A few of the older overclockers will recall the times when the largest positive factors available had been by overclocking a processor’s “FSB”, or “Entrance Aspect Bus”. FSB overclocks have not died, precisely, they’re simply not known as that anymore as a result of we do not have FSBs anymore. On trendy programs, there is a “base clock” (usually shortened to “BCLK”) from which all different clock charges on the motherboard are derived. This base clock is nearly at all times nominally 100 MHz, as that gives a pleasant spherical quantity for multipliers to work from.
Significant overclocking utilizing the bottom clock is nearly inconceivable, although, as a result of units like SATA controllers, USB controllers, and PCIe playing cards actually don’t love being overclocked. Most boards will not tolerate being extra than simply a few MHz out of spec earlier than parts begin giving up the ghost. An additional 100 Mhz of CPU clock is not sufficient to warrant making your system flakey, so usually, folks do not hassle with BCLK overclocking anymore.
There are exceptions to this, although. Some motherboards come outfitted with further clock mills for particular parts to be able to overclock your “BCLK” with out affecting the clock charges for different parts. This has the benefit of permitting you to overclock processors which might be, in principle, locked from overclocking.
We have already seen this finished to implausible impact with current-generation Alder Lake processors; champion overclocker Der8auer took a Core i5-12400 as much as 5.2 GHz all-core—the identical clock price that the Core i9-12900K hits on a single core. That is, clearly, a daft worth by way of price-vs-performance, however there is a catch: he was utilizing an expensive ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Apex motherboard.
Certainly, there actually is not a scarcity of motherboards that embody these capabilities, however they’re overwhelmingly components that occupy the upper worth tiers. That makes BCLK overclocking extra of a novelty, as these boards are more likely to be paired with high-end “Okay”-series processors which might be unlocked for overclocking—and so quick that they do not actually need it, anyway.
Nicely, there’s trigger for celebration primarily based on Twitter consumer chi11eddog’s (@g01d3nm4ng0) newest leak. The tweet reveals the small print of an upcoming MSI motherboard purportedly to be named “MAG B660M Mortar MAX WIFI DDR4”. That is an Intel LGA 1700 motherboard for Alder Lake (and presumably Raptor Lake) CPUs that sports activities a low-cost B660 chipset, DDR4 reminiscence assist, and Wi-Fi 6E—in addition to an built-in clock generator for BCLK overclocking.
This motherboard is definitely a revised model of the MAG B660M Mortar WIFI DDR4 (be aware the dearth of “MAX”). Except for the OC Engine characteristic, it additionally consists of PCIe 5.0 assist for the principle graphics card slot, 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI 2.1 for the CPU’s built-in graphics. All in all it appears like fairly a high-quality motherboard. We do not understand how a lot it will will run, nevertheless it’s certain to be cheaper than the high-end Z690 fashions that you’d have had to purchase to get BCLK overclocking assist. Chi11eddog says the board shall be obtainable in July.
