Rookie needs help ! Overclocking 5950X on MSI MEG X570 Ace

[gavinski]

Hi Guys/Gals

So I'm new here, and thought I would introduce myself I have always been interested in overclocking and I work in the IT world, but overclocking is a very niche skill set, and I really could do with some help so ill start with my specs 

MSI MEG X570 ACE (ms-7c35)

AMD X5950X

VENGEANCE® RGB PRO 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3600MHz C18 Memory Kit

MSI TRIO 3090

2 X Custom Loops with 2 X D5 Pumps 2 X Pacific RL360 Radiators 1x EK-Quantum Magnitude D-RGB AMD AM4 Nickel + Plexi CPU Water Block 1 x EK-Quantum Vector GeForce RTX 3080/3090 

2 x Samsung SSD 980 PRO 2TB IN RAID 0

6x Cooler Master SickleFlow 120 ARGB controlled by CoolerMaster-MASTERFAN ARGB AND PWM HUB

6 x CORSAIR iCUE QL120 RGB PWM controlled by Commander Pro

Corsair HX1200 PSU

Thermaltake CA-1H1-00F1WN-00 Tower 900 E-ATX Case with Tempered Glass Sides - Black

So far I have enabled XMP profile 2 and selected HW overclock Profile 4 out of 9 I believe if any one could point me to a guide with the MSI and CPU combo that would be great, I have tried using the Extreme Profile from the MSI Software but it seems to push my water loop to 70c  is that ok?. I'm just really interested in why we have to change the values we do but I'm getting confused with all the different boards terminologies for the same value any help would be much appreciated, I have been luckily enough to get a hold of the new MSI Trio 4090 with the EK Water block so I think ill be doing some GPU overclocking once I can figure out the CPU side and while its all open I'm going to replace both coolants and give the loops and fans a clean, so thankyou for any help anyone can give.

[Leeghoofd]

And how do your current clocks & bios settings look like sir? 

[gavinski]

Hi Leeghoofd

Thanks for the reply, what settings do you need the info for are there any particular your looking for ?

[wutske]

It's probably easier to get started with AMD Ryzen Master since you won't need to bother with MSI specificalities at first: https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/ryzen-master

The built-in "AI" overclock profiles that some motherboard manufacturers add are very generalistic and are designed to work with bad silicon too, so they usually overvolt your CPU way too much, which is probably why your CPU runs warm (no worries, it can go to 90°c before it throttles and slows down again).

 

Very simply put, your CPU's speed is defined by two factors: the base clock (BCLK) and the multiplier. Increasing the multiplier is the easiest, but also the most course way to do it. Increasing the multiplier by 0,5 on a BCLK of 100MHz means you're already running 50MHz higher than normal.

The BCLK can be increased in fine steps, going from 100MHz to 100,1Mhz with a multiplier of 49 (your CPU's max boost multiplier out of the box), means you're overclocking 4,9MHz. Increasing the BCLK also increases the speed at which your RAM runs and (if not locked in the BIOS) will also increase the frequency of the PCIe bus (which will quickly result in stability issues and might also lead to data corruption since you're disk is also running on PCIe).

 

Now, at a certain point your system will probably crash because you pushed it too hard, usually you can improve stability by slightly increasing the VCore (CPU voltage), but mind you that this doing so will increase power consumption, heat output and if pushed too high, can damage your CPU.

 

Those are the very basics, but things are bit more complex with turbo boosting nowadays. There's a lot of information to be found on Youtube on how to use Ryzen Master, I would certainly advise to have a look there ? .