OVERCLOCKING INTEL’S 10TH-GEN CPUS
I
ntel’s 10th-gen CPUs are easy to overclock. They
scale reasonably well with good cooling, and you
won’t have to fork out for a new PSU if you already
have a six or eight-core CPU. You’ll need a decent CPU
cooler, though, and if you’re aiming for 5GHz or more across
all cores on the Core i9-10900K, you’ll want to consider a
240mm all-in-one liquid cooler. Assuming you have the
necessarycoolingcredentials,here’showtooverclockit.(^1) Set XMP profile and multiplier
Start by enabling XMP in your motherboard’s EFI to set the
correct memory speed and timings. Depending on your
motherboard, the multiplier and CPU vcore settings will either
be on the same page, or within the overclocking section under
voltages. The multiplier in our EFI was just below, which we’re
settingto 51 togiveus5.1GHzacrossallcores.
(^2) Set RAM and CPU voltages
To hit 5.1GHz, we needed to apply a 1.3V vcore with the Core
i9-10900K, so we’ve set it to 1.32V here to be safe. However,
a lot will depend on your cooling and if your board has any
teething issues. For example, the Asus boards we tested this
month required 1.475V to be applied, which fell to 1.3V under
load, so it’s worth keeping an eye on CPU-Z in step 4. It’s also
worth setting the DRAM voltage manually – it’s usually 1.35V,
butcheckyourmemorymodulestomakesure.
(^3) Additional steps
If you can’t reach 5.1GHz at 1.3V, try increasing the power
limits in your EFI’s power management section. It’s safe
to push these to their limits as shown. You can also try
increasingloadlinecalibration.
(^4) Stress test settings
To stress test your settings, download and install the Blender
benchmark (opendata.blender.org) and load the BMW27
test. Use Core Temp and CPU-Z (cpuid.com) to monitor CPU
temperatures and frequencies. You need to keep the vcore
under 90°C for the duration of the benchmark, which is a
worst-case scenario and is far more taxing than games and
most content creation software.
If it’s still not stable, even with maximum power limits,
you may need to dip down to 5GHz. Always try to lower
the vcore as much as possible in order to minimise power
consumption and temperatures. We managed to hit 5.1GHz
at 1.3V, but you may be able to lower the vcore further,
especially if you need to dip to 5GHz.
ANTONY LEATHER
REVIEWS / PROCESSORS
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