Definitely take out the existing 2x 16 GB DDR5-4800 whoever put in there, this causes nothing but trouble. DDR5 highly dislikes when you use four modules (explained in my
RAM thread), and using two different RAM kits is a total no-no, this creates huge problems for the memory system. So in order to have any chance of your 2x 32 GB running at their DDR5-5600, they need to run as the sole kit in slots A2 and B2 (2 and 4 from the left).
Second of all, about overclocking. You picked the worst CPU for that. An i9-13900K(F) is already "factory-overclocked", so to speak. If you select "Water Cooler" in the BIOS, which maxes out the power limits, the CPU is already almost uncoolable at over 300W on a very small surface (much smaller than the IHS = heatspreader where the cold plate of your water cooler sits on). The best air cooler (Noctua NH-D15) can barely hold it at a touch over 100°C, and most AIOs would struggle just the same. Only a custom loop might deal with the CPU at stock settings. If you then try to OC on top of what is already an extremely pushed-to-the-max Voltage-per-Frequency curve by Intel, you will probably surpass 400W of pure CPU power draw under full multithreaded load, which is pretty much impossible to cool with conventional methods.
(Picture: MSI cannot recommend any off-the-shelf cooling for i9, because it's just so power-hungry, so they recommend a custom loop water cooler.)
Another thing that speaks against OC: Intel are doing a process called "binning" with the 13900K. The CPUs that can do more than the already high turbo frequencies of the 13900K are put aside to be sold as 13900KS, with even higher turbo clocks and even higher VCore. Both these parts can be considered factory-overclocked, as i mentioned, because Intel are pushing their CPUs to the absolute maximum already, 99% of their capabilites are extracted with a very aggressive VCore setup, and resulting insane power draw, all to somehow beat the latest AMD CPU at the time and have some slightly longer bars in the launch review benchmarks. To extract the remaining 1%, you would have to go even harder than they did on the 13900KS (which has a phenomenally low efficiency), because your 13900K(F) is not binned, meaning it's not the same quality as the KS, despite being the same silicon. But: You can't go harder than that, it would become uncoolable.
Now, your method was also wrong, the base clock is completely irrelevant. Under load, the CPU will clock much higher than that, those are the turbo clocks. They depend on the level of load. Fully multithreaded load (all cores fully loaded) will result in the lowest turbo clocks, because you have the least amount of power draw and temperature headroom left. Once you produce fully multithreaded load for example with
Cinebench R23 Multi, you will see the temperatures rise up quickly in
HWinfo64.
Whatever OC attempts you did in the BIOS, you need to reset everything to defaults, you have apparently crippled your CPU. It now shows 33x as the highest turbo multiplier, castrating it to a CPU model of a fraction of the price. Just leave the frequency settings at default, what you want to play with are the power limits in the BIOS, which can be adjusted to be in line with your cooling capabilities. Because that's what it will come down to, if you cooling can handle 250+W or not. By "handle", i mean, stay below 90°C to have some reserves for higher ambient temperatures.
And don't be tempted to use some automatic OC methods like GameBoost, they don't work well, especially with your CPU. They will try to push some fixed multi OC at a certain VCore (to somehow improve the fully multithreaded benchmark number), but can end up losing performance in a lot of scenarios with full load on less cores (which is far more common in daily use). Because overclocked with a fixed multi OC, it will actually boost less high in those scenarios than if you left everything at stock. Not to mention that you completely kill the efficiency with any OC you do on this CPU model, and the efficiency is already bad to begin with by Intel pushing it so hard. So the power draw will shoot into the sky, but the performance will hardly benefit, it could even stagnate or decrease for things like gaming, because the CPU could boost higher at stock.
Contrary to OC and maxing out the power limits, you can go the opposite way of lowering the power limits manually. Here's an excerpt from a review,
It's German, says "Multi-core performance at particular power limits, 241W with the 12900K as the reference point". By setting a power limit of 253W for example, it gets the temperatures for fully multithreaded load more under control, while costing hardly any performance. It's obvious Intel went brute force in order to win a couple benchmarks vs. AMD here, and it's not necessary at all to allow that high of a power draw. I estimate that around 200W or even below would be the best setting to regain some much-needed efficiency. I can explain this all about the power limits in more detail later, and how to tune them.
Also recommended viewing,
Finally, i wonder why they paired the second most high-end CPU available with the cheapest Z690 board that MSI are selling (PRO Z690-A Wifi). You should always match the board with the CPU somewhat, matching the cheapest of one thing with one of the most expensive of the other is often asking for trouble. Luckily, the PRO Z690-A Wifi doesn't have such a bad VRM section that you should fear VRM-induced throttling at stock speeds, provided that you have some airflow through the case. But this could've gone wrong, with previous Intel generations it would've gone wrong, because there the cheap board models were built more cheaply. But if you ever uttered the word "OC" to the people who built this PC, they straight away should've selected a higher-up board model, they cheaped out here.
Same as they did on the RAM by the way, the DDR5-4800 is not befitting a 13900KF (by the way, i would've gone for the 13900K, the integrated graphics can be very helpful for troubleshooting one day). DDR5-4800 is a bottleneck for a 13900K, because everything it does has to be loaded through the RAM first, and DDR5 completely depends on high speeds to make up for the increased latencies it carries.
Another thing they definitely cheaped out on is the boot SSD. The Kingston NV2 is a low-end M.2 PCIe SSD lottery, in the bad sense. It can use two different controllers, but despite both controllers being PCIe 4.0 x4 compatible, the performance is more or less limited to around PCIe 3.0 x4 speeds. Then there is the NAND flash, of which Kingston reserve the right to use common TLC NAND or bad-performing QLC NAND (by not specifying even the type of NAND), and they actually
make use of that. So there are at least four different variants of this SSD, none much good.
In summary, while it's miles better than the horribly performing NV1, the NV2 is still a DRAM-less budget SSD with a complete lottery of what components are used, and the performance is capped at PCIe 3.0 x4 speeds, negating the need for a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. In my opinion, Kingston should stick more to RAM, they historically offered more bad SSD models than good ones...
The final piece of hardware they could've cheaped out on is the PSU. Which is again a worrying thing, considering your CPU and GPU which are rather powerful. So if you could look that up, the model is written on the sticker, or maybe you have it in your documents.
Long story short: No OC. Let's first try to get this thing working at nominal speeds successfully, without the temperatures getting out of hand.
If your BIOS is the latest version, do a Clear CMOS and let's start from scratch with just the two modules of the faster RAM kit in the second and fourth slots from the left.
If your BIOS is older, update to the
newest one from here, this will also reset your settings to defaults. On the cooler selection prompt after the Clear CMOS or the BIOS update, select "Water Cooler" (this will max out the power limits), and then we can check out what's happening with that. Enable XMP for your RAM.
I will tell you later how we find out the best settings, but first i think you have some things to digest now...
