PboStudio is a stability testing and live tuning suite for AMD Ryzen processors. It combines per-core stress testing with direct SMU Curve Optimizer read/write in a single native GUI (.NET 9 / Avalonia UI), so you can test a value and apply it without rebooting into the BIOS.
Status: 1.0.0. 84 tests, and the tuning loop verified end to end on an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D: values written to the SMU before each measurement, Prime95 pinned to a single core, a full stress slot, pass detection, step-down and locking at the chip limit.
| Variant | Size | What you need |
|---|---|---|
PboStudio.exe |
45 MB | Nothing. One file, no .NET install. Fetches Prime95 and y-cruncher from their vendors on first run. |
PboStudio-full.zip |
98 MB | Nothing, including no internet. Same executable plus both stress engines and the PawnIO driver installer. |
Take the single executable unless the machine has no internet access. Both are on the Releases page.
Right-click → Run as administrator: talking to the SMU goes through a kernel driver, and that needs elevation.
Windows SmartScreen will warn about an unknown publisher — the executable is not code-signed.
- 🎯 Live Curve Optimizer control — read and write per-core CO margins in Windows, no reboot.
- 🤖 Auto-tuner with a two-way search — steps each core down toward the chip limit, and on a failure steps it back up, re-testing, until a value actually holds. Only a value that has passed under load gets locked in.
- 🏆 Dual-engine testing — chains Prime95 SSE (peak boost, transient Vdroop) and y-cruncher (heavy vector and cache load) in one run.
- 🛡️ WHEA watchdog — catches corrected hardware errors from the Windows event log and maps them to physical cores by APIC ID. Usually the earliest sign of a too-aggressive offset.
- ⏩ Smart recommendations — coarse (+4) and fine (+2) mitigation proposals in one click.
- 🩺 Platform check — EXPO/XMP state and motherboard BIOS age, both of which affect PBO stability before any CO value is involved.
- ⭐ Preferred-core badges from real CPPC data — read from the processor, not guessed. If the CPU reports no ranking, no badge is shown.
- 📊 15-minute live telemetry — three labelled lanes (clock, temperature, PPT) with a time axis, the configured emergency temperature limit drawn in, and a crosshair tooltip.
- 📄 HTML stability report — shareable summary of values, errors and runtimes.
- 💾 Crash recovery — an interrupted run is detected on the next start and can be resumed.
- ⚙️ Windows autostart task — reapplies your tuned values on every boot.
- 🌍 German and English, switchable at runtime.
- OS: Windows 10 / 11 (64-bit)
- CPU: AMD Ryzen (Zen 2 – Zen 5, including X3D) and Ryzen Threadripper
- Rights: Administrator — required for SMU access
- Driver: PawnIO — a signed, open-source kernel driver that restricts ring-0 access to a narrow set of commands. Installable from inside the app.
Prime95 and y-cruncher are downloaded from the vendors on first run, falling back to the current version on the vendor's download page if a pinned build has been retired. PawnIO is fetched from its GitHub release when you press Install.
The PboStudio-full.zip variant ships all three alongside the executable, so a machine with no
internet access can be set up completely. The app uses the bundled driver installer
automatically when it is present.
It changes CPU voltage offsets. Crashes and bluescreens are a normal part of finding a limit, not a malfunction. Values applied live are gone after a reboot unless you enable the autostart task or enter them in your BIOS.
Undervolting is not overvolting and does not typically damage hardware, but an unstable system can corrupt data in flight. Do not tune a machine that is doing work you care about.
git clone <this repository>
cd PboStudio
dotnet test tests/PboStudio.Tests/PboStudio.Tests.csproj
dotnet publish src/PboStudio.App/PboStudio.App.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 \
--self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true \
-p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true -p:EnableCompressionInSingleFile=true \
-o outexternal/ZenStates-Core is a vendored fork of
irusanov/ZenStates-Core with local patches;
external/zenstates-local-patches.diff records the difference from upstream.
- The auto-tuner's upward search — core fails, voltage is raised, core is re-tested — is covered by tests but has not been observed on physical hardware, because the test CPU stayed stable down to its chip limit. The descent and locking paths are verified.
- Aida64 and Linpack engines are not supported; CoreCycler has them.
- The upward search is bounded by the configured pass count, so starting at the chip limit with few passes can leave a core unresolved.
GPL-3.0 for PboStudio itself. Includes a patched copy of ZenStates-Core, also GPL-3.0.
Prime95 (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search), y-cruncher (Alexander J. Yee) and PawnIO (namazso) are owned by their respective authors and are not covered by this project's licence. The single-file build downloads them from their official sources. The offline bundle includes them unmodified and signature-intact for convenience; if you are an author of any of them and would prefer it did not, open an issue and the bundle will be withdrawn.
- Prime95: freeware — https://www.mersenne.org/legal/
- y-cruncher: freeware — http://www.numberworld.org/y-cruncher/
- PawnIO driver: GPL-2.0 — https://github.com/namazso/PawnIO; the installer wrapper declares no licence and is redistributed as published, signed by namazso.eu