We’re overclocking the Core i9-13900KS CPU up to 6200 MHz in 5 minutes or less using the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero motherboard and EK 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 Speed Run

When you’ve entered the BIOS, go to the Extreme Tweaker menu

Set Ai Overclock Tuner to XMP II. 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 DDR5-7200. Selecting XMP II means the motherboard will load the complete XMP profile.

Set ASUS MultiCore Enhancement to Enabled – Remove All Limits. This will unleash the Turbo Boost 2.0 power limits and let the CPU run at unlimited power indefinitely.

Set DRAM Frequency to DDR5-7600MHz. This effectively overclocks the memory to DDR5-7600. Note that we retain the memory XMP timings because we selected XMP II earlier.

Set Performance Core Ratio to By Core Usage. This enables us to configure a dynamic P-core overclock as we can configure the maximum allowed P-core ratio for a given number of active P-cores.

• Set 1-Core to 4-Core Ratio Limit to 62
• Set 5-Core to 8-Core Ratio Limit to 57

Enter the Specific Performance Core submenu. Here we can limit the maximum ratio for each P-core individually regardless of the By Core Usage configuration. We can also define the specific per P-core adaptive voltage for the specific P-core ratio limit.

• Set Performance Core0, Core2, Core3, Core4, Core5, and Core6 Specific Ratio Limit to 62
• Set Performance Core1 Specific Ratio Limit to 61
• Set Performance Core7 Specific Ratio Limit to 60

Leave the Specific Performance Core submenu

Set Efficient Core Ratio to Sync All Cores. This will force all E-cores to run at the same frequency.

Set ALL-Core Ratio limit to 45

Enter the AVX Related Controls submenu. Now we can adjust the AVX negative ratio offset, which lowers the P-core ratio when using AVX. The Offset is referenced against the Per P-core Ratio Limit, which we just configured.

• Set AVX2 Ratio Offset to per-core Ratio Limit to User Specify
• Set AVX2 Ratio Offset to 5

Enter the DIGI+ VRM submenu. Here we can make changes to the voltage regulator configuration. We adjust the VRM loadline to minimize the Vdroop, which is the voltage drop when the CPU goes from idle to full load. We choose the VRM loadline that provides a Vdroop that stabily undervolts the CPU in a heavy all-core workload like Prime95.

Set CPU Load-line Calibration to Level 6

Leave the DIGI+ VRM submenu

Set Global Core SVID Voltage 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. The OC Ratio is equal to the highest configured CPU ratio. In our case, that’s 62X. The voltage between 62X and the next V/F Point, 60X, is interpolated by the CPU.

Set Offset Mode Sign to +

Set Additional Turbo Mode CPU Core Voltage to 1.435

High DRAM Voltage Mode to Enabled. This enables memory voltage higher than 1.40V, which we need for our memory overclock

• Set DRAM VVD Voltage to 1.45
• Set DRAM VDDQ Voltage to 1.45

Then save and exit the BIOS.

Core i9-13900KS 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 +21.21% in Geekbench 5 Multi.

The highest Core Clock reported in the operating system is 6200 MHz for all P-cores except P-core 1 and 7.

When running Prime 95 Small FFTs with AVX disabled, the average CPU P-core clock is 5533 MHz, and the average CPU E-core clock is 4494 MHz with 1.190 volts. The average CPU temperature is 100 degrees Celsius. The ambient and water temperature is 25.7 and 30.7 degrees Celsius. The average CPU package power is 313.6 watts.

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