Core i7-13700K Undervolt & Overclock to 6000 MHz With MAG Z690 Torpedo EK X | SkatterBencher #50

hello and welcome back in today's video we're overclocking the Intel Core i7 13700k processor all the way up to 6 gigahertz using the EK Mana MSI mag z690 torpedo ekx motherboard and EK Pro custom Loop water cooling Raptor lake has a lot of Headroom for overclocking and performance tuning and by using this low end z690 motherboard I want to show you that you don't need an expensive z790 motherboard to squeeze more performance out of your Raptor Lake CPU that said Raptor leg overclocking doesn't come without its own challenges and in this video I'll try to explain you how to work around all of them so I hope you enjoyed the video and let's get started the Intel Core i7 is part of Intel's 13th generation Intel Core processor lineup Intel Raptor Lake Builds on top of the Performance Hybrid architecture introduced with the 12th gen Alder Lake so it also features performance P cores and efficient e-course like Alder Lake it is built on the Intel 7 process technology formerly known as 10 nanometer enhanced superfit while it may sound like Raptor lake is not much different from its predecessor the spec sheet reads quite impressive compared to the core i7 12700k launched one year ago the 13700k has 400 megahertz higher turbo boost frequency and four additional threads while costing 40 dollars less in this video we will cover four different overclocking strategies first we unleash the turbo boost limits and enable XMP 3.0 second we overclock using MSI game boost technology third we overclock using msi's turbo ratio offset feature lastly we get into the manual tuning of a Raptor Lake processor however before we jump into the overclocking let's first have a look at the hardware and the benchmarks that we'll be using in this guide the system we're overclocking today consists of the following Hardware I explained how I use the Elmo Labs products in scatterbanger number 34. basically I connect the EFC to the evc2 and allows me to monitor the ambient temperature the water temperature as well as the fan duty cycle I include the measurements in my Prime 95 stability test results I also use the alma Labs EFC to map the radiator fan curve to the water temperature without going into too many details I've attached an external temperature sensor from the water in the loop to the EFC then I use the low high setting to map the fan curve from 25 to 40 degrees water temperature I use this configuration for all overclocking strategies the main takeaway from this configuration is that it gives us a very good indication on whether our cooling solution is saturated suppose the CPU is at TJ Maxx and the water temperature exceeds 40 degrees Celsius in that case it means the fans are at maximum speed and this the cooling solution is saturated improving the cooling Solution by adding radiators or changing to more powerful fans would be the right action suppose the CPU is at TJ Maxx and the water temperature is below 40 degrees Celsius in that case it means the cooling solution is not saturated therefore to improve the CPU temperature you may enhance the thermal transfer of the CPU heat into the loop by exchanging the thermal paste deleting or changing the water block the z690 torpedo ekx is the fifth collaborative motherboard of MSI EK after the carbon EK X versions for z490 z590 x570 and z690 however it's the first collaborative product that uses the EK light block technology I already covered quite a bit about EK light Block in scatterbanger number 34 but let's have a look at the main points the EK light block sits between a regular CPU water block and a monoblock it's not a monoblock because it doesn't directly cool the vrm of the motherboard and it's also not quite a CPU block because it's still indirectly cools the vrm so how does it work MSI redesigned the z690 torpedo vrm heatsink to feature a flat surface on both the west and north side of the heatsink the EK light block then extends from the CPU socket over the vrm heatsink flat surface and with the help of 2 thermal pads makes contact with the vram heatsink the result is that even though it's not a monoblock the light block still actively cools the vrm if you want to learn more I suggest you check out the EK or MSI product page we use Windows 11 and the following Benchmark applications to measure performance and ensure system stability before we start overclocking we must first check the performance at default settings please note that the z690 torpedo ekx by default unleashes the turbo boost 2.0 power limits so for us to check the stock performance of the 13700k we must first enter the BIOS and enter the advanced mode enter the overclocking settings menu ensure CPU Cooler tuning is set to boxed cooler then save and exit the BIOS the default turbo boost 2.0 parameters for the core i7 13700k are as follows here is the Benchmark performance at stock here are the 3dmark CPU profile scores at stock when running prime95 small ffts with avx2 enabled the average CPP core clock is 4975 megahertz and average CPU e-core clock is 3801 megahertz with 1.141 volts the average CPU temperature is 90 degrees Celsius the ambient and water temperature is 26.2 and 37.4 degrees Celsius the average CPU package power is 253 Watts when running Prime 95 small ffts with AVX disabled the average CPP cork lock is 5225 megahertz an average CPU e-core clock is 4091 megahertz with 1.22 volts the average CPU temperature is 90 degrees Celsius the ambient and water temperature is 26 and 37.4 degrees Celsius the average CPU package power is 253 Watts now let us try our first overclocking strategy however before that make sure to locate the clear CMOS pins on the motherboard shorting the clear CMOS pins will reset all your bio settings to default which is helpful if you want to start your bios configuration from