We’re overclocking the Xeon w7-3465X Sapphire Rapids CPU up to 5100 MHz in 5 minutes or less using the ASUS Pro WS W790E-Sage SE motherboard and EK-Pro custom loop water cooling.

I’ll speedrun 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.

All right, let’s do this.

5 Minute Speedrun

When you’ve entered the BIOS,

Go to the Ai Tweaker menu

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

Set CPU Core Ratio to By Core Usage. That allows us to configure the overclock for different scenarios ranging from 1 active core to all active cores and enables us to run the cores significantly faster when there’s more performance headroom.

Enter the By Core Usage sub-menu. That gives us access to the Turbo Boost 2.0 ratio configuration.

• Set Turbo Ratio Limit 1 to 51
• Set Turbo Ratio Cores 1 to 8
• Set Turbo Ratio Limit 2 to 49
• Set Turbo Ratio Cores 2 to 12
• Set Turbo Ratio Limit 3 to 48
• Set Turbo Ratio Cores 3 to 16
• Set Turbo Ratio Limit 4 to 47
• Set Turbo Ratio Cores 4 to 28

Leave the By Core Usage sub-menu

Enter the Specific Core submenu. This menu contains Intel’s overclocking toolkit’s Per Core Ratio Limit and Voltage control options. These two tools let you control the upper end of the voltage-frequency curve of each core inside your CPU. When we set the Per Core Ratio Limit for a core, it restricts that core’s voltage-frequency curve to the specified ratio.

• Set Core 7 Specific Ratio Limit to 50. That’s the only core of our CPU that can’t run 5.1 GHz at 1.35V.

Leave the Specific Core submenu.

Set DRAM Frequency to DDR5-6800MHz. That increases the memory frequency from the base frequency of DDR5-4800 to DDR5-6800.

Enter the AVX Related Controls submenu. Now we can adjust the CPU ratio offsets associated with various frequency licenses. The ratio offsets help achieve maximum performance for SSE, AVX, and AMX workloads. The rabbit hole of AVX offset goes deep, but it suffices to know three pieces of information for this guide. One, by default, the AVX ratio offset is 0. Two, the AVX ratio offset is applied on a per-core basis as it’s subtracted from each core’s Per Core Ratio Limit, and three, the ratios are triggered based on workload intensity, not necessarily what type of instructions. That last part is crucial because “light” AVX loads may not trigger the offset, and heavy non-AVX workloads may.

Set AVX2 Ratio Offset to per-core Ratio Limit to User Specify.

• Set AVX2 Ratio Offset to 3. So, the maximum AVX ratio for most cores is 48X, while for Core 7, it’s 47X.

Leave the AVX Related Controls submenu

Enter the DRAM Timing Control submenu

Enter the Memory Presets submenu. That gives us access to memory-tuning presets for specific memory ICs. The presets will adjust the memory timings and voltages.

Since we have a V-Color memory kit with Hynix ICs, we use the profile for Hynix DDR5-6800 memory. However, the frequency will be the DDR5-6600 we set earlier.

• Select Load Hynix 6800 1.4V 8x16GB SR
• Select Yes

Set Max. CPU Cache Ratio to 27. That increases the Mesh frequency to a maximum of 2.7 GHz. 27X is the maximum Mesh ratio for the multi-tile Xeon W-3400 processors.

Set Vcore 1.8V IN to Manual Mode.

Set CPU Core Voltage Override to 2.3. Increasing the VccIN from 1.8V to 2.3V helps reduce the current draw at high power consumption. That makes it easier on the VRM.

Set Global Core SVID Voltage to Adaptive Mode. In Adaptive Mode, the CPU relies on the factory-fused voltage-frequency curves to set the appropriate voltage for a given ratio. When configuring an adaptive voltage, it maps against the “OC Ratio, ” – the highest configured ratio. In our case, that’s 51X.

Set Additional Turbo Mode CPU Core Voltage to 1.35. That defines the highest V/F Point for every core’s voltage-frequency curve to 51X at 1.35V, slightly higher than the highest factory-fused voltage of this CPU’s twenty-eight P-cores.

Then save and exit the BIOS.

Xeon w7-3465X Overclock Performance Improvement

We get a solid uplift in single and lightly threaded benchmarks by increasing the maximum core frequency of most cores by 500 MHz – from 4.6 GHz to 5.1 GHz – for example, we get a +23.14% performance uplift in 3Dmark CPU Profile 1 Thread. Overall, we get the highest performance improvement of +50.60% in V-Ray 5.

The highest Core Clock reported in the operating system is 5100 MHz.

When running Prime 95 Small FFTs with AVX disabled, the average CPU effective clock is 4466 MHz with 1.154 volts. The average CPU temperature is 91.0 degrees Celsius. The ambient and water temperature is 32.9 and 42.3 degrees Celsius. The average CPU package power is 639.4 watts, and the average CPU input power is 930.3 watts.

And that’s it. I thank you for watching and the Patreons for the support. See you next time!