I’ve just built a new computer and wanted to try overclocking, which is something I haven’t done before. I read what I could find online, thought I had a basic understanding and gave it a shot last night with disappointing results. I’ll outline what I tried below, but my goal is to OC to 5ghz. I understand that every CPU is different, but I think mine should be able to get 5 in most cases. I don’t do any audio/video editing or 3D rendering, computer is only going to be “stressed” while gaming. I’m hoping to get some advice or guidance – I assume I’ve missed something for lack of knowledge. Any advice is appreciated!
My setup:
Gigabyte Z390 Aorus master
Intel i9-9900KF
Corsair vengeance RGB pro 3600 4x8gb (with its xmp profile enabled)
Corsair h150i pro cooler
Seasonic prime ultra gold 850W
Nvidea RTX 2070 super (I have not overclocked the GPU yet)
Adata sx8200 pro 1tb and sx8100 2tb
Also using a Cyberpower PFCLCD1500 / 900W UPS with line-in for “power conditioning” which I think I probably didn’t need, but it was on a good sale and I like having some battery backup.
My goal was to get 5 ghz and keep max temp under 80C – seemed like a reasonable goal based on reading online, and I’m not trying to break records, just get my feet wet in overclocking and hopefully get a little boost in FPS while gaming.
After reading guides online, I went in and made changes in the BIOS:
First try – changed multiplier to 50, Vcore to 1.3, CPU cache ratio to 4.4ghz, disabled “advanced multi-core performance” and disabled “ring to core offset (down bin).” Saved, restarted, got to windows, verified all cores at 5 ghz using CPU-Z, opened intelburn, started a test on standard and got a blue screen almost immediately.
Second try – increased Vcore to 1.32, same result with the crash after about 2 seconds of intelburn, noted a decent spike in temps to mid 80s for a split second before dropping to 70s and crashing.
-At this point I decided to try Gigabytes autotune feature, expecting it would give me a stable setup that might run too hot. It did set my machine to 5ghz, but crashed immediately when I started intelburn.
Third try – Reloaded the 5ghz profile I had made in step 2 (to undo whatever gigabytes autotune did) and decreased CPU multiplier to 49, left Vcore at 1.32, got a similar temp spike starting intelburn and a crash within a few seconds of start
Fourth try – dropped CPU multiplier to 47 and set Vcore back to 1.30 – assuming 1.3 should be more than enough to adequately supply 4.7 ghz since it seemed like most people writing about this online could get 5hz with Vcore at 1.3. This setup worked a little better. Completed a couple runs of intelburn on standard, max temps stayed in 70s. I then ran prime95 on blend, no problems after about 20 min. So I decided to try bumping the multiplier to 48.
Fifth try – Changed multiplier to 48. Everything went well with stress testing in intelburn and Prime95 on balanced. I then ran prime 95 with small FFTs. Went well for about 20 minutes and then crashed.
Sixth try – I changed load line calibration to “turbo” ran my stress tests and noted max temps in mid 80s with average temps in high 70s when Prime95 was running on small FFTs. Also noted that the voltage reportedly being drawn was over 1.3, which didn’t make sense to me since I set Vcore to 1.3, but I assume this has to do with the LLC setting and it makes sense why that translates to higher temps. I decided that those temps were higher than I wanted and stopped the test after about one minute (no crash).
-At that point I decided I was in over my head. I had an at least semi-stable setup, but I’m pretty sure that I was over-volting the system, i.e. I don’t think I should need Vcore of 1.3 and LLC set at “turbo” to achieve 4.8ghz OC with the 9900KF.
So a few questions I’d really appreciate input on:
1 – Did I miss something obvious?
2 – Should my goals be different? Is 5ghz while maintaining under 80C a realistic goal for me as an unexperienced overclocker?
2 – Is there an expert out there who can tell me how to set x, y, z to have a better shot at getting to 5ghz under 80C?
3 – Is my stress testing appropriate? Specifically, should I be using something less intense than Prime95 with small FFTs, since I only use the system for gaming – like maybe just Prime95 on blend? I also didn’t mess with AVX offset, so might this be the big problem with crashes in Prime95?
4 – Is this a waste of time? Am I going through all this for a negligible bump in gaming performance?
