Question Newbie to overclocking - I have a 12600K, where do I start from?

[dolama72]

I recently put together a new build around a 12600K on an Asus TUF Gaming Z690 motherboard, 32GB of DDR5 6000 RAM (2X16GB) and an Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3070 Ti.

I'd like to move my first steps into OC to squeeze my CPU and I tried playng around with the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility, with very poor results.
Actually, using the automatic performance enhancer I get lower scores in the bechmarks like Cinebench and 3D Mark.

Do you have some basic suggestions on where to start from if I want to OC manually?
Shall I use the Bios or a third party software?
And finally, how can I check how my CPU ranks in the silicon lottery?

I'm happy also to be pointed to reading material or videos online. There is so much trash around, I need some help to read or watch something decent.

Thanks!

 

[Kocicak]

Alder lake CPUs can have very low overclocking headroom.

What could work without any problem is to allow all P cores to run at 4900 MHz. You could also add 100 MHz to E cores.

Both could work with leaving everything else on default values.

 

[igor_kavinski]

You need to have AIO watercooling for best results. Or a really huge air cooler (Noctua DH-15).

I'm using this: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17608/the-iceberg-thermal-icesleet-g6-stealth-review

Yet, setting all-core clock on my 12700K results in throttling.

 

[dolama72]

Alder lake CPUs can have very low overclocking headroom.

What could work without any problem is to allow all P cores to run at 4900 MHz. You could also add 100 MHz to E cores.

Both could work with leaving everything else on default values.

I’ll try that, thanks!

 

[dolama72]

You need to have AIO watercooling for best results. Or a really huge air cooler (Noctua DH-15).

I'm using this: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17608/the-iceberg-thermal-icesleet-g6-stealth-review

Yet, setting all-core clock on my 12700K results in throttling.

I have an Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 top mounted as exhaust, with 4 case fans Be Quiet Silent Wing 4 Pro 140mm, of which one as exhaust on the back and three as intake on the front.
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut compound.
The case is a NZXT H7 Flow.
I should be fine with temps right?

 

[igor_kavinski]

I have an Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 top mounted as exhaust

Yeah, that should be great.

 

[dolama72]

Alder lake CPUs can have very low overclocking headroom.

What could work without any problem is to allow all P cores to run at 4900 MHz. You could also add 100 MHz to E cores.

Both could work with leaving everything else on default values.

Sorry, I'm a total noob...
Does this meean that using Intel Extreme Tuning Utility I have to increase to 49 the ratios in red in the picture below and to 38 the ratios of the efficient cores?




And what is the difference of doing this or in alternative change the ratios in this section:

 

[Kocicak]

Sorry, I'm a total noob...
Does this meean that using Intel Extreme Tuning Utility I have to increase to 49 the ratios in red in the picture below and to 38 the ratios of the efficient cores?

View attachment 76535


And what is the difference of doing this or in alternative change the ratios in this section:

View attachment 76534

Yes, that is what you need to do.

Per core settings are useful if you know about some weaker core and you want to limit multiplier of just that particular core.

It is much better to make these changes in BIOS. You can use this Intel Tuning utility to try and test things, but when you figure out your setting, you deinstall it and make the changes in BIOS.

 

[dolama72]

Yes, that is what you need to do.

Per core settings are useful if you know about some weaker core and you want to limit multiplier of just that particular core.

It is much better to make these changes in BIOS. You can use this Intel Tuning utility to try and test things, but when you figure out your setting, you deinstall it and make the changes in BIOS.

First results with Intel ETU: performance cores @49 (all of them) and I get better scores with Efficient cores @37 (stock) compared to increasing them @38... Go figure...

Anyhow, I could not get the Watchdog driver recognized by Intel ETU, no matter what I do.
I downloaded the Intel NPSS package and installed the Intel WatchDog Timer 1.1.16.0, then uninstalled ETU and reinstalled it. Nothing.
Any changes done with ETU are lost at reboot.

