we’re overclocking the Core i7-14700K processor up to 6200 MHz in 5 minutes or less using the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero motherboard and EK-Quantum 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 blog post.

All right, let’s do this.

5 Minute Speedrun

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 our G.SKILL 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 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 and 6-Core Ratio Limit to 60
• Set 7-Core and 8-Core Ratio Limit to 59

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

Enter the By E-Core Usage submenu

• Set Efficient Turbo Ratio Limit 1 to 46
• Set Efficient Turbo Ratio Cores 1 to 6
• Set Efficient Turbo Ratio Limit 2 to 44
• Set Efficient Turbo Ratio Cores 2 to 12

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 4

Leave the DIGI+ VRM submenu

Enter the Internal CPU Power Management submenu.

Set IA AC Load Line to 0.30. This ensures the voltage requested by the CPU to the VRM controller is only slightly higher than the factory-fused voltage frequency curve.

Leave the Internal CPU Power Management submenu.

Enter the Thermal Velocity Boost submenu

Set Overclocking TVB to Enabled. OCTVB allows us to limit the P-core frequency based on the CPU operating temperature. It is based on the Turbo Ratio configuration. For each number of active cores, we define two temperature points, each with a unique number of “down-bins’.

• For 1-Core to 8-Core Active,
• Set Temperature A to 60
• Set Negative Ratio Offset A to User Specify
• Set Ratio Offset to 1
• Set Temperature B to 80
• Set Negative Ratio Offset B to User Specify
• Set Ratio Offset to 1

Leave the Thermal Velocity boost submenu

Enter the V/F Point Offset submenu. That gives access to Intel’s Advanced Voltage Offset feature, more commonly known as V/F Points. This feature extends the Adaptive Voltage mode by allowing end-users to undervolt or overvolt specific points of the CPU’s factory-fused voltage-frequency curve.

Set Offset Mode Sign 9 to 11 to +

• Set V/F Point 9 to 0.015
• Set V/F Point 10 to 0.015
• Set V/F Point 11 to 0.035

Leave the V/F Point Offset submenu

Then save and exit the BIOS.

Core i7-14700K Overclock Performance Improvement

We re-ran some benchmarks to ensure everything works as intended and checked the performance increase compared to the default settings. Higher is better, and all are higher. We see a maximum performance improvement of +18.39% in Geekbench 6 Multi.

The highest Core Clock reported in the operating system is 6200 MHz.

When running the OCCT CPU SSE Stability Test, the average CPU P-core effective clock is 5479 MHz, and the average CPU E-core clock is 4216 MHz with 1.197 volts. The average CPU temperature is 100 degrees Celsius. The ambient and water temperatures are 25.5 and 35.7 degrees Celsius. The average CPU package power is 292.5 watts.

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