Overclocking

Overclocking our retail Core i9-9900KS worked well considering the high clocks it's already running out of the box. We reached 5.2 GHz fairly easily, with only 1.35 V.

With the Core i9-9900KS, Intel introduced a new overclocking knob that lets you adjust the processor's throttle temperature. By default that value is set to 100°C, like on most of their previous CPUs. In the BIOS you can manually change that limit to any value between 62°C and 115°C, which gives you a little bit more temperature headroom to play with.

Reaching 5.3 GHz stable on our CPU wasn't possible though, no matter the voltage, not even with a 240 mm AIO. The system always ended up "almost stable", just some loads would crash it sometimes. Another problem was the increased heat output at that point; thermal throttling happened very quickly even with a more relaxed temperature limit of 115°C.