Question MSI Game Boost vs Intel Extreme Utility

[consptheory77]

I have a 13600K I am running in a Z790 MSI Tomahawk, and I am trying to see the best approach to overclock it.

I surmise may would say "always do it manually"

I ran Intel ETU first, and it said I had an excellent bin. Setting the Speed Optimizer it gave me a max of 5.4 Ghz@1.6v, when default speed is 3.5@1.2v

The I ran Game Boost for contrast it gave me 5.2 Ghz@1.5v, but tripled the fan speed by default, and it still ran warmer than under ETU

If I run Game Boost, I cannot run ETU. I went back and turned Game Boost off, re-ran ETU, this time Speed Optimizer gave me 5.3 GHz@1.4v.

Is running ETU like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get?

But I see no reason to leave fans at max.

I'm coming from having used a i5-4690K for eight years, which only had four cores, so the overclock was easy to observe.

This CPU has 14 cores, so I assume the number of cores, and the difference between performance and efficiency cores is why I see the voltage, core speed, and multiplier info constantly shifting in CPU-Z?

 

[Lutfij]

I surmise may would say "always do it manually"
Exacta! From the BIOS.

You need to accept that Intel just pumped more voltage/power into the chips to help gain some advantage over AMD. Without that they were trailing.

How are you cooling the processor and the case/rig as a whole? Make and model of your case?

 

[consptheory77]

How are you cooling the processor and the case/rig as a whole? Make and model of your case?

Lian Li Lancool III, no additional fans than what came with the case

Deep Cool AK620 for the CPU, supposedly "80% of a Noctua for 50% of the price"

 

[consptheory77]

This fellow here has a video on overclocking the 13600K simply (and only the 13600K)

How to overclock Intel's awesome Core i5-13600K to 5.5GHz!

Now, I know someone who has the chip and did 5.8 Ghz on 1.4 volts

I tried this, but ETU gave me a lower score, there was throttling of both the power limit and the thermal limit under the stress test, CPU maxed out at 95C

I tried the YouTuber's recommendation of 5.5 Ghz @1.2 volts ("that's all you need") and the ETU result was my best yet, CPU only reached a max temp of 75C under the stress test. So this is the setting I'm going to stick with.

And my conclusion is that neither MSI's Game Boost nor Intel's Extreme Utility are useful, you need to find someone who has played with the manual settings themselves for that particular chip. Indeed, this "find the settings of someone who did it successfully" is the same method I used when successfully overclocking the 4690K, back when OC software was not so ubiquitous.