This free app is just what my small form factor PC needed

I love my small form factor gaming PC, but I’ll admit, it’s not perfect. I crammed the RTX 4090 inside a case the size of a toaster, leaving little to no room for a cooler on top of my Ryzen 7 7800X3D. That’s led to high fan noise and concerning temperatures as I weave in and out of games, keeping me on the edge of my seat as to if my PC is operating within safe conditions. But I may have found a solution to put my worries to rest.

It’s called Camomile, which claims to offer a “one-click undervolt” for your CPU. It sounds like nonsense, and there’s a certain level of marketing surrounding the app targeted at the tech illiterate — if you know the developer, Outbyte, that probably doesn’t come as a surprise. Much to my surprise, however, Camomile lowered my CPU temperatures while only sacrificing a hair of performance, which was all the more shocking considering how straightforward it was to use.

A note of caution

Before digging into this article, I want to talk a bit about Outbyte. If you’re unfamiliar, Outbyte is a developer that makes mostly tools for Windows PCs that aren’t known for being particularly useful. The company has a PC repair tool, which cleans your registry and temporary files, and a driver updater, which searches automatically for new drivers. Those sound fine, but Windows itself already finds new drivers through Windows Update, and Microsoft actually recommends against running registry cleaning programs like CCleaner.

It’s important to set the stage that Outbyte is in the business of these PC tune-up apps, appealing mainly to users who don’t know what they don’t know. There’s also some misleading marketing surrounding Camomile as an app. On the website for the tool, for example, Outbyte claims “14th-generation processors,” presumably those from Intel, can reach 115 degrees Celsius. That’s not true, and it’s just one example of that fudging Outbyte has done in the marketing of its apps.

In addition, some Outbyte apps have previously been flagged by MalwareBytes (and only MalwareBytes) as Potentially Unwanted Programs, or PUPs. That’s not malware — PUPs are potentially unwanted, and the safeguard is in place for things like software bundled inside of installers. I scanned the Camomile installer and my entire PC after it was installed, and there weren’t any flags. It should also be noted that Camomile is a free app, which in the context of this company’s reputation might raise more concerns.

That being said, I’ve also been using the app for a while now without issues and haven’t noticed anything suspicious. Even so, I want to make sure we’re all on the same page about Outbyte before you go and install an app on your PC.

By the numbers

Camomile is extremely simple. It shows some information like your temperatures for your CPU, GPU, and SSD, and you can adjust a few settings like if the app starts with your PC. That’s it, though. Otherwise, you can either turn Camomile on or off. The app isn’t undervolting your CPU — if it has that level of access to your hardware, that’s concerning — but it’s still doing something. Before getting to that, let’s check on performance.

I only ran a few tests here, but the only one to note is Cinebench R24’s multi-core test. In both Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong, the performance stayed identical while significantly reducing temperatures. Cinebench was a different story. With Camomile on, my score went down by 13%, which is a pretty large drop. It’s a drop I’m willing to accept for my gaming-focused PC, but that wouldn’t be the case if I were running a lot of CPU-heavy workloads.

The temperature drop was much bigger, though. As you can see in the chart above, with Camomile off, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D hung out just below 90 degrees Celsius for the majority of the run. With the app on, it rarely went over 60 degrees — a 33% drop. Camomile itself reports your CPU temperatures, but I gathered this data with HWInfo. And sure enough, the numbers shown in the app were accurate.

A 13% drop in performance for 33% lower temperatures isn’t the best return on investment, at least when it comes to proper CPU undervolting. What was really surprising was how temperatures held up in games. In Cyberpunk 2077, which you can see above, Camomile brought an average temperature between 65 and 70 degrees down to between 50 and 55 degrees, and while delivering identical performance in the game. That’s the kind of return I can get behind.

Similarly, in Black Myth: Wukong, Camomile kept the CPU temperature almost completely locked at around 53 degrees. With the app off, there was a brief spike up to nearly 80 degrees before the fans ramped up and kept the temperatures around 60 degrees. Once again, that’s a great return when you’re seeing identical performance in a game.

What’s happening?

Behind the scenes, Camomile isn’t doing anything too crazy. It’s adjusting power settings that are available within Windows, and in particular, it appears the app limits how modern processors boost to higher frequencies. That becomes pretty obvious once you look at clock speeds with the app on in Cinebench. With Camomile off, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D boosted to around 4.8GHz, and with the app on, it was just shy of 4.2GHz. And, while there’s some variation with Camomile off, the clock speed with the app turned on was basically a flat line.

That 4.2GHz number isn’t a coincidence. It’s the base frequency of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Camomile isn’t undervolting your CPU, where you maintain the same clock speed while drawing less power. It’s disabling the boost characteristics of a processor, effectively downclocking the chip. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s important to note here that undervolting and downclocking aren’t the same thing, even if they strive to achieve similar goals.

Limiting the boost performance isn’t a bad thing necessarily, particularly in games. In Cyberpunk 2077, you can see above that the Ryzen 7 7800X3D once again locked in at its base clock speed of 4.2GHz. With the app off, you can see how the boost clock speed jumps around all over the place, going up to near 5GHz and down to the base clock speed constantly over the course of a minute. Those extra jumps represent more heat without any extra performance.

In Black Myth: Wukong, the situation is similar. This game doesn’t leverage the CPU as efficiently as Cyberpunk 2077 does, and because of that, you can see more variation with Camomile turned on. Still, the app was able to avoid these brief spikes in clock speed, limiting the CPU to 4.2GHz to generate less heat. And in the context of a game running at 4K, that extra clock speed is wasted.

There are surely differences when looking at different CPUs in different games at different resolutions. But for my small form factor gaming PC, Camomile essentially makes my CPU cooler for free.

If you have any doubt that Camomile is essentially just adjusting your power settings, here’s a look in Control Panel. You can see that app creates its own power plan and turns off the turbo behavior of the processor. You can do this yourself, either in the Control Panel or through Windows PowerShell, but if you don’t want to get your hands dirty, Camomile is doing the same thing.

Not for everyone

Camomile is mostly targeted at laptop users, and it’s obvious why. It’s an app that only makes sense if you are in a thermally constrained environment, such as a laptop, or a small form factor desktop trying to use flagship hardware with limited cooling to back it up. If you have a normal desktop, don’t download Camomile. A simple undervolt will take you further if you can poke your head in the BIOS for a minute.

Still, I’m shocked that Camomile worked in the first place. Misleading as the undervolt claim is, the app managed to lower my temperatures while barely touching performance in games. Part of that is a testament to the efficiency of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, but Camomile still did some heavy lifting. I’m not keeping the app around — I’d rather just set up my own power plan — but if you find yourself limited on thermal headroom, you should keep Camomile in mind.