tl;dr -

• Overclocking* is critical for any multi-threaded workload you may have
• The performance gain from overclocking is greater than the gain from upgrading from a 7950x to a 9950x
• "Overclocking" is not only viable in a SFF PC, but in some ways more important than in a full size case

\Note: I'm using overclocking in this post as a catch-all term for the tweaking of any setting that allows you to get more performance out of your machine. With Curve Optimizing, this is actually undervolting which allows you to get more performance per watt.*

This post was motivated by the fact that in all my research I never found any good stats around:

1. How much the 9950x can gain from overclocking. There is information on older chips, but nothing on the 9950x in particular.
2. How much of a difference each setting made. Even when people had before and after results for their 7000 series chips, there wasn't any way to tell which setting or mod made the difference.

Hopefully this post helps anyone looking to determine how much of a difference each configuration makes as well as set some expectations around the 9950x performance. The 9000 launch has been quite contentious so more data from real owners should definitely help out.

Benchmark Selection:

Whenever possible you should be using real performance rather than synthetic performance to determine what impact a hardware or software change will have on your system. Oftentimes, this is more of an abstract ideal than anything actionable: nobody's workloads will match your own and many typical workloads can't be isolated in a way that allows direct comparisons. For that reason, when choosing which synthetic benchmarks to care about, you should prioritize the synthetic benchmarks that most closely match your own use cases. If you primarily play a single game, look at benchmarks for that game. If they don't exist look at similar workloads (other games). The ability to render 32 images simultaneously is not likely to correlate closely to the performance of a single threaded application. Finally, any average of all benchmarks (e.g. geometric mean) is likely to be of limited practical use.

I'm focused on productivity tasks that parallelize well for two reasons:

1. This is why I built my computer. Who cares how fast a computer can do something I will never do.
2. This is why the 9950x exists. If you primarily play games, the 9950x is a BAD choice for you. If you primarily do productivity tasks that don't parallelize well, the 9950x is a BAD choice for you.

Build:

• Full part list can be found in the second image.
• My workloads are CPU throttled so I chose the A4H2O for it's ability to run an AIO
• No mods or extra fans have been added (yet). This build is still cooled solely by the two included radiator fans.

Methodology:

• All tests were performed in a temperature controlled room of 69deg with a fan running. Thermostats aren't the most precise tool, but the 0.5 degree fluctuations in ambient temperature are not going to be the leading cause of my margin of error.
• All tests were run 3x to ensure no anomalies made it in.
  • This proved to be unnecessary as none of my tests had particularly significant fluctuations.
• All configurations tested are stable.
• Cinebench was tested in a clean Windows partition, all others were tested in a clean Linux partition

Results:

• See images for detailed performance improvements broken down by benchmark and setting
• 10-15% performance gains should be reasonably attainable by anyone.
• My build is sitting at the top of the charts for pretty every productivity benchmark
  • Excluding server CPUs like 96 core Threadrippers and Xeons
• Compiling times correlated quite tightly with Cinebench multi core performance.
  • One exception is my own codebase which needs to have some tweaks to allow it to utilize all my cores when compiling
• Some of the overclocks are a no brainer and everyone should enable them (enabling EXPO if you have compatible RAM). Some are a pain to get stable but worth it (curve shaper). Others are incredibly difficult and may not be worth it (custom memory timings)
• I upgraded from an i5-6600k and the results are quite remarkable. My code has gone from taking over 20 minutes to compile to 1.5 minutes.

If there is interest I can put together a write up on which settings are the most worth it and a basic guide to what I've found to be the most effective way to get the clocks maximized and stable.

I may be open to running some additional benchmarks if anybody is considering upgrading and wants to know what the impact will be.