Thanks so much- I'm looking at the x570 rog strix, unless people really feel B550 is better for mostly gaming. Could you elaborate on the 4.9-5.1 clock? I'm coming from my experience with the 8700k, where I overclocked to 4800mhz using bios settings. Is it done differently with Ryzen?
In general, X570 boards get their worth from more gen 4 PCIe lanes and sockets. A B550 will have gen 4 lanes to the GPU and the NVME, gen 3 everywhere else, and that's all that most users need. B550 boards are more than adequate for gaming and the B550 Strix-F is at the top of the heap with more than enough VRM to power a 5950X CPU.
Overclocking Ryzen is, indeed, very different. Reason is the extremely aggressive boost algorithm AMD has implemented that drives the CPU close to it's silicon limits by design. It will eagerly boost individual cores very high only when needed, driving it with (what looks like) very high voltage to keep it stable. It monitors dozens of sensors all over the cores and changes boost ratios and voltage up to a hundred times a second for each core individually. That lets it drive the CPU very close to the safe limit of the silicon.
What holds the boost algorithm back more than anything else is cooling: keep it cool and it stays boosting longer. You can also encourage the CPU to stay boosting with PBO (Performance Boost Override) that opens up power and current limits. Doing so raises heat output a lot (so you really need good cooling for it) but can improve performance pretty significantly. What's important here, though, is the boost algorithm is left doing it's thing so it's going to protect the CPU by lowering clock and voltage if it's getting outside of safe ranges.
Many people try all-core overclocking, but the gains are very low and it can take a lot of tweaking to get it stable at a low voltage to be safe. Even when done right light threaded performance (most important for gaming) might be hurt as the algorithm is so aggressive on it's own. But if you're only interested in heavily threaded performance (as for rendering or video editing) it can be a way to go. But the boost algorithm is locked out so you're on your own as far as monitoring temps so keeping the fixed voltage low is critical to avoid early degradation.
And then there's per-CCD/per-CCX overclocking. Identify your strongest cores (hit the highest clocks at lowest voltage) and the CCD/CCX they're on and overclock those highest. That can help games, but then how they make sure the scheduler puts the important threads on those cores is beyond me.
That's it in a nutshell, the specifics of it for ryzen 5000 I don't know (I've a 3700X, it works extremely well with a PBO overclock). I'm aware it's somewhat different with Zen 3. I suppose because CPU's have been in such short supply there's not a whole lot of experiences being posted, but those that are suggest very eager boosting behaviour even at stock, when set up right in BIOS with good air or liquid cooling.
Some people have used Clock Tuner for Ryzen (CTR) to help get an overclock...there's recent versions for Zen 3 come out. It works by using RyzenMaster software (it has to be installed) to iterative test clocks and voltages (so you don't have to) and stress tests them until settling on a combination. Once it's done, you still have to set up the overclock in BIOS though.