scratch however it does not delete any of the BIOS profiles previously saved the clear CMOS pins are located in the bottom left of the motherboard in our first overclocking strategy we take advantage of unleashing the turbo boost 2.0 power parameters and leveraging Intel XMP 3.0 Intel turbo boost 2.0 technology allows the processor to run faster than its base frequency it allows this when the processor is running below its rated power and current specification in the real world that essentially translates into opportunistic performance boost when the conditions are just right the turbo boost algorithm Works according to Intel's proprietary ewma formula this stands for exponentially weight moving average there are three parameters to consider pl1 pl2 and Tau Power number 1 or pl1 is the threshold the average power will not exceed historically this has always been set equal to Intel's advertised DDP pl1 should not be set higher than the thermal solution cooling limit power limit 2 or pl2 is the maximum power the processor can use for a limited amount of time Tau in seconds is the time window for calculating the average power consumption the CPU will reduce the CPU frequency if the average power consumed is higher than pl1 to robust 2.0 technology is of course available on Raptor Lake CPUs as it's the primary driver of performance above the base performance similar to Alder Lake but different from many of the Intel Core Generations before that is that pl1 equals pl2 this differs from before where pl1 would equal the TDP and pl2 would range from 200 to 250 Watts this change effectively means that Intel has enabled near unlimited Peak turbo by default for the 13700k the maximum power limit is set at 253 Watts a convenient CPU Cooler tuning option on MSI motherboards allows you to unleash the turbo boost power limits set the option to water cooler and enjoy the maximum performance adjusting the turbo boost to 2.0 power limits is strictly speaking not overclocking and that's because we are not changing any of the warranted clock frequencies or voltage or temperatures related to the base specification essentially Intel provides the turbo boost power parameters to the motherboard vendors or system integrators to ensure that they can run the CPU at the base specification but of course higher quality motherboards or higher quality thermal Solutions or better designed gaming systems can deliver Peak Performance well above the base performance note that there is also a technology called turbo boost Max 3.0 technology and while it carries the same name like turbo boost 2.0 they're not quite the same turbo boost 2.0 focuses explicitly on exploiting the available power budget to provide additional Computing performance on the other hand turbo boost max technology 3.0 aims to exploit the natural variance in CPU core quality observed in multi-core CPUs with turbo boost max 3.0 Intel identifies the best cores in your CPU and calls those the favored cores the favored cores are essential for two reasons first Intel allows for additional frequency boosts of the favored course on the 13700k there are two favored P cores and no favorite e-course both favored P cores can boost to 5.4 gigahertz while the other 6p cores can only boost up to 5.3 gigahertz note that the 5.4 gigahertz is restricted to only scenarios where two cores are active second the operating system will automatically assign the most demanding workloads to these favored cores ensuring potentially higher performance the performance benefit of turbo boost max 3.0 technology is mostly visible in single threaded workloads and that's because there's only a couple of favored cores most of the time you will not see a difference in multi-threaded workloads Intel extreme memory profile or XMP is an Intel technology that allows you to automatically overclock the system memory and benefit from the performance boost it's essentially built on top of the jdex specification and allows memory vendors such as g-skill to program higher performance memory timings and memory frequencies onto the memory sticks Intel Xtreme memory profile 3.0 is the new XMP standard for ddr5 memory it is primarily based on the XMP 2.0 standard for ddr4 but has additional functionality the XMP 3.0 standard is designed with six sections one Global section describes the generic data which is used across the profile and the other five sections are designed for five profiles respectively there's a lot more to learn about XMP 3.0 that is outside of the scope of this video if you want to learn more about XMP 3.0 feel free to check out my Alder Lake launch video where I discuss it in a little bit more detail a upon entering the BIOS in advanced mode click XMP profile 1. enter the overclocking settings menu ensure CPU Cooler tuning is set to water cooler then save and exit the BIOS we re-ran the benchmarks and check the performance increase compared to the default operation as expected since we're not increasing the frequency of the CPU cores the performance Improvement is relatively limited that said improving the memory performance by using XMP 3.0 does help in memory sensitive Benchmark applications we see the highest performance Improvement of plus 8.06 percent in geekbench 5. when running prime95 small ffts with avx2 enabled the average CPP core clock is 5090 megahertz and average CPU e-core clock is 4076 megahertz with 1.188 volts the average CPU temperature is 100 degrees Celsius the ambient and water temperature is 26.7 and 38.3 degrees Celsius the average CPU package power is 288.9 Watts when running prime95 small ffts with AVX disabled the average CPU core clock is 5287 megahertz and average CPU core clock is 4190 megahertz with 1.237 volts the average CPU temperature is 95 degrees Celsius the ambient and water temperature is 26.5 and 37.8 degrees Celsius the average CPU package power is 268.2 