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New overclocker here. Looking for advice on how to overclock my 9900k.

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crisis88m

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Just built my second computer and looking for some help on how to overclock my 9900k.
I am a complete novice in overclocking. Also how did I do in building my second computer?
I hope I chose right with the GPU considering the monitor is a ultrawide 1440p 120hz badass.
This is all for gaming and eventually VR gaming. Some parts were carried over from my old system, built in 2013.
System specs are:

CPU > Intel 9900k
Cooler > Corsair H100i V2
Motherboard > Asus z390 ROG Maximus 11 Hero WIFI
PSU > Corsair AX860i
Ram > Corsair Dominator DDR4 8gb x2 @3200 MHz
GPU > GTX 680 Classified 4gb, being upgraded to a refurbished GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2080 DirectX 12 GV-N2080GAMING OC-8GC 8GB 256-Bit GDDR6 PCI Express 3.0 x16 SLI Support ATX Video Card from Newegg.
Storage > WD Black 1tb SSD NVME and a 250 gb Corsair SSD
Monitor > Alienware 34 Curved Gaming Monitor: AW3418DW
Case > Corsair Carbide Series 500R White Mid-Tower Case
 
Last edited:
Yes the 2080 should be able to drive your monitor.
When overclocking you always want to make incremental changes and test stability. You can read about the stability testing portion here: https://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/686655-Three-Levels-of-Stability-Methodolgy. Every CPU is different, so "plug and play" settings don't tend to get the best results. You can increase your multiplier gradually until it becomes unstable, then increase the voltage until it becomes stable, and so forth. Someone more familiar with this CPU can give you more details about BIOS settings and appropriate voltages.

Your build looks pretty good. You should also see improvement from overclocking your RAM. 3200 MHz is OK, but your CPU can benefit from faster.
 
Thank you for your response. Wish I would have knew about the ram when I bought it.
 
In short, most users are happy if they can stabilize 9900K at 5GHz on all cores. Depends on the chip, it will need 1.27-1.37V. There are no other settings required to do that, only CPU multi + voltage. The only issue can be too high CPU temperature.
 
When I overclock and remember complete novice here and I don't want to turn this 9900k into slag, should I only do it via bios or can I use a different program like ASUS AI Suite 3? Also how small of steps should I be taking here? After I achieve a overclock will the CPU still throttle down? Any recommendation for what programs to use for stability testing?
Thank you guys.
 
You can use AIDA 64, OCCT, Intel Burn test, or realbench. Prime 95 is good too, but people run into problems because it uses some special instructions that can cause unrealistic loads (version 26.6 avoids this problem). Really it's up to you.

I would just make changes in BIOS, but that's me. Some might recommend using software for more rapid adjustments, then setting the bios once a stable OC is obtained.

I'm not sure that you used the full name of your motherboard. If it is the ROG Maximus Hero XI, then this video shows how to overclock your CPU on your motherboard.
. I started it at the manual OC. Before that he is advertising some stuff, and then discussing the AI tuner settings. In the video he uses Cinebench. Only difference with his CPU is that it was "pre-tested" so he skips a lot straight to 5.0 GHz and 1.290 V. You could start with a more conservative 4.7 GHz and 1.27 V (using Woomack's numbers) and work from there. Once you get to a good point, you can run a longer stress test like AIDA 64 or OCCT. Also make sure you keep a close eye on temperatures throughout this process.

There's really minimal risk of damaging your CPU as long as you keep your temps reasonable (actually the CPU should save itself from temps anyway, but it's still best practice to watch them) and don't feed a it a ton of voltage (staying within the range Woomack gave of 1.27-1.37 V). Just check over everything before you make changes to the settings. It can be easy to accidentally type in 2.7V or 1.7V for example, when you meant 1.27V. Hopefully your BIOS would warn you of an unusually high setting, but its best to just have a habit of double checking your settings. EDIT: there is risk to voltage, usually this results in decreased lifespan, however most of us don't keep our CPUs long enough for this to matter. The other thing that can happen is an OC that once was stable now requires more voltage after a year or two.

If you use cinebench then write down your score, multiplier ratio, and voltage for each setting. The video mentions your score will drop if your CPU starts to throttle, so this is also a helpful double check that your temps are behaving.
 
Wow, that helped me tremendously. Thank you. Yes sorry my motherboard is the ASUS z390 ROG Maximus Hero 11 WIFI. As soon as I finish some college work I will start overclocking and I will update you guys.
 
With a i9 9900k I would just set Multi core enhancement then see how low you can run the Vcore with stability.
 
Well just ran into some problems and I haven't even overclocked anything. Just got blue screen of death with whea uncorrectable error. I reset bios to defaults but didn't work. Couldn't repair windows or start a fresh install, it kept failing but it was fixed after I disabled turbo in bios. Someone please tell me I don't have a fu************ cpu...
 
What were you doing when the BSOD occurred? Had you made any BIOS changes, if so, what? When you say you reset defaults, did you do this using the "restore default settings" BIOS option? If that doesn't work, try clearing the CMOS manually. High end motherboards like yours should have a button do do this, the proper procedure will be listed in the manual (just pressing the button doesn't work). Other times its a jumper on the motherboard or can be done by removing the battery.
 
I was on the desktop. I literally just got done downloading cinebench and it happened. I just recently restarted and turned turbo back on and everything is running fine. Currently running RealBench right now with no issues. I don't know I'm stumped lol. Nothing was changed in bios minus the ram frequency.
 
Thats what I was thinking but after I restored defaults windows still wouldn't load. Windows loaded only after I turned turbo off in bios.
 
I just enabled xmp again for memory and everything is fine. Stress testing again. Im confused lol
 
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