It’s official! AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU doesn’t support over-clocking

AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D will be the first consumer CPU to include 3D V-Cache, but it will have to forego several essential features such as overclocking support as a result…

By Nivedita Bangari

March 17, 2022

2 min read

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AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D will be the first consumer CPU to include 3D V-Cache, but it will have to forego several essential features such as overclocking support as a result of the new technology. Robert Hallock, AMD’s Director of Technical Marketing, provided some new insights about the impending Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU in an interview with Hothardware. In response to an inquiry from AMD hardware enthusiast Michal Simonek about whether the chip will support overclocking, Robert said no, and with good reason.

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU will be the company’s first 3D V-Cache product, and as such, it will require voltage optimization before being released to the general public. While chips can overclock to 1.5-1.6V, the 3D V-Cache stack that sits on top of the Zen 3 cores can only handle 1.35V and is already at its limit out of the box, according to Robert. Users who attempt to overvolt the chip beyond that voltage curve risk damaging it, which is why overclocking is not recommended for the CPU.

Even though the CPU doesn’t support overclocking, memory and Infinity Cache (FCLK) overclocking will remain enabled, and as Robert points out, memory and Infinity Cache (FCLK) overclocking deliver a more significant performance improvement than regular core overclocking.

Robert did mention that AMD was eager to release the Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU in the gaming market, so given enough time to mature, future generations of 3D V-Cache chips could allow overclocking just like any other CPU. The clocks have also been affected by the voltage scaling, which has been reduced by up to 400 MHz to 3.4 GHz and 4.5 GHz, respectively, from 3.8 GHz and 4.7 GHz on the non-3D portion.

According to recent reports, AMD is advising motherboard manufacturers to remove overclocking features and support for the 5800X3D CPU from their products, but Robert confirms that the chip is ‘Hard Locked’ for overclocking and that there is no way for board makers to bypass the restriction and enable overclocking. However, this should not lead you to believe that AMD’s future Ryzen Desktop CPUs will be non-overclockable. Robert claims that this is a one-time occurrence and that they intend to offer more overclocking-capable CPUs in the future.