Watts in our second overclocking strategy we rely on msi's unique technology called game boost game boost has been on MSI motherboards for quite a while and essentially allows for one click overclocking and performance boosting we had a look at the history of MSI game boost technology in scatterbanger number 31. so if you want to learn more about this MSI unique technology feel free to check out that video enabling game boost on the z690 torpedo ekx with the core i7 13700k lifts all turbo ratios by plus one for both P cores and e-cores in addition it also sets an AVX negative ratio offset of -3 this results in a maximum p-core boost frequency of 5.5 gigahertz AVX and negative ratio offset essentially allows you to reduce the CPU frequency when AVX instructions are detected this allows you to maximize the overclock in both SSE and AVX workload AVX negative ratio offset has been on Intel CPUs for quite some time but since all the lake there has been a couple of changes to how it works here are the key things to know first on Raptor Lake the AVX negative ratio offset is only applied to the p-course the e-core frequency is unaffected second by default the maximum ratio during an AVX workload is the turbo boost 2.0 ratio not the turbo boost 3.0 frequency if you want an offset of zero so an AVX workload doesn't reduce the frequency you'll need to manually set zero third the AVX negative offset is referenced against each core's maximum ratio limit since raptorlink supports per P core ratio control this is important if you're using the per core ratio limit function to restrict the worst course from boosting to the maximum frequency lastly Intel has changed how it Flags an AVX workload the effect is that some light AVX workloads will no longer trigger the AVX negative offset we can demonstrate this new Behavior using Y cruncher we use the Y cruncher component tester to test various AVX workloads on the 13700k four of the six pure avx2 workloads trigger a frequency reduction when an AVX negative ratio is set however for the two other workloads the frequency remains elevated upon entering the BIOS in Easy Mode click the game boost button click XMP profile 1 then save and exit the BIOS we rerun the benchmarks and check the performance increase compared to the default operation with game boost enabled we increase the processor frequency slightly over the stock settings therefore while we expect some performance Improvement we don't expect it to be enormous we have the best performance Improvement of plus 9.11 percent in geekbench 5. when running prime95 small ffts with avx2 enabled the average CPP core clock is 5083 megahertz and average CPU e-core clock is 4202 megahertz with 1.188 volts the average CPU temperature is 100 degrees Celsius the ambient and water temperature is 26.7 and 38.1 degrees Celsius the average CPU package power is 287.8 Watts when running prime95 small f50s with AVX disabled the average CPU core clock is 5353 megahertz an average CPU e core clock is 4256 megahertz with 1.259 volts the average CP temperature is 100 degrees Celsius the ambient and water temperature is 26.7 and 38.3 degrees Celsius the average CPU package power is 283 Watts in our third overclocking strategy we rely on msi's turbo ratio offset feature turbo ratio offset allows us to offset the default turbo ratio configuration by a specific number of bits essentially it allows you to set a very Dynamic overclock without having to go too deep in the Bios options for our configuration we choose a turbo ratio offset of plus 5 for the P cores and plus 2 for the e-course that will push the p-core frequency up to 5.9 gigahertz and the equal frequency to up to 4.4 gigahertz in addition to Turbo ratio offset we will control the voltage using adaptive voltage mode this suits our Dynamic overclock the best in order to understand what we're setting and how we're setting it let's have a closer look at the two Intel Technologies turbo ratios and adaptive voltage mode generally speaking there are two main ways of configuring the CPU ratios on Intel CPUs sync all cores or Turbo ratios sync all cores sets a single fixed ratio applied to all cores this is very much the historical or traditional way of Intel CPU overclocking turbo ratio configuration allows us to modify the default Intel frequency specification and configure an overclock for various scenarios before we go any further there are three important things to know about turbo ratio configuration one you can configure the maximum allowed CPU core ratio for any amount of active course two you can configure the maximum allowed CPU core ratio for a given CPU core and three the turbo ratio configuration for p-core and e-course is independent to explain the first point let's take the default configuration of the 13700k the 13700k has a total of eight P cores therefore we can configure the maximum allowed p-core ratio for when one p core is active when two P cores are active all the way up to when eight P cores are active the standard configuration allows up to two active P cores to boost to 5.4 gigahertz and up to 8 active P cores to boost to 5.3 gigahertz in our overclock since we lift the turbo ratios by plus 5 bins the configuration allows up to two active P cores to boost to 5.9 gigahertz and up to 8 active Peak cores to boost to 5.8 gigahertz to explain the second Point again let's consider the 13700k default specification while the 13700k has eight identical P cores two of those cores are called the favored course the maximum allowed frequency for the favored cores is 5.4 gigahertz whereas the other cores are limited to 5.3 gigahertz if we combine 0.1 and 0.2 we can identify the following scenarios if one p-core is active and it is a favored P chord then that core will run at 5.4 gigahertz if one p-core is active and it is not a favorite P core then that core will run at 5.3 