considering that the TDPs were essentially halved.

We would advise users to be cautious and experiment with the overclocking procedures at their own risk.