We’re overclocking the Ryzen 9 7900X CPU up to 5912 MHz in 5 minutes or less using the ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme motherboard and EK-Quantum custom loop water cooling.

I’ll 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 not the whole picture. Please don’t 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.

Alright, let’s do this.

5 Minute Speedrun

When you’ve entered the BIOS, switch to the Advanced Mode view.

Then enter the Extreme Tweaker menu.

Set Ai Overclock Tuner to EXPO II. That will make the memory run at our EXPO-rated frequency of DDR5-6400 and timings. EXPO I will load only the primary timings and have the motherboard tune the secondary timings. EXPO II will load the entire profile without motherboard adjustments.

Set eCLK Mode to Asynchronous Mode. This enables an external clock generator to drive the CPU frequency. Ryzen 7000 has three clock generator modes: internal, external synchronous, and external asynchronous. The internal clock generator is driven by a 48 MHz crystal and used for all parts inside the CPU. In External Synchronous mode, there’s a single external 100 MHz clock generator that provides the reference clock for all components in the CPU. In External Asynchronous mode, there are two external 100 MHz clock generators. One is used exclusively for the CPU core frequency and the other for the other parts inside the CPU.

BCLK2 Frequency to 105 MHz. That will increase our Precision Boost algorithm frequencies by 5%. In our case, the maximum boost frequency ceiling increases from the programmed Fmax of 5700 MHz to 5985 MHz.

Set Memory Frequency to DDR5-6000. While our memory kit is rated at DDR5-6400, unfortunately, our CPU isn’t able to run that frequency. By enabling EXPO, we still benefit from the improved memory timings.

Enter the DRAM Timing Control submenu

Set Memory Context Restore to Disabled. This forces the CPU to retrain the memory at every boot. The benefit is that it helps improve stability at higher memory frequencies. The downside is that the boot process will take longer to complete.

Leave the DRAM Timing Control submenu

Enter the Precision Boost Overdrive submenu. Here is where we will do most 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 Enabled. This adjusts the PBO platform parameters PPT, TDC, and EDC according to the motherboard auto-rules. On this motherboard, we find that the following values have changed:

Increasing the platform boost parameters typically have the most significant effect with multi-threaded processors. For Ryzen 7000, however, AMD’s default platform parameters are relatively unconstraining. So even with the 12-core 7900X, we don’t hit the platform limits at stock values. Ultimately, we don’t expect much performance improvement.

Set CPU Boost Clock Override to Enabled (Negative).

Set Max CPU Boost Clock Override to 75. This decreases the frequency ceiling by 75 MHz over the programmed max 1T limit. On this Ryzen 9 7900X, that’s 5700 MHz. Reducing this by 75 MHz results in a ceiling of 5625 MHz, but adjusted by our ECLK of 105 MHz, that becomes 5906 MHz.

Enter the Curve Optimizer submenu and set Curve Optimizer to Per Core

Here’s where the real magic happens as curve optimizer allows us to adjust the V/f curve for each core by up to 30 steps in a positive direction and up to 300 steps in a negative direction. Each step represents around 5mV.

Setting a negative offset means the CPU will use less voltage for a given frequency and boost to a higher frequency at a specific voltage. Setting a positive offset means the CPU will use more voltage for a given frequency and boost to a lower frequency at a particular voltage. That is what we need in our overclock.

The Precision Boost algorithm is ECLK-unaware, meaning If Precision Boost boosts to 5000 MHz at 1.1V, with a 105MHz ECLK, it boosts to 5250 MHz at 1.1V. That won’t be stable. With a positive curve optimizer, we can increase the voltage at a given frequency, thus ensuring stability when using reference clock overclocking.

• For every core, set Curve Optimizer Sign to Positive
• For Cores 0, 2, 3, 4, and 5, set Curve Optimizer Magnitude to 21
• For Core 1, set Curve Optimizer Magnitude to 1
• For Cores 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11, set Curve Optimizer Magnitude to 3
• For Core 9, set Curve Optimizer Magnitude to 6

Then save and exit the BIOS.

Ryzen 9 7900X Overclock Performance Improvement

To ensure 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 see a maximum performance increase of +8.65% in the AI Benchmark.

The highest Core Clock reported in the operating system is 5912 MHz for Core 1.

When running Prime 95 Small FFTs with AVX disabled, the average CPU effective clock is 5081 MHz with 1.213 volts. The average CPU temperature is 95.3 degrees Celsius. The ambient and water temperature is 25.5 and 34.4 degrees Celsius. The average CPU package power is 207.3 watts.

And that’s it, thanks for watching and see you next time!