gigahertz if two P cores are active and both are a favored P core then both cores will run at 5.4 gigahertz if two P cores are active and one of them is a favorite p-core while the other isn't then one core will run at 5.4 gigahertz and the other will run at 5.3 Hertz if two P cores are active and neither is a favored P chord then both cores will run at 5.3 gigahertz if three or more P cores are active then any p-core will run at 5.3 gigahertz in our overclock since we lift the turbo ratios by plus 5 pins the configuration allows the favored p-course to boost to 5.9 gigahertz and the other P cores to boost to 5.8 gigahertz to explain the third Point again let's refer to the 13700k the CPU has a total of 8 p cores and 8 e-cores while the p-cores can boost up to 5.4 gigahertz the e-course can only boost up to 4.2 gigahertz the p-core rules for maximum allowed frequency can also be applied to the e-course however with one major caveat the e-core CPU ratio can only be controlled in groups of four equals so for the 13700k since it has 8 e cores in total we can configure the maximum allowed core ratio for a total of two groups of four ecors however we can still configure the maximum allowed frequency for one active e-core up to 8 active e-course in our overclock since we lift the turbo boost ratios by plus five bins for the P cores and plus two bins for the e-course the configuration allows the favored P cores to boost to 5.9 gigahertz the other P cores to boost to 5.8 gigahertz and the e-cores to boost to 4.4 gigahertz now let's have a look at the voltage configuration on Raptor Lake the VCC IA voltage rail drives the voltage for the CPU cores p-core and e-core and the ring that means a single voltage is configured for all these parts of the CPU how that voltage is configured is straightforward yet complex there are three key aspects to understanding how voltage is configured on Intel platforms the CPU the motherboard design and the voltage regulator let's start with the CPU side of the story an Intel CPU relies on a lot of factory fused voltage frequency curves or VF curves to dynamically manage its CPUs performance the voltage frequency curve essentially describes the relationship between a certain operating frequency and the voltage that is required to run at that frequency stably a lot of parts inside your CPU have a VF curve including those relevant to the vccia voltage rail in case of the core i7 13700k the vccia voltage rail is affected by no less than 11 different voltage frequency curves based on these VF curves to get a specific voltage provided via the vcci voltage rail the CPU issues an svid request to the voltage controller the vid request is the highest among all the requested voltages according to every VF curve affecting the voltage rail let's take an example in this case the highest voltage requested according to the relevant VF curves is 1.32 volt by p-core 0. this will be the vid request from the CPU to the voltage controller here's another example in this case the highest voltage requested according to the relevant VF curves is 1.25 volt by equal group 0. this will be the svid request to the voltage controller the main purpose of the svid voltage requests from the CPU to the voltage regulator is to make sure that the effective voltage at the CPU die is equal to the requested voltage to the voltage controller which usually follows the factory fused voltage frequency curve of course overclockers and performance enthusiasts know that this is not always the case and that's because there are a lot of electrical components between the voltage regulator and the CPU Intel provides us with a couple of tools to mitigate these problems and there's two main tools that we can be using AC DC load line and vrm load line plenty has already been said and written about the AC DC low line so I won't cover it in detail in this video basically it boils down to this the AC DC load line can be configured such that it accounts for the impedance of the motherboard which includes the vrm components the PCB quality the PCB layout and so on the impedance can significantly affect the actual voltage at the CPU die to avoid too big of a difference between the requested and the effective voltage we can adjust for this in the Motherboard BIOS the adjustment consists of informing the CPU of the motherboard impedance via the AC low line setting so the CPU can request a higher voltage to the voltage regulator for example suppose it is known that a 1.4 volt voltage output by the voltage controller as requested by the CPU will result in an effective voltage of 1.35 volt at the CPU dime in that case the AC load line can be configured such that the CPU requests 1.45 volt instead the vrm load line determines how much the voltage increases or decreases during a transient load transient means when the CPU goes from idle to load or from load to idle there are two aspects of the vrm load line that are very important to know the drupe and undershoot feedroop is the decrease in voltage when the CPU goes from idle to load you want your CPU to be stable in all scenarios so knowing the lowest voltage the CPU will run at stably is very important after all if the voltage is too low the overclock will be unstable undershoot and its counterpart overshoot is a brief voltage Spike that occurs when the CPU switches from idle to load or from load to idle these spikes cannot be measured easily and usually require an expensive oscilloscope to detect I highly recommend the Elmore Labs article titled vrm load line visualized to see a great picture of undershoot and overshoot in action while undershoot and overshoot are temporary spikes an undershoot that's too low will also cause instability by adjusting the vrm load line we can mitigate both the V droop and undershoot in practice it often helps us reduce the voltage under high load resulting in a