Overclocking

Overclocking the 12th generation Intel processor comes with a light learning curve owing to new voltages and the new E-cores. I am certainly not an expert on the subject, but am making some personal progress through trial and error. Now that Alder Lake CPUs have been out long enough for a wide range of testing, the overclocking community suggests keeping it at or below 1.35 V for long-term use. However, please do not take my applied settings as a standard or copy my voltages, and ask on the TPU forums if you have questions related to voltages and general safety tips.

The ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme Glacial is a powerhouse when to comes to CPU overclocking with a VRM setup that is just over the top in every way. It is extreme overkill for the most part. The actual limiting factor overall will be the monoblock itself. It's not that LN2 cannot be used with the monoblock removed, rather those XOC overclocks are better for motherboards designed around such activities. In any case, the waterblock topped out around at around 300 watts of cooling dissipation. This is nearly 30 watts lower vs. a stand-alone EK Velocity waterblock in my testing. To be, clear that was only achieved because the i7 12700K already went through the delid process. Normally, without lapping and deliding the CPU, thermal transfer below the IHS will have these Intel 12th Gen CPUs hitting 100°C before even reaching 290 watts.

For overclocking the i9-12900K was used, which has not been modified. This means the final overclock was at the mercy of not only the monoblock and thermal paste, but the solder below the IHS. The final result was 5.3 GHz. More adjusting could have been done as 5.4 GHz with a voltage of 1.35 V is possible using this CPU. Overclocking can take hours, days or weeks to get it perfect and because the review has to be completed at some point, I opted to settle with 5.3 GHz, even though I knew another 100 MHz is possible with a bit of extra play to the Load-Line Calibration and minor voltage tweaking.

Memory Overclock

As expected, the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme Glacial has excellent memory support going beyond the QVL by quite a large margin. Officially the QVL for four DIMMs stops at 4400 MT/s. With all four slots filled using single-ranked memory, a frequency of 3000 MHz (6000 MT/s) was achieved. This was unstable in Windows, but a notch down and 5800 MT/s passed stability tests after manual some voltage adjustments.

For two DIMMs, the QVL stops at DDR5-6400, but 6800 MT/s did boot into Windows. This encountered the same problems as four DIMMs and was unstable. However 6600 MT/ did pass the stress tests after manual some voltage adjustments. as well. Overall. if you have the patience and time, higher frequencies are possible. That being said, those who want a hassle free plug and play experience should stick to 6400 MT/s when using two DIMMs. This is general the commonly highest frequency 4-DIMM slot motherboards can accomplish with a 12th generation Intel Core processors. The 13th Generation Intel Core processor may enable higher supported kits in the future. General rule of thumb is to follow the QVL list and unless it is updated in the future, assume nothing above 6400 MT/s is guaranteed to work.