CPU overclocking:
Protocol:
Before starting, it is necessary to have one or more reference scores with our i9-13900K at stock frequencies , that is to say, without having made any modification except having activated the XMP profile. It is also very important to have at hand a sheet that will allow you to note all the tests you will perform as well as the results or failures. Personally, I have hundreds of sheets of my tests on which I sometimes go back to know how the processor behaved on such motherboard or in such test conditions. My own little bible.
For H24 overclocking, it will of course be necessary to take more time to fine-tune the voltage in order to provide it with the minimum necessary, but also to adjust each core independently if you want to take advantage of the maximum performance.
Loadline Calibration in the BIOS:
Go to the Tweaker tab – Advanced Voltage Settings – CPU Vcore Loadline Calibration. It is in this part that you can choose the mode that suits you best.
Personally, my principle is to have as little vdroop as possible.
Basically, I want the voltage chosen to be as close as possible to the load voltage. In the tables below, you can see the chosen voltage, the effective voltage in idle and finally in load . The readings are made with a multimeter at the PCB of the motherboard. It is very important to know the real voltage brought to the different components but especially to your processor. In general, I choose the Turbo mode.
Profiles within the Gaming BIOS, Max Performance and Instant 6GHz :
Within our BIOS, there are 3 additional profiles compared to the default one. Remember that by default, the frequency of our i9-13900Ks on a single-threaded task is 5.8 GHz and 5.5 GHz for the P-Core and 4.3 GHz for the E-Core on multithread.
So let’s see what the Gaming, Max Performance and Instant 6GHz profiles change.
The Gaming profile will disable the E-Core, leaving only the P-Core active. The second profile, Max Performance, will push the P-Core frequency from 5.5 to 5.6 GHz and the E-Core from 4.3 to 4.5 GHz. This will result in a performance gain in multithreaded tasks. Finally, as you might expect, the Instant 6GHz profile will push the two best P-Cores to 6 GHz. These three profiles passed several runs in a row in Cinebench R23 without flinching! The results of these tests will be shown in a table below.
Overclocking under watercooling in different stages :
I don’t really need to overclock my i9-13900K anymore, because I know it by heart and unfortunately it’s not a nugget. However, if it’s a new processor, I advise you to follow this little ritual. Start the tests by choosing, via the BIOS, a starting frequency applied on the 8 P-Cores of the i9-13900K. I chose a starting frequency of 5500 MHz with a multiplier of 55, a BCLK of 100, a voltage of 1.20 volt and a Level 7. All other options are in AUTO
The idea is then, in the OS, to test the stability on several runs of Cinebench R23 multithread . If it’s stable, I increase the frequency by 100 MHz while rechecking the stability. If the benchmark crashes, I increase the voltage by 0.05 volt increments in order to regain a stability allowing to run the benchmark. The objective is to get a “quick” idea of the max benchmarkable frequency. As soon as the max frequency of the P-Core is detected, you can push the E-Core.
The problem is that what my i9-13900K is capable of, i.e. P-Core x56, E-Core x45 and uncore x50, almost corresponds to the Max Performance profile we mentioned above. So let’s see if we can do a little better on this AORUS Z790 Tachyon.
Our best score is 42762 in Cinebench R23 but with temperatures ranging from 77 to 93 °C. Unfortunately, our sample is not a gold processor but it performed well under LN2. Here is the summary table which includes our different tests with the BIOS profiles.
I’m waiting for the arrival of an i9-13900KS this week which should have a good potential in overclocking associated with a good IMC, fingers crossed.
