We’re overclocking the Core i7-13700K CPU up to 6900 MHz in 5 minutes or less using the EK-Mana MSI MAG Z690 Torpedo EK X motherboard and EK-Pro 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, enter the Advanced Mode

In Advanced Mode, click XMP Profile 1. This enables the use of the Intel Extreme Memory Profile 3.0 technology and will make the DDR5 memory run at its rated speed of DDR5-6200.

Then enter the Overclocking settings menu.

Set P-core Ratio Apply Mode to Turbo Ratio Offset. This also enables us to configure a dynamic P-core overclock. We use MSI’s predefined profiles which offset the P-core maximum turbo ratio by 5 bins over default. That means we get up to 2 active P-cores to boost to 5.9 GHz and up to 8 active P-cores to boost to 5.8 GHz.

Set P-Core Turbo Ratio Offset Value to +5

Set E-core Ratio Apply Mode to Turbo Ratio Offset. This also enables us to configure a dynamic E-core overclock. We use MSI’s predefined profiles which offset the E-core maximum turbo ratio by 2 bins over default. That means the E-cores will now boost up to 4.4 GHz.

Set E-Core Turbo Ratio Offset Value to +2

Enter the Advanced CPU Configuration submenu. Here we will set some expert settings.

Set BCLK 100MHz Lock On to Enabled. This will force the BCLK to run at exactly 100 MHz instead of slightly below. It’s not a mandatory setting for a stable overclock … but I just like it better this way.

Set TVB Voltage Optimizations to Disabled. This prevents the CPU from automatically reducing the requested voltage based on its current temperature. This setting is great when relying on the default voltages and ratios, but may induce instability when manually tuning the voltage-frequency curve.

Ensure CPU Cooler Tuning is set to Water Cooler (PL1: 4096W). This will unlock the Turbo Boost 2.0 power limits and let the CPU run at unlimited power indefinitely.

Set CPU Core Voltage Mode to Adaptive Mode. This allows us to control the voltage associated with the highest point of the voltage-frequency curve. The adaptive voltage set maps to what’s called the OC Ratio and is equal to the highest configured CPU ratio. In our case, that’s 59X. The voltage between 59X and the next V/F Point, 54X, is interpolated by the CPU.

Set CPU Core Voltage to 1.400

Then save and exit the BIOS.

Core i7-13700K 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 +19.08% in AI Benchmark.

The highest Core Clock reported in the operating system is 5900 MHz for every CPU core.

When running Prime 95 Small FFTs with AVX disabled, the average CPU effective clock is 5120 MHz 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.

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