So I went into the Bios of my Asus TUF Z690 and tried the two "auto OC" profiles, to find that the second one is indeed improving the benchmark results. Not sure if the ASUS Bios did also touch the voltage, I'm still not clear how it works.

 

[Kocicak]

Auto OC tends to push too high voltage in the CPU.

You would get better performance out of 6x49 than from 50,50,48,48,47,47.

 

[aigomorla]

To be honest, AlderLake has very good boost performance, and requires very little overclocking.
Infact most recent intel chips become horribly inefficient the moment you start overclocking them, because for you to see the actual performance you need to disable the e-cores or they wreck your benchmarks somehow. (not 100% sure about this, but this is what i picked up... please correct me if i am wrong.)

Unless you absolutely need the speed for something, or your doing some benchmarks or tuning, or want to just have fun, i would just play with boost clocks and not 24/7 settings.

 

[Pohemi]

Unless you absolutely need the speed for something, or your doing some benchmarks or tuning, or want to just have fun, i would just play with boost clocks and not 24/7 settings.

I was going to ask OP: do you really need to OC your chip? Tinkering is fine, it's your hardware to do as you please...but the entire point of overclocking is not 'needed' like it was 20 years ago, and the returns are nowhere near what they use to be by doing it.

 

[dolama72]

I was going to ask OP: do you really need to OC your chip? Tinkering is fine, it's your hardware to do as you please...but the entire point of overclocking is not 'needed' like it was 20 years ago, and the returns are nowhere near what they use to be by doing it.

As you said, tinkering…

 

[Tup3x]

These days the only thing that makes sense is undervolting and memory timing tweaks. Traditional overclocking is often not possible or makes little to no sense because chips are already maxed out.

 

[igor_kavinski]

To be honest, AlderLake has very good boost performance, and requires very little overclocking.
Infact most recent intel chips become horribly inefficient the moment you start overclocking them

It's true, at least for my 12700K. Even with a huge air cooler, it struggles when overclocked and score went down due to throttling when I tried all core OC. Just left it at default settings and it seems fine to me. May try my hand at it again if Coolermaster releases their rumored LGA1700 subzero peltier based AIO cooler.

 

[Mopetar]

I was going to ask OP: do you really need to OC your chip? Tinkering is fine, it's your hardware to do as you please...but the entire point of overclocking is not 'needed' like it was 20 years ago, and the returns are nowhere near what they use to be by doing it.

No one needs to overclock, but it's a fun way to play with your hardware, learn more about it, and enjoy a hobby a bit more.

Sure you won't get 10- or even 20% gains like you could in the past, but the satisfaction of a final tuned machine is not diminished for it.

 

[dolama72]

No one needs to overclock, but it's a fun way to play with your hardware, learn more about it, and enjoy a hobby a bit more.

Sure you won't get 10- or even 20% gains like you could in the past, but the satisfaction of a final tuned machine is not diminished for it.

Totally agree.
I spent hours reading about the Alder Lake Architecture, it was interesting.
With a mild boost on the performance cores and no other tuning I got around 5-6% more on some benchmarks only.
Like not even 5fps on my favourite games.
Yeah it makes sense only for the fun of doing it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[igor_kavinski]

Like not even 5fps on my favourite games.

You would have more success in increasing fps if you bought a really expensive DDR5 kit and then tried to tweak it to the lowest possible timings and highest possible speed.

Remember, Alder Lake/Raptor Lake are more bandwidth starved. Increasing the clockspeed will do little if the cores waste their time doing nothing while waiting for data to arrive from RAM.

 

[dolama72]

You would have more success in increasing fps if you bought a really expensive DDR5 kit and then tried to tweak it to the lowest possible timings and highest possible speed.

Remember, Alder Lake/Raptor Lake are more bandwidth starved. Increasing the clockspeed will do little if the cores waste their time doing nothing while waiting for data to arrive from RAM.

