Struggling to overclock i5-6400

[thekingofmonks]

I'm trying to overclock my i5-6400 on an Asus Z170M-Plus. I've tried different bclk values but to no avail.

 

Yes, the BIOS is already patched with microcode 74 to support non-K OCing.

The board is clearly a Z170 and can automatically OC up to 102.5MHz with Ai tuner but for some reason won't OC when it's set manually.

I've naturally set DRAM frequency to the low 2000s and used discrete graphics.

I've disabled speedstep and C-states. Core voltage brought up to 1.35V. Even forced VRM feed to max level.

I've tried 103, 105, 120, 140MHz... just to get nothing. No post whatsoever.

 

There are videos with 6400s capable of OCing up to 4.4GHz on YouTube. Do I just have a really shitty 6400 bin or am I doing something wrong??

[Gat Pelsinger]

Base clock overclocking is very unstable. Make sure absolutely anything non-essential is disconnected and disable XMP as well (just for testing, but not worth it in real scenario). It could be that you have a terrible bin. Honestly, it might not even be called as terrible, because you still only have a locked i5, which had enough binning to reach the clock speeds it can reach naturally. At least if it was an i9 or an unlocked i5, there could have been a great overclocking chance. It also depends a lot on your motherboard and how stable it is with higher base clocks.

 

I just looked up the specs and upon that, 4.4 GHz overclock is pretty insane not gonna lie. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 hour ago, Gat Pelsinger said:

Base clock overclocking is very unstable.

ancient and completely outdated info relevant for 2nd and 3rd gen maybe non k 4th gen and zen2/3 bclk to an extent

 

desktop 4th gen had bclk strap and bclk strap just ocs the cpu and rams, kinda reminiscent of the bclk/fsb oc era, and it is unlinked from everything else, this is how bclk works after 4th gen

 

the real bclk is usually marked as pcie frequency also kinda reminiscent of the bclk/fsb oc era, limited by either sata or pcie and judging by zen2/3 bclk lowering pcie link speed alongside not using specific sata ports can help for higher bclk atleast on zen2/3 but this is really only relevant for x3d oc

 

 

there wasnt any non k bclk strap oc on haswell since there wasnt a microcode bug that allowed it though there was one that allowed turbo unlock for all cores on nok k cpus (even 2011-3 xeons) alongside overclocking mobile i7 mq/hq

 

but for skylake there was a microcode bug that allowed non k chips to use bclk strap so you can run like 120-130bclk strap on a non k chip with a z board but later microcode locked it to <103

 

 

my suspicion here would be bios so try flashing a diff bios that still has the microcode bug, maybe look for a bclk bios by just searching up "z170m plus bclk bios"

 

if unavailable you can buy a ch341a and crossflash to whatever other asus z170 thats similar and has a bclk bios maybe something like the z170a, bios is socketed on your board located just above the front panel header and beside the chipset heatsink and no crossflashing poses no risk aside from temporarily bricking the board if you flash a bios that wont post which can be fixed by just reflashing the bios chip, also means that you wont ever have to worry about corrupted bios or bios updates as you are effectively immune to bricking your mobo since you can just reflash the bios to a working one and now it works again, and you can definitely flash to diff brands usually asrock or msi will boot on asus boards but good luck getting voltage controls or the bios settings to work properly so i wouldnt do that unless you just wanna toy around with your board which is definitely what i like to do with my boards *proceeds to flash a z77m bios onto an asus h61m-e*