10980XE #

General Overview #

The i9 10980XE is a 18 core 36 thread Intel processor on the x299 chipset. It comes stock with a 3.0ghz baseclock and 4.3ghz boost clock with a TDP of 165 Watts.

Overclocking Basics #

The 10980XE is a great overclocking chip though it is quite cost prohibitive to setup and run especially when pushing it to the absolute max. The chip is a decent bit larger than even the LGA 1700 chips, and given that this chip only has “P-cores” (this chip was made the generation before Intels introduction of E-Cores) this chip puts out a lot of heat over a relatively large area. This chips TDP is very misleading as even on a light overclock you can expect to be drawing 300 to 400 watts. This mean you will be running into thermal limits well before you hit anything else on this chip. To help with that lapping is advised given the IHS size and may help with the “pumping” effect the heat cycling will cause due to the massive power draw. It is advised you replace thermal paste every 2 to 3 runs (if on LN2) as you will lose a massive amount of heat transfer due to the paste being pushed away from the center of the chip.

Nitty Gritty #

Generally low voltages are common for this chip, so don’t be surprised to be hitting 1.5 to 1.6 volts as a sweet spot for stability. Though at those voltages be prepared to need dual PSU’s to feed just the CPU as you will be drawing upwards of 1500 watts. The other things to not is that because the 10980XE is on a mesh interconnect its cold bug is far warmer than your traditional desktop CPU’s thus running cold-bug mate on Benchmate is advised to add heat load while you get the CPU under cold bug temp to make run attempts. One last thing to note is pushing your base clock quite high isn’t uncommon for this chip so if your at 15mhz over then don’t be surprised. Note that unless you have a very binned CPU a clock ratio of 55 to 56 may be the max you will get. To get to the 2x base frequency mark base clock overclocking is needed, start at 1.1 volts and go from there.