The MSI MEG Z690 Unify (DDR5) Motherboard Review: The All-Black Option

Overclocking The Core i9-12900K

When it comes to overclocking on Intel's 12th generation processors, Alder Lake has a new, yet important variable to consider. This is because not all of its cores are equal. Intel's latest Alder Lake processors feature a hybrid design with P-cores (performance) and E-cores (efficient). Focusing on the Core i9-12900K, it has 8 P-Cores, 8 E-cores, and 24 threads in total. While Hyperthreading isn't a new technology, the hybrid nature of Alder Lake combining two different types of CPU core is. The basic idea is that the P-cores do much of the front-loaded heavy lifting, the grunt work so to speak, while the E-cores assist in the background with high-threaded workloads with a much lower overall power draw than the P-cores.

Fundamentally when paired with a Z690 motherboard, both the P-core and E-cores are unlocked. This gives two areas for users to consider when it comes to overclocking. Having personally taken some time to investigate overclocking ability with the Core i9-12900K prior to diving into motherboard reviews, I found that the P-cores offer much more in terms of performance, while the E-cores don't have as much headroom or scalability as the P-cores.

Another point of note when overclocking with Alder Lake, like with 11th gen and 10th gen, performance out of the box on both sets of cores are squeezed out via turbo, e.g, the P-Core Turbo on the Core i9-12900K is 5.2 GHz, while the E-Core turbo is 3.9 GHz. Make no mistake about it, Alder Lake is power-hungry, even more so from personal experience when overclocking than was the case with 11th gen Rocket Lake. This means adequate power being made available from a reliable and quality power supply is needed, as well as good quality and premium cooling such as AIOs, or even custom water cooling.

Experience with the MSI MEG Z690 Unify

Focusing on overclocking the Core i9-12900K with the MSI MEG Z690 Unify, it has plenty of customizable and configurable options available within its Click BIOS 5 UEFI firmware. All of the board's processor and memory overclocking options can be found in the Advanced section of the BIOS under the OC section.

The OC section has extensive options for users to overclock both the processor and memory, although due to the Z690 Unify's lack of video outputs, there are no options to overclock the integrated graphics. As the board has an over-engineered 21-phase (19+2) power delivery that is more than capable of allowing users to push Alder Lake with both ambient and sub-ambient cooling methods. For the CPU side of things, users can adjust the P-Core and E-Core ratios, with other controls such as AVX offsets so that when under these extreme workloads, the CPU cores can dial down a little and enhance overall system stability.

MSI also includes an LN2 mode for users looking to use this board to break world records, but there's the MSI MEG Z690 Unify-X which is pretty much the same model, but with two DDR5 memory slots for better memory overclocking ability. There are also various voltage options for both the memory and CPU, while MSI also includes an LN2 mode designed for users to overclock the E-Cores, although these won't as effective as pushing the P-Cores in terms of scalability and performance.

On the memory side of things, MSI includes a variety of customizable options in regards to frequency and memory latencies. This includes the two levels of Intel's memory gears, Gear 1 which sets the memory controller to match the frequency in a 1:1 ratio, while Gear 2 operates at a ratio of 1:2 (IMC and DDR5).

Overall the MSI Click BIOS 5 firmware has everything a user needs to overclock Alder Lake, and with a premium power delivery, decent and varied selection of options available, even extreme overclockers could be confident of squeezing out all of that extra and delicious performance on offer. 

Overclocking Methodology

Our overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with the Intel XTU 2.0 benchmark and Prime95 to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.

For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from the previous testing, start off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed. The process is repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (105ºC+). Our testbed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.

Note: For the purposes of overclocking in our Z690 reviews, we will only be focusing on the P-cores (performance) as these simply scale better. The E-core (efficiency) will subsequently be set at 3.9 GHz throughout the entirety of our Z690 motherboard reviews.

Overclocking Results

Looking at overclocking performance when using our Core i9-12900K with the MSI MEG Z690 Unify, it's notably mixed. First off the bat, even at default temperatures when using Intel's own XTU 2.0 benchmark, we hit temperatures of 75c with a total system power draw of 317 W at stock with one of the most premium AIO CPU coolers on the market, the ASUS Ryujin II 360. There's also an overclocking profile of sorts through MSI's Game Boost profile, which when compared to default settings provided extra grunt without that much more heat and power all things considered.

Manually overclocking the P-cores from 4.7 GHz to 5.3 GHz, performance increased incrementally in XTU 2.0, with temperature and overall power draw also climbing. One thing we did notice was that when using the board's default load-line calibration (LLC) profile, there was a considerable amount of VDroop between the CPU VCore voltage set in the firmware when compared to the reported load voltages. While it's possible that voltage reporting software needs some work, the jump in power draw seems somewhat consistent.

We managed an all-core stable overclock on the P-cores of 5.3 GHz at 1.400 V, but this was just too much for our cooler to handle and as such, we did experience some thermal throttling. It should also be noted that we hit a total power draw of 448 W which is a lot considering this is a desktop processor. That's one of the disadvantages of overclocking, but the MSI MEG Z690 Unify is certainly capable of giving more with cooling being the main limitation.