[UPDATED] (Some B660 Confirmed) Intel Alder Lake Non-K Overlocking Enabled on certain motherboards

[TrigrH]

UPDATE:

ASUS ROG Strix B660-G and B660-F are confirmed, they have a slightly different way of doing it though.

 

 

Summary

Well known overlocker der8auer has discovered full range BCLK overlocking in ROG MAXIMUS Z690 motherboards:

 

 

 

This feature is only visible if a K CPU is NOT installed:

 

 

In Alder lake adjusting the BCLK only changes three things:

CPU Freq - Multiplier adjustable

Cache Freq - Multiplier adjustable

Memory Freq - Strap adjustable

 

This means that unlike with skylake there are no known downsides to a BCLK OC since PCIe still runs at 100.

 

Quotes

Quote

"I also want to highlight that this feature likely only works when an external clock generator is present on the motherboard."

 

My thoughts

I give Asrock about 14 seconds till they enable this and about 20 seconds for stupid intel to block it in the next microcode update.

 

Source

 

[bcredeur97]

hasn't this happened multiple times in past generations and it was quickly disabled afterwards? 

[TrigrH]

5 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

hasn't this happened multiple times in past generations and it was quickly disabled afterwards? 

The last time was Skylake in 2015. What people seem to forget is that intel cannot remove a feature from an already existing bios installed on your PC. The feature can only be removed in newer bios versions.

[RONOTHAN##]

If they enable this on some of the cheaper boards, it might make sense to buy the i3 12100F, one of those boards, and a half decent cooler and overclock the crap out of it. 

[Middcore]

Really thought this was going to be ASRock. 

[Rauten]

I can't watch the video, and I'm confused.

 

So... the BIOS setting is called "Unlock BCLK OC", but it unlocks the frequency multiplier?

What?

[TrigrH]

1 hour ago, Rauten said:

I can't watch the video, and I'm confused.

 

So... the BIOS setting is called "Unlock BCLK OC", but it unlocks the frequency multiplier?

What?

its unlocks BCLK

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, Rauten said:

I can't watch the video, and I'm confused.

 

So... the BIOS setting is called "Unlock BCLK OC", but it unlocks the frequency multiplier?

What?

It unlocks the base clock, not the multiplier.

Multiplier is what you typically use to overclock, and you leave the base clock alone.

Since the multiplier is locked on non-K chips, you have to change the base clock instead.

 

I thought this was possible on all Intel motherboards. 

Base clock has always (since Sandy Bridge) been kind of meh since it messes with other things too (like USB ports), but if they have now decoupled the CPU base clock from things like the PCIe bus then that's great news.

 

This coupled with the really good performance some low-end Alder Lake chips have makes them look really appealing to budget gamers. Something like the i3-12100F will probably perform really well in games and it's less than 100 dollars. It will probably overclock pretty decently as well.

[TrigrH]

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

I thought this was possible on all Intel motherboards. 

Only K chips can go past ~103? i think.

[porina]

13 hours ago, TrigrH said:

This means that unlike with skylake there are no known downsides to a BCLK OC since PCIe still runs at 100.

Depends on the mobo. Many Z170 boards could separate PCIe clock from BCLK when doing non-K OC. The biggest problem with Skylake era non-K OC was that it crippled AVX performance.

 

Anyway, while this "news" might be interesting to competitive overclockers, I don't think it makes any sense for the masses. You don't buy a high end mobo to skimp on the CPU.

 

13 hours ago, TrigrH said:

The last time was Skylake in 2015. What people seem to forget is that intel cannot remove a feature from an already existing bios installed on your PC. The feature can only be removed in newer bios versions.

Microcode updates can also be delivered by OS (while OS is running, doesn't persist in hardware). Microsoft often pushes them out. So to avoid that you may also need to hack system files, or use an outdated version of OS.

 

[Stahlmann]

So only maximus motherboards? If so, then it still doesn't make sense. Spending a lot of money on your mobo so you can overclock the CPU you cheaped out on?

 

(cannot watch the video atm)

[TrigrH]

10 minutes ago, porina said:

Microcode updates can also be delivered by OS (while OS is running, doesn't persist in hardware). Microsoft often pushes them out. So to avoid that you may also need to hack system files, or use an outdated version of OS.

This is not a thing for consumer motherboards (as far as im aware), laptops and surface tablets sure.

[porina]

1 minute ago, TrigrH said:

This is not a thing for consumer motherboards (as far as im aware), laptops and surface tablets sure.

Nothing to do with mobo. Any consumer system with a supported CPU can get it. In case it wasn't clear, it is a runtime thing. It is loaded with the OS. No persisting hardware code is changed. Reboot and it is gone, but the OS reloads it next restart, unless you block it.

[TrigrH]

6 minutes ago, porina said:

Nothing to do with mobo. Any consumer system with a supported CPU can get it. In case it wasn't clear, it is a runtime thing. It is loaded with the OS. No persisting hardware code is changed. Reboot and it is gone, but the OS reloads it next restart, unless you block it.

Do you mean the optional windows updates? which can be easily uninstalled from safe mode.

Something like this?: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-releases-new-windows-10-intel-cpu-microcode-updates/

[porina]

Just now, TrigrH said:

Do you mean the optional windows updates? which can be easily uninstalled from safe mode.