lower temperature and possibly higher turbo boost frequency not that we know all this information let's return to our core voltage and adaptive voltage mode on Intel platforms there are two main ways of configuring the CPU core voltage override mode and adaptive mode override mode specifies a single static voltage across all ratios it is mainly used for extreme overclocking purposes where stability at the highest frequencies is the only consideration adaptive mode is the standard mode of operation in adaptive mode the CPU relies on the VF curves to set the appropriate voltage for the vccia voltage rail both override and adaptive mode settings can be configured via the CPU registers so in effect we control the CPU vid request to the voltage controller this is Intel's intended way of overclocking of course most voltage controllers also allow independent configuration for example they enable us to configure a voltage offset to the requested voltage it is often unclear from the motherboard biases which method of setting the CPU core voltage we are using when we type in the desired voltage for the purpose of this guide however Let's ignore the capabilities of the voltage controllers and focus on Intel's intended way of overclocking we can specify a voltage offset for override and adaptive modes of course this doesn't make much sense for override mode if you set 1.35 volt with a plus 50 millivolt Offset you might as well just set 1.4 volt but it can be helpful in adaptive mode the entire VF curve can be offset by up to 500 millivolt in both directions as I mentioned Intel offers great granularity for tuning the many VF curves inside the CPU let's forget about the e-cores and ring to keep things simple and assume a case where we set a global adaptive voltage for the cpu-p course now let's dig into what happens when we set a global adaptive voltage first disregarding any user set Global or VF point offsets the Adaptive voltage set in the Bios is mapped against What's called the OC ratio the OC ratio is the highest ratio configured for the CPU when you leave everything at default the OC ratio is determined by the default maximum turbo ratio in the case of the 13700k that ratio is 54x which is the turbo boost max 3.0 frequency in the case of the 13900k that ratio would be 58x which is a thermal velocity boost frequency when you manually overclock the OC ratio is the highest ratio you configure across all the various settings and options second specific rules govern what adaptive voltage can be set the voltage set for a given ratio n must be higher than or equal to the voltage set for ratio n minus 1. suppose our 13 700k runs 54x at 1.3 volt in that case setting the Adaptive voltage mapped to 54x lower than 1.3 volt is pointless 54x will always run at 1.3 Volt or higher usually biases will allow you to configure lower values however the cpu's internal mechanisms will override your configuration if it doesn't follow the rules the Adaptive voltage configured for any ratio below the maximum default turbo ratio will be ignored take the example of the 13700k which is specified to run 54x at 1.3 volt if you try to configure all cores to 52x and set 1.4 volt the CPU will ignore this because it has its own Factory fused Target voltage for all ratios up to 54x and we'll use this voltage you can only change the voltage of the OC ratio which as mentioned before on the 13700k is 54x and up for ratios between the OC ratio and the next highest Factory fused VF point the voltage is interpolated between the set adapter voltage and the factory fused voltage returning to our example of our 13700k specified to run 54x at 1.3 volt let's say we manually configure the OC ratio to be 58x at 1.425 volt the target voltage for ratios 55x 56x and 57x will now be interpolated between 1.3 volt and 1.425 volt so in conclusion the Adaptive voltage set in the Bios is mapped against the OC ratio the OC ratio is the highest ratio configured across all of your settings including turbo ratios octvb per core limits and so on the voltage for the next lower ratio is then either equal to the factory fused VF point if it is defined by the factory and if not interpolated between the OC ratio and the next VF point in scatterbanger number 31 I covered the Alder Lake VF curve in detail since Raptor lake is very similar to Alder Lake we can use the same approach to also extract the factory fused voltage frequency curve from this core i7 13700k in our overclocking example we set the adapter voltage to 1.4 volt as explained the Adaptive voltage is now mapped against the OC ratio and in this OC strategy that's 59x as a result the new voltage frequency curve looks as follows I modified two additional settings in the bios for this OC strategy disabling the voltage optimizations of thermal velocity boost and forcing the bclk to run at exactly 100 megahertz thermal velocity boost is an Intel technology that exploits the fact that CPUs need less voltage to run a specific frequency when the operating temperature is lower when this setting is enabled the CPU automatically adjusts the voltage according to the operating temperature as we want manual control over the operating voltage to ensure stability it's prudent to disable this function forcing the bclk to run at exactly 100 megahertz has nothing to do with stability or performance it's just kind of the way I like things upon entering the BIOS in advanced mode click XMP profile 1. enter the overclocking settings menu set p-core ratio apply mode to Turbo ratio offset set the P chord turbo ratio offset value to Plus 5. set E chord ratio apply mode to Turbo ratio offset e-core turbo ratio offset value to Plus 2. enter the advanced CPU configuration submenu set bclk 100 megahertz lock onto enabled set TVB voltage optimizations to disabled leave the advanced CPU configuration submenu ensure CPU Cooler tuning is set