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 Gigabyte Z690 AORUS Tachyon is a no holds barred overclocking monster of a product. It is designed for extreme memory and CPU overclocking. Gigabyte has deployed fifteen 105 A power stages. Recently, the Z690 AORUS Tachyon took the world record for DDR5 with a frequency of 5011 MHz (DDR5-10022). As this is written, the HWBOT CPU frequency record for this motherboard is 6.3 GHz using liquid nitrogen (LN2), by WESTMEREX. Far from the best world-wide, it is still well above what any dry-ice or custom water loop can accomplish.

There are two main ways to overclock these CPUs, and it just depends on personal preference. Either one performs an all-core overclock or chooses two of the best cores and aims for the highest overclock on those alone. In the end, I settled for the highest all-core P and E-cores overclock. You of course can set a single core to be higher with an offset, and this motherboard certainly can do it if you have the patience to fine-tune the voltage offsets.

I tried multiple ways to squeeze every last MHz out of the CPU. Ultimately, I settled on using the XOC software inside Windows for a quick run to avoid thermal restraints. With every Alder Lake overclock, the process is the same, At first, I left the E-cores and Ring Cache alone and set out to push the P-cores up until I reached the stopping point of 1.35 V with an all-core overclock of 5.4 GHz in Cinebench R23. This was followed by raising the E-cores to 4.3 GHz with the Ring Cache left on Auto. Overall, if you can keep CPU temperatures under check, the Gigabyte Z690 AORUS Tachyon provides excellent overclocking for any supported CPU.

Memory Overclock

The Gigabyte Z690 AORUS Tachyon has great memory support as well. With only two slots, it is designed for high frequency memory. The nice thing about these types of motherboards is that Command Rate 1 (1T) can be used, which I could enable at up to DDR5-6800, after which it required an unhealthy amount of supporting voltages to stabilize. DDR5-7000 took a lot of voltage tinkering, but stabilized with loose enough timings and the use of 2T. For tighter timings, more DRAM voltage was required, which I could not commit to. I enjoy the process of overclocking, but still want working memory when I am done after a an overclocking session. The final compromise became DDR5-6933 for 24/7 use.

With a single DIMM able to boot into Windows with a value of 7200 MT/s, the limitation once again is my unwillingness to kill the CPU IMC or DRAM from excessive voltage.