Review basic BIOS configurations for optimal performance.
Review basic BIOS configurations for optimal performance.
If manual overclocking isn't your goal, leaving it on is acceptable. It slightly raises temperatures and can extend turbo time a bit, but not as significantly as AI OC techniques. The impact is minimal. Typically I opt for 1 because it offers a modest performance boost without instability issues, though results can differ. If you encounter memory-related crashes, switch to 2. No, it demands much higher voltage than needed and pushes settings beyond what's ideal. It's best to either manually overclock or skip it entirely. Most other adjustments concern manual overclocking rather than automatic gains, and Turbo-related settings should already be enabled by default.
You're on the right track by wanting to learn manual overclocking. It's a common goal for enthusiasts aiming for better performance. There are plenty of resources available—look into forums, YouTube tutorials, and technical blogs that explain the process step-by-step. Focus on understanding voltage limits, thermal management, and stability before diving into advanced settings. Good luck with your research!
Yeah, that's how you get it up that high. There are some YouTube channels that do focus on it, Der8auer, SkatterBench, and Actually Hardcore Overclocking to name a few, though they go into the more advanced methods of overclocking and other nuances of the platform. For just a basic overclock, it's not super difficult, the way I like to think of it is a balancing act between voltage, clock speed, and temperature. Changing one affects the other two, and your goal is to maximize the clock speed while keeping the temperature and voltage below safe limits (100C and 1.45V respectively, though with 12th gen you will hit temp limits before you get anywhere near voltage limits). My general process is as such: First, decide if you want to go for multicore score or game speed. This only applies to 12th gen, but you can clock the ring (the interconnect between the cores and the memory controller) way higher when the E cores are disabled, which can impact some workloads like games a lot. Disabling the e cores doesn't reduce the multi core score by all that much, especially if you're overclocking the P cores as well (average R23 score after overclocked with the P cores off is ~16K), but it's lower enough that you have to decide which is more important to you for whether you'd leave the E cores on or off. Run a couple benchmarks initially to see where your performance started to make sure you're actually improving. You want to do multiple, as there can be regressions in one benchmark but good performance in another with certain setups. If you want to disable E cores, I'd recommend doing that before benchmarking fully. Once that's done, go into the BIOS and set some initial settings. First, go through and disable all the power management settings (C-States, SpeedStep, etc.), though leave Intel Turbo Boost enabled still (you can't overclock if this is disabled for some reason). You can turn those back on later. Next, set the ratios. You want 48 for the P cores, (if they're enabled) 40 for the E cores, and 40 for the Ring (might be called Cache or Uncore, I'll refer to it as ring though since that's what I'm used to calling it). Those ratios should be stock (or at least close enough to stock, I'm going off memory for them) and therefore should just work. Configure the LLC settings. They should be in the Digi+ VRM menu of the ASUS BIOS, and you want to configure that to Level 4 LLC. This sets the amount of VDroop you have, and without going into the specifics about it Level 4 should give a good balance between voltage regulation and not dropping down a ton. Finally, set the initial voltage. Set the VCore mode to manual/override (I forget what ASUS calls it) and set the voltage to 1.35V. Boot into Windows, double check to make sure the frequency applied in either HWInfo64 (great for monitoring temps and other sensor data) or CPU-Z (much quicker for just checking frequency) and run a stress test of your choice for about 5 minutes to make sure it's not immediately unstable. Some of the bigger ones are Prime95 Small FFTs, OCCT, and Linpack Xtreme, they all have their pros and cons. Prime95 Small FFTs is about as hot a stress test as you can find, if you're pushing your chip it will end up at 100C in this while being like 80C in Cinebench. It's usually the most effective at finding instability though, it's just generally considered too unrealistic and will reduce your max overclock somewhat significantly compared to the other two. Linpack Xtreme is a more balanced stress test, it's much more in line with a workload you can actually see in the real world, though it is dependent on having relatively fast memory speed for it to run at full speed (E.G. you'd have to do a memory overclock first, which is a very tall order for someone who's never done a CPU overclock), and it doesn't work properly with the E cores on. OCCT is in the middle of those two, it has a lot of different settings and it does have some cool features to it, though it's paid software so you'd have to use the free trial if you don't want to spend the ~$5 a month for it, and the free trial has some Once the stress test completed: If it was stable and temps were fine, increase the P core multiplier. If it was stable and temps weren't fine, decrease voltage by 0.01V. If it wasn't stable and temps were fine, increase the voltage by 0.01V. If it wasn't stable and temps weren't fine, decrease the voltage by 0.01V and P core multiplier by 1. Repeat from Step 4 until you found the upper limit of the P cores You can also mess with the CPU PLL voltage as this can help with P core stability a bit, but it's little enough that I wouldn't blame you for not trying. It sweet spots, so the way you want to find the optimal value is to lower the voltage to the point where you're just barely crashing, then increase the CPU PLL by 0.015V from the stock 0.9V until it stops crashing until you get to ~1.1V Once you found the P core limit, Repeat Step 4 and 5 with the E cores (assuming they're enabled). There is also the E core PLL voltage and E core L2 Cache voltage, these can help, though not by enough to make a noticeable difference. IIRC E core L2 voltage you want to just leave at 1.25V on 12th gen, though in my experience (13th gen admittedly, not 12th) it just doesn't really do anything. Once you found the limits for the P and E cores, move onto the ring. Repeat Steps 4 and 5 with the ring multiplier. There are even more voltages this time. There's the ring PLL, SA PLL, and System Agent voltage that affect ring stability. The most important of these is System Agent, and usually higher is better for this with ring overclocking, but higher can also cause weird memory issues so it might not be a good idea to mess with this unless you're going to be stress testing your RAM at the same time. After you've found the initial balance for the chip, run a long final stress test. I'd want at least an hour, more likely 2, for my main system, though run it for as long as you like (I'd say anything more than 24 hours is pretty excessive though). If you run into instability, do the following: If the temps get too high and/or you start throttling, decrease voltage by 0.01V until it's below 100C. If you get a crash and you aren't yet at the temp limit, increase the voltage by 0.01V until it works again. If you get a crash and you're at the temp limit, decrease the multipliers one by one (I go in the order ring, E core, P core, but it's up to you) until it becomes stable, then start adding back the ones you removed earlier to figure out which was bad (if not all of them). Finally, re-run the initial benchmarks to see how much performance you gained.