5 – Side note: if I do OC to, for example, 4.8ghz, does that negate the turbo boost where 1 core can get 5 ghz, and if so, am I likely to actually hurt gaming performance by overclocking to anything less than 5ghz?
Any help appreciated!
My setup:
Gigabyte Z390 Aorus master
Intel i9-9900KF
Corsair vengeance RGB pro 3600 4x8gb (with its xmp profile enabled)
Corsair h150i pro cooler
Seasonic prime ultra gold 850W
Nvidea RTX 2070 super (I have not overclocked the GPU yet)
Adata sx8200 pro 1tb and sx8100 2tb
Also using a Cyberpower PFCLCD1500 / 900W UPS with line-in for “power conditioning” which I think I probably didn’t need, but it was on a good sale and I like having some battery backup.
My goal was to get 5 ghz and keep max temp under 80C – seemed like a reasonable goal based on reading online, and I’m not trying to break records, just get my feet wet in overclocking and hopefully get a little boost in FPS while gaming.
After reading guides online, I went in and made changes in the BIOS:
First try – changed multiplier to 50, Vcore to 1.3, CPU cache ratio to 4.4ghz, disabled “advanced multi-core performance” and disabled “ring to core offset (down bin).” Saved, restarted, got to windows, verified all cores at 5 ghz using CPU-Z, opened intelburn, started a test on standard and got a blue screen almost immediately.
Second try – increased Vcore to 1.32, same result with the crash after about 2 seconds of intelburn, noted a decent spike in temps to mid 80s for a split second before dropping to 70s and crashing.
-At this point I decided to try Gigabytes autotune feature, expecting it would give me a stable setup that might run too hot. It did set my machine to 5ghz, but crashed immediately when I started intelburn.
Third try – Reloaded the 5ghz profile I had made in step 2 (to undo whatever gigabytes autotune did) and decreased CPU multiplier to 49, left Vcore at 1.32, got a similar temp spike starting intelburn and a crash within a few seconds of start
Fourth try – dropped CPU multiplier to 47 and set Vcore back to 1.30 – assuming 1.3 should be more than enough to adequately supply 4.7 ghz since it seemed like most people writing about this online could get 5hz with Vcore at 1.3. This setup worked a little better. Completed a couple runs of intelburn on standard, max temps stayed in 70s. I then ran prime95 on blend, no problems after about 20 min. So I decided to try bumping the multiplier to 48.
Fifth try – Changed multiplier to 48. Everything went well with stress testing in intelburn and Prime95 on balanced. I then ran prime 95 with small FFTs. Went well for about 20 minutes and then crashed.
Sixth try – I changed load line calibration to “turbo” ran my stress tests and noted max temps in mid 80s with average temps in high 70s when Prime95 was running on small FFTs. Also noted that the voltage reportedly being drawn was over 1.3, which didn’t make sense to me since I set Vcore to 1.3, but I assume this has to do with the LLC setting and it makes sense why that translates to higher temps. I decided that those temps were higher than I wanted and stopped the test after about one minute (no crash).
-At that point I decided I was in over my head. I had an at least semi-stable setup, but I’m pretty sure that I was over-volting the system, i.e. I don’t think I should need Vcore of 1.3 and LLC set at “turbo” to achieve 4.8ghz OC with the 9900KF.
So a few questions I’d really appreciate input on:
1 – Did I miss something obvious?
2 – Should my goals be different? Is 5ghz while maintaining under 80C a realistic goal for me as an unexperienced overclocker?
2 – Is there an expert out there who can tell me how to set x, y, z to have a better shot at getting to 5ghz under 80C?
3 – Is my stress testing appropriate? Specifically, should I be using something less intense than Prime95 with small FFTs, since I only use the system for gaming – like maybe just Prime95 on blend? I also didn’t mess with AVX offset, so might this be the big problem with crashes in Prime95?
4 – Is this a waste of time? Am I going through all this for a negligible bump in gaming performance?
5 – Side note: if I do OC to, for example, 4.8ghz, does that negate the turbo boost where 1 core can get 5 ghz, and if so, am I likely to actually hurt gaming performance by overclocking to anything less than 5ghz?
Any help appreciated!
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