What is base clocking?

[TheNewbiestONewbs]

I forgot where I heard it but what is base clocking. I have a z170 motherboard and an i5-6600. What does it do and could it help me.

[tarfeef101]

BCLK, or base clock, is half of what determines the frequency of your CPU and RAM. They each have that base clock and a multiplier. The multiplier times the BCLK determines the speed they run at. Since you have a CPU whose multiplier cannot be changed, some people change the BCLK to overclock their CPU. This used to be a bigger problem when it was used for more things, but on skylake you can manipulate it without really harming other components.

[neolinux]

I think it means the lowest CPU speed your laptop can have. Laptops today have turbo boost, they can jump their speed when needed but still at "base clock" most of the time.

[TheNewbiestONewbs]

2 minutes ago, tarfeef101 said:

BCLK, or base clock, is half of what determines the frequency of your CPU and RAM. They each have that base clock and a multiplier. The multiplier times the BCLK determines the speed they run at. Since you have a CPU whose multiplier cannot be changed, some people change the BCLK to overclock their CPU. This used to be a bigger problem when it was used for more things, but on skylake you can manipulate it without really harming other components.

How would you go about changing your BCLK?

[tarfeef101]

3 minutes ago, TheNewbiestONewbs said:

How would you go about changing your BCLK?

In your BIOS, there should be an area for "tweaking", "tuning", overclocking, or something similar. Here you should find this setting fairly easily. it is usually called BCLK, or sometimes the strap.

 

Here is an example of someone doing this:

 

 

[TheNewbiestONewbs]

1 minute ago, tarfeef101 said:

In your BIOS, there should be an area for "tweaking", "tuning", overclocking, or something similar. Here you should find this setting fairly easily. it is usually called BCLK, or sometimes the strap.

Thank you! This helps so much.

[tarfeef101]

2 minutes ago, TheNewbiestONewbs said:

Thank you! This helps so much.

My pleasure