Overclocking
I won’t hide that manual CPU overclocking on the C9X299-PG300 was not easy. You may easily go up to 4.5-4.6GHz using profiles but above that, even good water cooling won’t be able the handle generated heat. It’s because the voltage in profiles has values for typical and let’s say not the best overclocking processors. Of course, it’s fine as not all users have the luck to get the best overclocking CPU. However, 4.7GHz profile already set 1.35V what is way too much for cooling on ambient temperatures. The i9-7900X which I was using for overclocking couldn’t run at more than 1.27V without thermal throttling. The same was on other motherboards. At this voltage, it’s possible to set stable 4.8GHz but the temperature on our cooling was too high to keep it like that in longer tests.
Below you can see result from Intel XTU at 4.8GHz. It’s quite demanding benchmark and is showing us if there is any thermal or power throttling. As I mentioned, 1.27V was maximum voltage at which there was no throttling or other issues.
I said that manual CPU overclocking is hard and really it is. Most motherboards have limited overclocking options and motherboards automatically adjust some settings. The C9X299-PG300 has overclocking profiles which are the easy way but also has a lot of settings if we wish to do everything manually. There are power limits, P-States, various voltages and everything else you may need. Point is that typical user will be lost in these settings and without correct values won’t be able to overclock the CPU without throttling or other problems.
What I recommend to make all easier is to load overclocking profile close to the desired frequency and simply edit voltages and power limits as you already have the pattern so you will see in what format are options. It’s because depends on options, you may need to adjust values in A, mV, W or simple dividers. Not everything is easily described so less advanced users will be for sure lost. No one said that overclocking is for everyone.
Much easier is to overclock memory. Regardless if we use 32GB or 64GB memory kit, we can count on good results.
Two screenshots, above and below, are showing overclocking of 64GB Ballistix Elite DDR4-3000 memory kit. This memory kit is based on dual rank 16GB modules and we were able to set it stable at DDR4-3600 16-16-16 1.35V or 3733 17-18-18 1.35V. Both results are really good and are on top of what you can expect on the X299 chipset.
Stable settings of 32GB memory kit are not much higher just because of limited potential of our processor’s memory controller. Even though it could run in some benchmarks at DDR4-4100 then we couldn’t stabilize it at more than the DDR4-4000. It’s still a great result for quad channel memory.
Even though overclocking on the C9X299-PG300 is not easy then I guess that overclockers and computer enthusiasts can have a lot of fun playing with various settings. All that matters is to spend some time to learn the BIOS and more complicated settings and anyone can achieve great results on this motherboard.
