We are overclocking an engineering sample of the unreleased AMD Ryzen Threadripper 5990X 64 core processor up to 4650 MHz in 5 minutes or less with EK-Quantum custom loop water cooling and the ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha 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 them to your system. If you want to learn how to overclock this system, please check out the longer SkatterBencher article.

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 1000 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 800 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 800 amps. EDC stands for Electrical Design Current and is the peak current the motherboard VRM may supply under transient conditions. While some benchmarks would peak over 1000 amps, we need to limit EDC to 800 amps to prevent system shut downs in certain heavy workloads.

Set Precision Boost Overdrive Scalar to Manual. Scalar is a tool that allows users to increase the FIT limit. FIT stands for Failures in Time and is a standard reliability metric in the semiconductor industry. Every CPU has a specified FIT value from the factory, and the Scalar allows you to manually increase this value.

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 this Ryzen Threadripper 5990X engineering sample that’s 4450MHz. Adding 200 MHz results in a ceiling of 4650 MHz.

Leave the Precision Boost Overdrive submenu

Go to the Advanced menu

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 5990X. 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.

Leave the CPU Configuration submenu

Enter the AMD Overclocking submenu and click Accept

Enter the Precision Boost Overdrive submenu

• Set Precision Boost Overdrive to Advanced
• Set Precision Boost Overdrive Scalar to Manual and 10X, to mimic the settings we used in the other Precision Boost Overdrive menu

Enter the Curve Optimizer submenu. Here’s where the real magic happens as curve optimizer allows us to adjust the factory-fused voltage-frequency of each CPU core by up to 30 steps of 3 to 5 mV. Setting a negative curve means the CPU will use less voltage for a given frequency. That in turn results in lower power, thermal, and current. This in turn gives more headroom for setting higher voltage. And that, well, that gives us higher frequencies.

• Set Curve Optimizer to All Cores
• Set All Core Curve Optimizer Sign to Negative
• Set All Core Curve Optimizer Magnitude to 15

Leave the Curve Optimizer submenu

Set Max CPU Boost Clock Override to 200MHz, to mimic the settings we used in the other Precision Boost Overdrive menu

Then save and exit the BIOS.

Ryzen Threadripper 5990X 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 +45.92% in 3DMark CPU Profile.

When running Prime 95 Small FFTs with AVX enabled, the average CPU effective clock is 3909 MHz with 0.972 volts. The average CPU temperature is 95.4 degrees Celsius, the average VRM temperature is 3176.8 degrees Celsius, and the average water temperature is 36.0 degrees Celsius. The average CPU package power is 616.4 watts.

When running Prime 95 Small FFTs with AVX disabled, the average CPU effective clock is 4003 MHz with 1.033 volts. The average CPU temperature is 95.2 degrees Celsius, the average VRM temperature is 75.9 degrees Celsius, and the average water temperature is 36.2 degrees Celsius. The average CPU package power is 628.6 watts.

The highest core clock reported in the operating system is 4641.5 MHz for every of the 64 cores.

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