^^^^ Hey no problem man...reach out any time..I had lots of help on numerous forums when I set up my first Loop in 2013 ;)
My entire system is based upon "positive pressure case", as in a pretty old Corsair 900D with a 120*4 Rad in the top ...120*3 Rad in the bottom side and and additional 120*2 Rad also in the bottom other side.
All Fans on the Rads are set as "Intakes" as I simply dont believe in running warm air thru a heat exchanger (Radiator)...there are also another 3*120 Fans (no rad) in the front of the Case, also Intakes, so in total 12*120 fans all Intakes with only a single 140mm Fan top / rear for exhaust. This set-up works very well for the best optimal cooling.
Im still running "old school" Fan Controller, where by all fans are set up in "groups" of 4, which all plug directly into a 4 Channel (50w *4) Manual Fan Controller. So I simply move the knobs (sliders) up n down for speeds (no software control). Also works well and can actually install all my Rads / Fans then test them all prior to leak testing (at least this no surprises with a fan not working on first boot). It is old school and likelywhen I eventually ditch the 900D I will also ditch the manual fan controller.
As for OC'ing the 12900.....to get an idea of what kind of voltages your chip requires, you can run IXTU (Intel Extreme Tuning Utility) as a first step. This steered me in the rght direction and gave me an idea of whether I had a decent chip or not. Was able to find out 1.285v (vcore) was fine for 5.1 and 1.325v for 5.2.
Now I could go into BIOS and change some parameters, then test.
In all honesty this 12900K took very little tweaking to settle on 5.1P / 4.1E in BIOS:
- Set voltage to manual and set vcore to 1.285v
- Set LLC to 4
- Set "All Core", including E-Cores
I left all the CPU power saving functions except for those that allow for maximum sustained boost.
For 5.2 exact same as above only vcore set to 1.325v, but as you found, heat becomes an issue with anything getting over 1.3v, so I have settled on 5.1 / 4.1 All core.
As for Memory, the DDR5 is pretty finicky and have spent a fair bit of time with it. I had a Dominator 5600 C36 kit that easily OC'd to 6000 C36 (no effort at all), so I picked up another Dominator kit 6200 C36 that I figured no prblem to reach maybe 6400 or even 6600, but after 2 full days of monkeying, I could not get that kit stable with XMP 6200 C36......chaulk it up as my CPU IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) doesn't play well with RAM over 6000 Mhz, so left it at 6000 BUT lowered the Timings and upped some voltages.
Unlike DDR4 where you primarily tweak only VDIMM and System Agent, DDR5 is a whole new beast.
For DDR5 RAM the key for tweaking in BIOS are:
VDD
VDDQ
VDD Transmitter
SA
MC (Memory Controller).
Basically followed this guide from ROG
https://rog.asus.com/foru...690-Overclocking-Guide To setting up my Memory, pretty straight forward, as in enable XMP Profile, then:-
- adjust voltages up a little (following the guide above)
- set Memory speed to 6000
- set Timings as you like, original timings were 36-39-39-76, so simply set them to 34-37-37-74 and test, all went well so tighten up sa little more and have settled on 32-35-35-72.
For testing, the best test really is to simply throw your favorite AAA Titles at it. I have found over the years that you can test the crap out of your system using a multitude of programs such as IBT...Prime..etc, pass them all...then crash in a game, which sucks, especially after hours n hours testing.
My current set-up and OC has been rock solid with many many hours of CP77 and no issues.
I have always stuck to ROG Extreme Boards the last few builds, the last Evga Board I had was a very long time ...Classified X58.
This time around the Extreme Boards were ridiculous expensive and have always wanted to try out an ROG Apex (for OC'ing)
R23 Im consistent 29.3K and temps are great, so Im leaving it at that and focusing on gaming ;)
Rarely hit 60c CPU in CP77 and my Vector Block working well on the 3080Ti as it never exceeds 45c, so all good.
I have this really strange issue whereby my purchased copy of W11 became "not activated" the last time I flashed my BIOS and cannot re-activate it, I think I may have some part of Windows 11 corrupted, so at some point will clean install again and see if I can re-activate.
Anyhow, be sure to post up some pics and dont hesitate to reach out at any time ;) Cheers