We are overclocking the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X 64 core processor up to 4525 MHz in 5 minutes or less with EK-Quantum custom loop water cooling and the ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme motherboard.

I will speed run you through the BIOS settings and provide some notes and tips along the way. Please note that this is for entertainment purposes only and most certainly not the whole picture. Please do not outright copy these settings and apply to your system. If you want to learn how to overclock this system, please check out the longer SkatterBencher blog post.

All right, let’s do this.

5 Minute Speedrun

When you have entered the BIOS,

Go to the Ai Tweaker menu

Set Ai Overclock Tuner to D.O.C.P. Standard. This ASUS technology allows us to run the memory at its XMP-rated specification. While our memory kit is rated at DDR4-4266, I will run it at DDR4-3600 with the fabric clock in sync at 1800 MHz. That is because on Threadripper we prefer to run the memory, memory controller, and infinity fabric clock in synchronous mode.

Set Memory Frequency to DDR4-3600MHz

Enter the Precision Boost Overdrive submenu. Here is where we will do the majority of the performance tuning as PBO provides us with tools to increase the power, current, and frequency headroom of the Precision Boost 2 boost algorithm.

Set Precision Boost Overdrive to Manual

Set PPT Limit to 750 watts. PPT stands for Package Power Tracking and is the amount of power the processor can draw from the socket before the boost levels off.

Set TDC Limit to 525 amps. TDC stands for Thermal Design Current and is the maximum current the VRM can supply for an extended period of time. Typically the limitation is the quality of the VRM thermal solution.

Set EDC Limit to 725 amps. EDC stands for Electrical Design Current and is the peak current the motherboard VRM may supply under transient conditions.

Set Precision Boost Overdrive Scalar to Manual. The Scalar factor is a way to get the processor to pursue higher voltages more aggressively. Technically, this should allow for boosting to higher frequencies.

Set Customized Precision Boost Overdrive Scalar to 10X.

Set Max CPU Boost Clock Override to 200MHz. This increases the frequency ceiling by 200 MHz over the programmed max 1T limit. On the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X that’s 4350MHz even though the listed maximum boost frequency is 4300MHz. Adding 200 MHz results in a ceiling of 4550 MHz.

Leave the Precision Boost Overdrive submenu

Set DRAM AB and CD Voltage to 1.2. This helps us avoid a minor issue with the Zenith II Extreme where it is not possible to run higher than the 1.2V default DRAM voltage unless you enable LN2 mode. I will not dig into why that is as this particular issue was resolved on the Zenith II Extreme Alpha motherboard anyway.

Enter the CPU Configuration submenu

Set SMT Mode to Disabled. Most of my benchmark applications do not scale up to the 128 threads available on the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X. By disabling SMT I ensure all applications run on the 64 “real” cores thus improving performance. Also, the lack of SMT creates extra power, current, and thermal headroom so the Precision Boost 2 algorithm can boost to higher frequencies.

Then save and exit the BIOS.

Ryzen Threadripper 3990X Overclock Performance Improvement

To make sure everything is working as intended we re-run some benchmarks and check the performance increase compared to the default settings. Higher is better; and all are higher. We get the highest performance increase of +46.86% in AI Benchmark.

When running Prime 95 Small FFTs with AVX enabled, the average CPU cores runs stably at 3564 MHz with 1.058 volt. The average CPU temperature is 95 degrees Celsius, the water temperature is 45.8 degrees Celsius, and the average CPU package power is 600.2 watts.

When running Prime 95 Small FFTs with AVX disabled, the average CPU cores runs stably at 3855 MHz with 1.162 volt. The average CPU temperature is 93.2 degrees Celsius, the water temperature is 44.9 degrees Celsius, and the average CPU package power is 623.2 watts.

The highest core clock reported in the operating system is 4525 MHz. The highest reported effective clock is 4400 MHz.

And that is it. I thank you for reading and the Patreons for the support. See you next time!