I don’t know what you mean by an expensive DDR5 kit.
I have two 16GB modules of G.Skill DDR5 6000 CL32 38 38 96.
The kit is running at its nominal timing and frequency selecting XMP II on the bios

 

[igor_kavinski]

I don’t know what you mean by an expensive DDR5 kit.
I have two 16GB modules of G.Skill DDR5 6000 CL32 38 38 96.
The kit is running at its nominal timing and frequency selecting XMP II on the bios

Something like this: https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-32gb/p/N82E16820374446

 

[dolama72]

Something like this: https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-32gb/p/N82E16820374446

Oh, ok I see.
I would have invested another 150 for a better memory kit but I strictly followed ASUS compatibility list and 6000 CL32 was the best in the list…
I even contacted ASUs to ask if I could try something more aggressive but they stuck to their list.
Too bad!

 

[igor_kavinski]

Too bad!

You could still try tweaking the timings for your kit. If you can get to DDR5-5600 or even 5400 with CL28, it might give you extra fps, depending on how much the particular game is sensitive to memory latency. But it's a time consuming process.

 

[iamgenius]

Alder lake CPUs can have very low overclocking headroom.

What could work without any problem is to allow all P cores to run at 4900 MHz. You could also add 100 MHz to E cores.

Both could work with leaving everything else on default values.

To be honest, AlderLake has very good boost performance, and requires very little overclocking.
Infact most recent intel chips become horribly inefficient the moment you start overclocking them, because for you to see the actual performance you need to disable the e-cores or they wreck your benchmarks somehow. (not 100% sure about this, but this is what i picked up... please correct me if i am wrong.)

Unless you absolutely need the speed for something, or your doing some benchmarks or tuning, or want to just have fun, i would just play with boost clocks and not 24/7 settings.

These days the only thing that makes sense is undervolting and memory timing tweaks. Traditional overclocking is often not possible or makes little to no sense because chips are already maxed out.

It is too unfortunate this is the case with overclocking nowadays. Although I'm not an expert, but overclocking cpus is one of my favorite hobbies. Does this also apply for AMD cpus? Zen3 and Zen4?

 

[aigomorla]

Does this also apply for AMD cpus? Zen3 and Zen4?

Yes to Zen4, not to Zen 3.
It also mostly applies to Intel 12 and 13th gen with P - E cores.
The 11th gen intel is also not affected, as you can tune all cores with voltage scaling.

But 13th gen in particular has horrible voltage scaling.
Zen 4 is a funny cpu in that it max's out CPU Temp core to max boost clock, which is why u see a lot of people freaking out that Zen will run at 95C under load, so overclocking the cpu does very little, again as the cpu itself will max boost to max heat levels. Wont see much on a typical AIO cooler, or High Class Air sink.
May see some benifits on a full custom water, or LN2 benching, but again, were talking a very small percentage here when we even cross into custom water, and even smaller then small when going LN2.

Consensus is to just leave 13th gen and Zen 4 to its devices, and let boost clock sort itself out, to get optimal efficiency in cpu.

I tell my friend CPU overclocking took the same fate as cars.
In the 60's we had muscle tuners that didn't care about MPG, and then the 80's hit, and we ended up all going to smaller tiny more efficient engines and today we have engines half the size that can generate more HP then almost any 60's block engine tuned right from factory.

You can tune a car or a cpu for fun, but to it wont net you much unless you want to really go exotic like car engines, and that can get very pricey.

 

[Markfw]

It is too unfortunate this is the case with overclocking nowadays. Although I'm not an expert, but overclocking cpus is one of my favorite hobbies. Does this also apply for AMD cpus? Zen3 and Zen4?

Zen 4 and 13th gen should be underclocked, sort of. Set the max wattage to something sane, and let it go as fast as it can without using more than that. For example, I have set my 7950x's to PBO CO -25 and it never goes over 142 watt vs stock can hit 230. It does 95% of the performance at that setting, still way faster than my 5950x's.

Edit: I just read that Intel has now killed this. Well, you can still do it on AMD.