to water cooler set CPU core voltage mode to Adaptive mode set CPU core voltage to 1.4 then save and exit the BIOS we rerun the benchmarks and check the performance increase compared to the default operation of course we expected a significant performance Improvement after increasing the CPU Peak core frequency by 500 megahertz and the equal frequency by 200 megahertz and that's also what we see with the double digit performance improvements in both single threaded and multi-threaded Benchmark applications we see the highest performance Improvement of plus 19.08 percent in AI benchmark when running prime95 small ffts with avx2 enabled the average CPP core clock is 4848 megahertz and average CPU core clock is 3849 megahertz with 1.207 volts the average CPU temperature is 100 degrees Celsius the ambient and water temperature is 26.4 and 36.4 degrees Celsius the average CPU package power is 280.4 Watts when running prime95 small ffts with AVX disabled the average CPP core clock is 5120 megahertz and average CPU e-core clock is 4027 megahertz with 1.272 volts the average CPU temperature is 100 degrees Celsius the ambient and water temperature is 26.5 and 36.9 degrees Celsius the average CPU package power is 277.3 Watts in our fourth and final overclocking strategy we resort to Advanced manual tuning to squeeze the last bits of performance out of our CPU we have a couple of objectives first we will try to get at least some of our P cores to reach 6 gigahertz two we will try to push at least one e-core group to a higher frequency three we will optimize the Alcor Prime 95 settings to achieve better all core frequency I will try to explain how I approached each of these objectives with their bios configuration in detail to push our Raptor Lake Peak course a little bit higher we will still rely on the same technology as in the previous OC strategy the turbo ratios however rather than relying on the turbo ratio offset we will manually configure our turbo ratios and that allows us to have more than two cores boost to the highest frequency our manual turbo ratio configuration looks as follows as you can see we target the P cores to boost 100 megahertz higher than our previous OC strategy I hear you ask already if you can push it to 6 gigahertz why not also do it in your last strategy well that's easy because not all P cores can boost to 6 gigahertz as it turns out P chord 0 is not as good as the others so to prevent that core from boosting to six gigahertz we use the per P chord ratio limit function here we Define the maximum allowed ratio for a given P core regardless of the turbo ratio configuration for example let's say we have four active P cores and one of the active P cores is core zero in this case according to the turbo boost configuration all P cores can boost to 6 gigahertz however since the core zero ratio limit is 59x only three of the four cores will run at 6 gigahertz and the other core core 0 will run at 5.9 gigahertz the last topic to cover is of course the voltage for our six gigahertz P cores in this OC strategy we will be relying on the advanced voltage offset or VF points since there's quite a lot to say about the Raptor leg VF Point implementation we'll cover it in a bit when we talk about all core prime95 fine tuning similar to the pcores we can use a ratio limiter to only have our best e-core group boost to the highest frequency to make things very short I add one additional step to the turbo ratio offset allowing the e-course to run up to 4.5 gigahertz and then I restrict e-core Group 1 to 44x last but not least we dig into fine tuning for Alcor heavy workloads like prime95 having a system that dynamically adapts to really heavy workloads just like it adapts to really light workloads is a crucial element of a modern dynamic overclock and it requires several pieces to come together in harmony these pieces include ensuring continued stability of the high frequency and high voltage for single threaded or light workloads ensuring the frequency decreases appropriately with the increased workload ensuring the voltage is sufficient to support the high frequency at higher workloads and ensuring the system is also stable during transient conditions for the first piece of the puzzle we already have the answer as I mentioned before all cores of this CPU can run at 6 gigahertz with 1.425 volt except for core zero using the per core ratio limit function we can configure the system such that all cores will boost to 6 gigahertz but limit core 0 to a maximum of 5.9 gigahertz we have several tools available to address the second piece of the puzzle reducing the frequency as the workload increases the tools include TJ Maxx turbo boost 2.0 power limits and turbo ratio configuration T Junction Max or TJ Maxx is the maximum thermal Junction temperature that the processor is allowed to run at if the temperature exceeds TJ Maxx internal thermal control mechanisms will reduce the operating frequency until the temperature is below TJ Maxx the TJ Maxx 4 Raptor Lake CPUs is 100 degrees Celsius however it can be manually increased to 115 degrees as the temperature increases with heavier multi-core workloads it can be used to appropriately reduce the operating frequency however we prefer to allow up to the Intel default temperature limit of 100 degrees Celsius to maximize performance turbo boost 2.0 power limits manage the total power used for the CPU in Practical terms it reduces the CPU operating frequency to prevent the CPU from exceeding a specific power use as power usage increases with heavier multi-core workloads it can be used to appropriately reduce the operating frequency however since we Unleash the Power limits to effectively have no constraints whatsoever this won't be particularly helpful for this OC strategy as discussed the turbo boost ratio configuration allows us to specify a maximum CPU ratio for