Hello guys,

with the CPU being quite profitable at the moment perhaps it is a good idea to give you some details on how you can maximize your profitability if you decide to use your PC to earn some coins. Those tips are valid for all CPU's, however I will go into some overclocking details over AMD Ryzen processors due to the fact that they are way more capable in that area and I simply does not own a single Intel with which I can experiment for the past few years. 

As you probably know, at the end of 2019 Monero switched to the Random X algorithm which is very CPU friendly and this started the current rise of CPU mining. Anyway, let's get started. 

(all those tips are valid for Windows users)

The first thing to do is to enable the Lock Pages in Memory. This is by far the biggest boost you will get on your PC.

To enable Lock Pages in Memory, follow these steps when logged in to your Windows account:

1. Click Start and type "gpedit.msc" and press Enter.

2. In the window that opens navigate to Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > User Rights Assignment

3. On the right panel, scroll down until you find Lock pages in memory.

5. Click Add User or Group.

6. Type your Windows account name in the empty text box.

7. Press OK & restart your PC.

Overclocking AMD Ryzen

The next step would be to overclock your AMD CPU(overclocking Intel is also beneficial, just I'm not in a position to explain how that goes). Download and install the AMD Ryzen Master software. This is an overclocking tool that allows you to change CPU core speed and lower or increase voltage. 

Setting Core Speed and Peak Core(s) Voltage

1. Select Profile 1(fig. 1).

2. Enable Speed Mirroring of one core to all other cores (fig. 2).

3. Increase core speed (fig. 3) by 50Mhz. This depends on your CPU capabilities.

4. Click Apply (fig. 5).

5. Start mining.

6. If you do not experience any issues, repeat this process until your PC becomes unstable. If PC restarts on itself, the Ryzen Master settings will be set to default. This is why we prefer to overclock CPU via Ryzen Master instead of directly through BIOS.

7. If you ran into an unstable PC, you can increase Peak Core(s) Voltage (fig. 4). Doing this will allow higher Core Speed, but will yield in higher power usage and higher temperatures.

8. When the overclocks are stable, click one Save Profile (fig. 6).

My last tip is to change few settings in your Windows in order to get few more hashes. 

Change your power plan to High Performance.

Control Panel-> Power Options and switch your plan to High Performance. Normally a Windows by default will be set on "Balanced" plan.

A disclaimer here -> there is a chance that your High Performance plan is not available or grayed out for some reason. There are multiple reasons that can be, which I am not able to cover here. However in such cases Youtube is your friend. Search for videos that explain how to deal with such situation. There is always a solution which usually takes 5 minutes to be fixed.

Select a performance settings for your Windows. 

Open a Windows Explorer and find "My Computer"/"This PC" or however your PC is called and right click on it and select the "properties" option. This will open the "System" window. On the right side there is a option "Advanced system settings".

Go ahead and click on it. This is make another window to appear with several tabs. You need the "Advanced" tab. There you will see several options to select from and hit the "performance" button. This will open the performance options window. Over there go ahead and select "adjust for best performance" radio button and select apply.

This setting will both slightly improve your VGA and CPU mining speeds.

I hope guys you find this guide interesting.