5 Minute Overclock: AMD Ryzen 7 8700G to 5350 MHz
We’re overclocking the Ryzen 7 8700G processor up to 5350 MHz in 5 minutes or less using the ASUS ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming 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 guide.
All right, let’s do this.
5 Minute Speedrun
When you’ve entered the BIOS,
Switch to the Advanced Mode view and stay in the Ai Tweaker menu
Set Ai Overclock Tuner to EXPO I. That makes 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.
Enter the Precision Boost Overdrive submenu. Here we can use the AMD Precision Boost Overdrive 2 toolkit 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:
The main bottleneck for maximizing system performance are the power limits, in particular the STAPM and PPT limiter. STAPM is an an acronym for Skin Temperature Aware Power Management and is primarily relevant for mobile devices. It represents the maximum power the processor can use within the thermal budget of the whole system. It is similar to the package power, or PPT, but also considers the system thermal capacitance headroom.
Enabling PBO should raise both STAPM and PPT limit. However, if it doesn’t automatically adjust the STAPM limit, then you may have to manually adjust the setting as I’ll show later on.
By increasing the STAPM and PPT limit to 1000W , we have plenty of headroom for the Precision Boost 2 algorithm to push this CPU to its maximum performance.
Set Precision Boost Overdrive Scalar to Enabled. Scalar is a tool that allows the user to override the warranted silicon stress level, or FIT, to achieve a higher frequency. Increasing the scalar allows the CPU to pursue higher voltages under load.
Set Customized Precision Boost Overdrive Scalar to 10X
Set CPU Boost Clock Override to Enabled (Positive). That unlocks the ability to increase the CPU’s programmed Fmax, or maximum frequency, up to 200 MHz in steps of 25 MHz. Note that the standard Fmax for the 8700G is 5150 MHz. Remarkably, every core in this CPU can boost to an effective clock clock matching the Fmax of 5150 MHz at stock. The CPU boosts to 4829 MHz when all cores are active.
Set Max CPU Boost Clock Override(+) to 200. This increases the Fmax by 200 MHz, so the new Fmax for this CPU is 5350 MHz.
Enter the Curve Optimizer submenu. Here’s where the real magic happens as curve optimizer allows us to finetune the V/f curve for each core in a positive or negative direction. Each step represents around 5mV.
Set Curve Optimizer to Per Core
Set Core 0 to Core 7 Curve Optimizer Sign to Negative. 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. It’s the former we need in our overclock. Note that the Curve Optimizer settings are highly CPU-specific so you should find the best values for your CPU rather than copying mine.
I set the Curve Optimizer Magnitude for each core according to my test result. The Curve Optimizer Magnitude results range from -50 to -25.
Despite the aggressive undervolt with Curve Optimizer and a raised Fmax of 5350 MHz, none of the cores achieve an effective clock matching the new Fmax. However, the CPU now boosts to 5128 MHz when all cores are active.
If enabling Precision Boost Overdrive doesn’t adjust the STAPM limit, then switch to the Advanced menu.
Enter the AMD CBS submenu
Enter the SMU Common Options submenu
Enter the SmartShift Control submenu
Set SmartShift Control to Manual
Set Sustained Power Limit to 1000000
Then save and exit the BIOS.
Ryzen 7 8700G Overclock Performance Improvement
We re-run some benchmarks to ensure everything works as intended and check the performance increase compared to the default settings. Higher is better, and all are higher. We see a maximum performance increase of +24.93% in AI Benchmark.
The highest Core Clock of this overclocked Ryzen 7 8700G reported in the operating system is 5350 MHz.
When running the OCCT CPU SSE Stability Test, the average CPU core effective clock is 5053 MHz with 1.288 volts. The average CPU temperature is 94.4 degrees Celsius. The ambient and water temperatures are 27.5 and 32.9 degrees Celsius. The average CPU package power is 125.8 watts.
And that’s it. I thank you for watching and the Patreons for the support. See you next time!