MSI PRO Z690-A WIFI DDR4 + i7-12700K | Optimal BIOS settings

[WildDoktor]

Hi; I'm back! I got a small bonus at work and used it to buy the above as new (old stock) for a decent price. My reasoning is that my gpu is cpu-locked at 3x pcie speed; moving up to an 11th gen intel cpu or higher will unlock it's full 4x pcie speed capability. That won't really get me more FPS, but more stability and apparently an easier road to less stutters. I could have gotten an 11th gen cpu and kept this motherboard, but...the prices on the new mb and 12th gen cpu were too good to pass up. Moving up to the 12900k broke the budget, to, 12700k is where I landed.

The MB is here, and the cpu will arrive in a few days, so after having had 100% success with help from this community (@citay !) for my current setup about 5 months ago, I'd like to begin exploring optimal settings for the new setup!

I'm only replacing the current z590-A Pro and i9-10900KF; everything else stays the same:

RTX 4070 super, nzxt 850 gold power supply, mag liquid cooler (2 fans) v2, corsair 4000d case with 3x 120mm front intake, 1x 120mm rear exhaust, 2x 120mm radiator fans exhausting thru the radiator out the top, 32GB of G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3600 (PC4 28800) Desktop Memory Model F4-3600C18D-16GVK

• My current bios settings (on the 590) are: long and short duration wattage 240, lite load 4, [Turbo Ratio Offset] +1

Running MSFS 2024 full-tilt, my current cpu/gpu temps are averaging 65C.
I've seen that the 12700 will run hotter than this, but not by much, so we'll see.

I have already downloaded the latest BIOS and drivers, so I'll of course do that first thing and run at defaults for a few hours to get a feel for it and work out any bugs.

But after that: time to optimize! So: what suggestions do you have for me for this setup?

Thanks!

PS - I'm re-reading @citay's cpu power post atm.

 

[citay]

Yeah, basically you can go by my guide again. I would always advise to start off without any overclocking whatsoever, and instead use the CPU's full potential for undervolting, as in step 2) of my guide. Because overclocking and undervolting are two sides of the same coin. Whatever reserves the CPU has, you can use them to drive it further than factory, which requires more voltage, or make it more efficient than factory, lowering the voltage but keeping the full performance. Or even increase it slightly, should it be limited in any way (by power/temperature limits).

For most people, overclocking is a purely psychological thing, they will never notice 100 MHz more in gaming, but it's about getting "more bang for your buck". But to me, vastly improving the efficiency of the CPU by undervolting it, that is where the real reward lies. All of a sudden, while still performing like a full 12700K or better, you can achieve it at much lower power draw, heat, and potentially noise. When it comes to energy spent per workload, that CPU will blow any stock 12700K out of the water. Let alone an overclocked one, because with overclocking, you rapidly lose efficiency, once the voltage has to be driven up considerably for a minuscule frequency gain.

Now, the power limits, you can keep roughly at similar values than before, because they depend on what your cooling can deal with. Of course, you need to check at which temperatures you arrive at, and try to keep them below 90°C. Then the lowering of "CPU Lite Load", this has to be fully tested all over again, find the ideal mode for it. Testing one step above the first unstable mode, and if that is confirmed stable, add another step for stability headroom.

In this post you find some additional settings that I like to apply.

 

[WildDoktor]

Awesome; thanks @citay. I'm looking forward to tweaking the new setup. I've certainly changed my views on overclocking due to your excellent guidance; less power, better performance and stability, less heat and less noise over pure speed makes sense to me now, and I've seen it work in my own setup. So that's what I'll be going for with the new stuff! Probably won't get to work on it until Tuesday night.

 

[serj_7509]

Hi so i recently also upgraded my board to the msi z790 tomahawk and also have a i7 12700kf, do you happen to know on what undervolt settings you ended up sticking with? im pretty confused in all of this but i do want to reduce power draw since stock settings kinda suck

 

[citay]

The model of CPU might be the same, however, each CPU is individual, in regards to its undervolting ability. The CPUs that Intel produces are binned to achieve a certain spec (and then if the iGPU has a defect, they can sell it as an -F model), but that spec has a certain tolerance, so slightly higher-quality and slightly lower-quality silicon can still become the same CPU model. This reflects in how much you can undervolt each individual CPU later. But this also means that any values another user would tell you, in regards to undervolting, cannot be simply applied to your CPU. Either you'd leave something on the table, or you'd overdo it any have instability, because no two CPUs behave identically there.

What to do then? Well, that's why I wrote the Guide: How to set good power limits in the BIOS and reduce the CPU power draw. It gives you the way of finding the best settings for your individual CPU. Once you have found them, they will automatically be better than any values others tell you they ended up with. Those can only be ideal for their CPUs.

 

[serj_7509]

thanks for the guide, i ended up doing something around cpu lite load 10 (down from the defaulted 12) alongside doing a +2 ratio boost on both the E and P cores and it was stable during the extreme avx2 occt test for 30 minutes, and was able to achieve 23592 points in the multithreaded r23 cinebench benchmark. Is it a perfect undervolt? Probably not since i just hammered away with the cpu lite load values until it was stable but its getting 7% better performance alongside using less power so i stopped tweaking further

 

[citay]

Well, that's a good start, better than nothing. But two remarks there:

1) Undervolting and overclocking are two sides of the same medal. They each try to exploit the additional headroom that an individual CPU has from factory. But they each do it in the opposite direction. While, with undervolting, you would invest all that headroom into a lower voltage per frequency, resulting in lower power draw, lower temps, and higher efficiency at the same performance (or better performance, if it hits the power limits), with overclocking you start to invest the headroom primarily into higher performance, often at similar or higher voltage per frequency, usually resulting in similar or higher power draw, higher temps, as well as worse efficiency, if you overdo it.

Now, you can strike a good balance where, if you keep the OC modest, you will not suffer from the negatives much. But any more significant OC would directly conflict with the end goal of the guide, and make most CPUs behave worse than factory. You are lucky in that you probably have the last i7 that was somewhat civilized. The 13th and especially 14th gen i7 were pushed so hard from factory that even the tiniest OC would immediately result in extreme downsides. But even with a 12700K, I would already put all my eggs in the "undervolting" basket.

2) Why stop tweaking? You might have a "golden sample" CPU, whose silicon quality surpasses those of most other samples. I had some CPUs before that were stable at Mode 1, believe it or not. If you stop randomly at some mode, just because it was stable and already netted some improvements, then you haven't really optimized it fully yet. I would investigate further, see where you get the first instability. Stopping at Mode 10 is a shot in the dark, if you haven't also tested lower modes. And if you set power limits according to your cooling, and the CPU hits those limits (i.e. natively would want to draw more), then the more you can lower the mode while staying stable, the more the performance will increase, totally independent of any OC.