a given number of active cores therefore we can precisely set the maximum frequency when all cores are loaded in this case I find that the maximum stable frequency for an all core workload is 5.7 gigahertz in an alcore heavy workload like Prime 95 with AVX disabled the maximum voltage at the maximum temperature of 1 100 degrees Celsius is about 1.25 volt this is an essential input for when we get to tune the voltage frequency curve knowing which voltage you need for your all core workload is great but the difficulty comes when you have to configure or set this voltage after all our Dynamic overclock requires a dynamic voltage and that means that we don't have precise control over which voltage is used for what frequency on Intel platforms there is essentially two ways to configure a dynamic voltage adaptive voltage mode and advanced voltage offset we can use these methods either independently or together as I explained before when we set an Adaptive voltage we map it against the OC ratio which is the highest of all the ratios we've set in this case the OST ratio will be 60x the voltage for 59x is then interpolated between the voltage mapped against the OC ratio and the next Factory fused VF point which for the 13700k is 54x Advanced voltage offset or VF points is an extension of the Adaptive voltage as it exposes some of the points on the factory fused VF curve to the end user and allows for manual adjustment of these points the primary purpose of advanced voltage offset is to allow end users to undervald specific parts of the CPU voltage frequency curve in addition to undervolting it also of course allows overvolting specific parts of the VF curve Advanced voltage offset or VF points is commonly used in two main ways first you configure a positive voltage offset for the highest VF point this helps achieve a higher single threaded boost frequency second you configure a negative voltage offset for the second highest VF point this helps achieve lower voltage for all core boost which results in a lower temperature in all core boost and thus potentially additional overclocking Headroom on Raptor Lake there are a total of 15 distinct voltage frequency points however only 11 are in use furthermore some points can be copies of others here are the VF points of this core i7 13700k processor the f.8 matches the turbo boost 2.0 frequency vf.9 matches the turbo boost 3.0 frequency and VF Point 11 matches the OC ratio VF point 10 is a copy of vf.9 ideally we would now adjust the VF curve with the following modifications offset VF points 6 7 8 and 9 with a negative value to undervolt the CPU this will reduce the effective voltage when the CPU reduces the frequency in extreme workloads resulting in a higher average frequency offset VF Point 11 with a positive value to overvolt the CPU this will enable additional frequency Headroom allowing us to push the CPU frequency higher in single threaded or light workloads note that VF points 9 and 11 mapped to ratios 54x and 60x in this OC strategy effectively control the voltage 4 ratios 55 56 57 58 and 59x the tricky part is that the VF curve slope as determined by those two VF points must accommodate light and heavy as well as single and multithreader workloads if your single core frequency doesn't need High Voltage a too gentle slope may not be able to accommodate high frequency light multi-threaded workloads if you need sufficient voltage for all core workloads at high frequency then a two steep slope May set a to high voltage for the single core frequency lastly unfortunately it looks like the advanced voltage offset on Raptor Lake isn't quite super mature yet and that can give us some problems when we're trying to use it for a daily overclock two issues in particular are quite annoying when it comes to Raptor Lake first sometimes the VF points don't work correctly in combination with 100 megahertz bclk an easy work around here is to have the bclk frequency slightly lower or higher than 100 megahertz two sometimes not all points are exposed in the Bios in the example of the z690 torpedo ekx and the a91 beta bios that I'm using in this video only VF Point 11 is available programming VF Point 11 also programs VF Point 9 and 10 to the same value to return to my example I use the following Advanced voltage offsets that gives me the following very awkward voltage frequency curve just to clarify the plus 100 millivolt offset for VF points 9 10 and 11 are because I can't program them independently on this BIOS version the minus 65 millivolt offset for vf.8 maximizes the undervolt at 5.3 gigahertz to push the CPU as much as possible to 5.4 gigahertz in heavy all core workloads like prime95 the minus 35 millivolt and minus 15 millivolt offset for VF points seven and six ensures the monotonicity of the curve if I didn't configure these points the voltage for 53x would not go lower than that 452x which is Factory fused to 1.27 volt the last piece of the puzzle is undoubtedly the most challenging yet intangible transient conditions a transient condition is essentially when the CPU goes from idle to load from load to idle from one active core to all active cores and so on essentially a key characteristic is that the voltage and current change rapidly and suddenly this can put a lot of stress on the electrical components especially the vrm as discussed transient loads may cause undershoot and overshoot of the voltage to the CPU which can invoke instability however it's not an exact science and instability can appear unexpectedly therefore it is tough to mitigate this problem apart from ensuring sufficient voltage margin to adapt to any transient condition the primary way to mitigate transient issues includes adjusting the vram load line still you can use the AC DC load line or change the turbo ratios to prevent big spikes for example while 5.7 gigahertz may be stable in an all core