Overclocking
Overclocking on Ryzen has not changed all that much since the last generation. It is actually quite easy to do.
The Ryzen 9 3900X has a base clock of 3.6 GHz and boosts up to 4.6 GHz. Now that boost is only on 1-2 cores. By overclocking we can set all cores to run at the same speed all of the time. This will give us better performance, especially in multi-core workloads.
We will be doing all of our overclocking in the BIOS. To start make sure you are in Advanced Mode (F2). Once there head on over to the Tweaker tab. Here you want to set your CPU Clock Control to 100.00 MHz. Next set your CPU Clock Ratio to what you are shooting for. An easy calculation is CPU Clock Control x CPU Clock Ratio. So in our case that would be 100 X 44 = 4400 MHz.
I would suggest starting at the base clock of your processor and moving up in small steps. So for the Ryzen 9 3900X it would be 37, 38, 39, etc. You are likely going to have to adjust your voltage as well. A good starting point is 1.35-1.40V Vcore. Each time you overclock load into Windows and run a stability test, we use AIDA64 and CINEBENCH, but any CPU-focused benchmarking program would work. When running the stability test / benchmark be sure to keep an eye on your temperatures as well. If your system does not boot up try upping your Vcore. If that does not help you could try settings your load line calibration higher.
After much testing we were able to get our Ryzen 9 3900X running at 4.4 GHz on all 12 cores!
Our load temperature was right around 80C, so I’m not sure I would recommend this for a 24/7 overclock. 4.2-4.3 would be pretty stable temperature-wise. If you are using watercooling then 4.4 is very attainable.
