Advice overclocking 9900k

vamosuk · February 23, 2020

Hi all,

I am fairly new to overclocking but watched a few tutorials/researched a bit and would say I have a decent enough knowledge atm. I have a set up with a Z390 Aorus Pro and 9900k cooled by a dark rock pro 4. I know the dark rock pro 4 isnt great at cooling for heavy overclocks, but its all I have atm before an upgrade is possible.

Onto the overclocking, I have left my settings default optimised apart from I enabled XMP for RAM and I boosted the clock to 4.7ghz + 1.280v. I have ran this on Aida 64 stress test for a few hours maximum temperatures were around 80c on some cores which I believe is fairly ok?

I have been running a few benchmarks and found that if I turn off the setting which boosts some cores i.e. 5.2ghz core 1, 5.1ghz core 2 e.t.c down to 4.7ghz on the latter cores, the benchmark will run worse (because its locked to 4.7ghz). But the system runs stable with the boost on do you recommend I just leave it with boost as when I have tried to do a flat all cores overclock I have found it wont bench near enough (probably due to my cooler).

Just wondering what people would recommend ideally I would like a 5ghz over all cores or something but I know thats unrealistic.

Thanks for all your help in advance!

*EDIT*

Also would love recommendations for a cooler which will perform better, I have limited water cooling knowledge so a fairly easy solution would be good. I know about the Corsair H100i just wondered if its the best option!

maizenblue · February 23, 2020

Cant really help you, but if you dont mind I do have a question. Does your 9900k boost to 5ghz at stock speeds?

I just installed a 9900k, did a windows reinstall and at stock settings mine never boosts above 4.7ghz on any core. Prior to the windows and driver reinstall it went to 5ghz all the time.

vamosuk · February 23, 2020

3 hours ago, maizenblue said:

Cant really help you, but if you dont mind I do have a question. Does your 9900k boost to 5ghz at stock speeds?

I just installed a 9900k, did a windows reinstall and at stock settings mine never boosts above 4.7ghz on any core. Prior to the windows and driver reinstall it went to 5ghz all the time.

Hi mate, yeah I believe it does when I disable the setting which allows some cores to go higher I bench a lot worse on Cinebench + User Benchmark.

When I turn it on again it goes back up so I believe it does. Not too clued up tbh i'll try find the setting for you