workload it may not be stable when coming from idle or a One Core load suppose neither the vrm load line nor AC DC low line tuning helps in that case limiting the all core frequency to 5.6 gigahertz may be required to avoid instability during transient conditions if all this sounds difficult to tune for it's because it is when you're close to your best overclock you're fighting everything voltages temperatures turbo ratios and so on the only way to win this fight is to keep fine tuning keep adjusting and choosing where you will compromise just that little bit of performance as you'll see in my overclocking settings I rely on an AC DC low line setting of mode 2 which differs from the default of mode 1 and an LLC load line of also mode 2. while I can't say this is the best configuration outright for this platform it is the best setting for my specific system and overclock configuration upon entering the BIOS in advanced mode click XMP profile 1. enter the overclocking settings menu set pcore ratio apply mode to Turbo ratio set a number of P core of Group 1 to 4. set Target P core turbo ratio Group 1 to 60. set a number of P core of group 2 to 5. set Target P chord turbo ratio group 2 to 59. set number of P core of group 3 to 6. set Target P chord turbo ratio group 3 to 58. set a number of P core of group 4 to 8 set Target P chord turbo ratio group 4 to 57. set per P core ratio limit to manual set p-core 0 to 59 set p-core 1 to 7 to 60. set equal ratio apply mode to Turbo ratio offset e-core turbo ratio offset value to Plus 3. set per equal ratio limit to manual set e-core 0 to 3 to 45. set equal 4 to 7 to 44. enter the advanced CPU configuration submenu said bclk 100 megahertz lock on to enabled set CPU light load to mode 2. set TVB voltage optimizations to disabled leave the advanced CPU configuration submenu set CPU ratio offset when running avx2-2 ensure CPU Cooler tuning is set to water cooler enter the digital power submenu set CPU load line calibration control to mode 2. leave the digital power submenu set the CPU core voltage mode to Advanced offset mode VF point enter the advanced offset mode VF point submenu for voltage offset when running CPU ratio X51 set a voltage offset control to minus set voltage offset Target to 0.015 for voltage offset when running CPU ratio x52 set voltage offset control to minus set voltage offset Target to 0.035 for voltage offset when running CPU ratio x53 set voltage offset control to minus set a voltage offset Target to 0.065 for voltage offset when running CPU ratio x 60 set voltage offset control to plus set voltage offset Target to 0.1 then save and exit the BIOS we re-ran the benchmarks and check the performance increase compared to the default operation while we hit 6 gigahertz on most of the cores and saw some slight performance improvements over our turbo ratio offset OC strategy overall it's a minor Improvement nevertheless we can be happy to achieve the best performance in all of our benchmarks the highest performance Improvement is an AI Benchmark with plus 21.94 percent when running prime95 small ffts with avx2 enabled the average CPP clock is 5090 megahertz and average CPU e-core clock is 4080 megahertz with 1.182 volts the average CPU temperature is 100 degrees Celsius the ambient and water temperature is 26.2 and 38.3 degrees Celsius the average CPU package power is 255.6 Watts when running prime95 small ffts with AVX disabled the average cpu-p core clock is 5273 megahertz and average CPU e-core clock is 4241 megahertz with 1.256 volts the average CPU temperature is 99 degrees Celsius the ambient and water temperature is 26.7 and 38.5 degrees Celsius the average CPU package power is 256.8 Watts alright let's wrap this up I would say that overclocking the core i7 13700k was mostly positive but also here and there there's a little downside on the positive side the fact that we're able to overclock almost all Raptor Lake P cores to 6 gigahertz on plane water cooling and the alcore configuration can go up to 5.7 gigahertz for light workloads that's amazing the fact that we can do it on a previous generation low end motherboard like the z690 torpedo ekx that's double amazing in fact I think it was kind of interesting to see that the EK light block worked so well even with raptor Lake I think the maximum vrm temperature in an all-core workload like prime95 didn't even exceed 60 degrees Celsius triple amazing the only downside that I have a little bit with raptor Lake overclocking is the VF points it seems that they're not quite mature and VF Point tuning is kind of the ideal way to approach a dynamic overclock there are 15 VF points available why not open some more of them so we can build our own user configured VF curve above the VF curve that is fused by the factory but I would say that's pretty much the only downside really to Raptor like over overclocking everything else is is amazing I'm sure that any overclocker or performance Enthusiast will love squeezing more performance out of these CPUs anyway that's it for this video I want to thank you for watching and I also want to thank my patrons for the support as per usual if you have any questions feel free to drop them in the comments section below I will also put up the script or a written version of this video on my blog for those people who want to go through my BIOS settings and people who still read the internet I guess and that's it see you in the next one foreign [Music]

Channel: SkatterBencher

Views: 28,011

Keywords: overclocking, overclock, hardware, pc, how-to, guide, simple, easy, step by step, beginner, budget, overclocking guide, skatterbencher, how to overclock, 13700k, core i7-13700k, 13700k oc, z690 msi, z690 torpedo ek x, raptor lake, safe, safe overclocking, safe overclock

Id: popQrxK5_nU

Length: 58min 12sec (3492 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 23 2022