Something like this?: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-releases-new-windows-10-intel-cpu-microcode-updates/

In essence yes. In Spectre/Meltdown era I think they made it a manual optional download, but they had rolled it in with routine Windows Updates in the past. It is hard to keep track of and since I don't care about non-K OC since Skylake era, I don't know what the current situation is. Last I tried on a Z170 board with non-K bios installed, it wouldn't OC with recent versions of Windows. I just ran old Windows for benching, rather than try to hack newer Windows.

[RejZoR]

Only issue is that board is some top of the line super duper expensive one. Pairing it with budget CPU and hoping it'll clock well is a very bad investment. And since it's not reliable info on which boards have this feature guaranteed, it's far from ideal option. If 12400 could be paired with cheap mobo that has this feature, then it would be pretty awesome for gaming. Reminds me of days when I bought dirty cheap Core 2 Duo E5200 and overclocked it to 3,75 GHz on same board that as running E4300 few years earlier. I played Crysis on that thing and it was nice! That was also the only time I actually upgraded the CPU on same board.

[TrigrH]

10 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Only issue is that board is some top of the line super duper expensive one.
If 12400 could be paired with cheap mobo that has this feature, then it would be pretty awesome for gaming. 

[RejZoR]

3 hours ago, TrigrH said:

It's annoying that you have to dig them out this way. And what happens if ASUS has to one day remove this because Intel doesn't like it? You'll then have to be stuck with old BIOS that still has this which sucks ass.

[TrigrH]

4 hours ago, RejZoR said:

It's annoying that you have to dig them out this way. And what happens if ASUS has to one day remove this because Intel doesn't like it? You'll then have to be stuck with old BIOS that still has this which sucks ass.

I feel being stuck with an old bios is not that bad if you're saving a ton of money. I guess we will see how this shakes out.

[MageTank]

4 hours ago, TrigrH said:

I feel being stuck with an old bios is not that bad if you're saving a ton of money. I guess we will see how this shakes out.

It is extremely bad on DDR5 boards right now. DDR5 stability is god-awful and we are constantly getting BIOS updates to fix broken training. We know the boards and IMC's can do it because it can be done manually, but XMP is very hit or miss, especially if you involve 4 DIMM's. Locking yourself to an older BIOS means you'll likely be stuck running non-XMP or hoping you can understand DDR5 enough to manually OC it for some performance gains.

 

As someone that greatly enjoyed overclocking non-K Skylake CPU's, I like the idea of this. I am also hesitant to recommend someone buy a DDR5 board to do this knowing how bad training is across all of the board partners. For DDR4 boards, it is pretty much a non-issue.

[TrigrH]

7 hours ago, MageTank said:

It is extremely bad on DDR5 boards right now. DDR5 stability is god-awful and we are constantly getting BIOS updates to fix broken training. We know the boards and IMC's can do it because it can be done manually, but XMP is very hit or miss, especially if you involve 4 DIMM's. Locking yourself to an older BIOS means you'll likely be stuck running non-XMP or hoping you can understand DDR5 enough to manually OC it for some performance gains.

 

As someone that greatly enjoyed overclocking non-K Skylake CPU's, I like the idea of this. I am also hesitant to recommend someone buy a DDR5 board to do this knowing how bad training is across all of the board partners. For DDR4 boards, it is pretty much a non-issue.

If I can get a cheap B660 DDR4 board, i'm doing this. We all agree that the expensive boards (which use DDR5 anyway) make no sense running a 12400f.

[1van]

Why is everyone except der8auer silent regarding non-K OC? Shouldn't it be the hottest topic?

These guys have the boards, and DDR5 on their hands, and non-K CPUs are dirt cheap, what gives

But major tech channels are testing boring 6500XT instead, c'mon now

 

Btw someone on a certain Chinese forum mentioned B660-F Strix as one of the B660 boards supporting this. Does anyone here have it?

[porina]

1 hour ago, 1van said:

Why is everyone except der8auer silent regarding non-K OC? Shouldn't it be the hottest topic?

It's the most niche of niche topics. OC is pretty much pointless outside of people who have too much time to tinker. Non-K OC would be a small subsection of that.

 

1 hour ago, 1van said:

But major tech channels are testing boring 6500XT instead, c'mon now

Probably safe to say far more people will buy the 6500 XT than ever will non-K OC.

[1van]

16 minutes ago, porina said:

It's the most niche of niche topics.

It probably is, if one is a housewife.

 

But OC (especially non-K OC) is still interesting for many tech enthusiasts, who are supposed to be main audience of YT tech channels, or were supposed to be, as it turns out. Feels like it's wrong place to discuss this.

[AnonymousGuy]

On 1/18/2022 at 6:13 AM, MageTank said:

It is extremely bad on DDR5 boards right now. DDR5 stability is god-awful and we are constantly getting BIOS updates to fix broken training. We know the boards and IMC's can do it because it can be done manually, but XMP is very hit or miss, especially if you involve 4 DIMM's. Locking yourself to an older BIOS means you'll likely be stuck running non-XMP or hoping you can understand DDR5 enough to manually OC it for some performance gains.

 

As someone that greatly enjoyed overclocking non-K Skylake CPU's, I like the idea of this. I am also hesitant to recommend someone buy a DDR5 board to do this knowing how bad training is across all of the board partners. For DDR4 boards, it is pretty much a non-issue.

I thought it's only Asus boards having DDR5 problems and Gigabyte / MSI are fine?