Skylake base clock overclocking on non-K CPUs ????

Titan

Golden Member
Oct 15, 1999
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Hi AT,

I'll get right to it. I am upset and surprised to find after googling, that the new base-clock overclocking that is touted on the new Skylake CPUs does not appear to be available on the non-K SKUs. To me historically, base-clock overclocking means you are stuck with a fixed CPU multiplier, and you increase the base clock to get your final speed, while trying not to overclock the RAM too much because it is delicate.

Did AT fail to report this detail? Seems a bit misleading when Intel is telling us BCLK overclocking is back.

I also hear there is a rumor that certain motherboards override this, but it is not confirmed or clear which boards.

Has anyone tried to adjust their base clock on a non-K CPU? Please tell me I am wrong.
 
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Hugo Drax

Diamond Member
Nov 20, 2011
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If you were interested in overclocking why would you buy a non K cpu. The price difference is not that much.
 

PG

Diamond Member
Oct 25, 1999
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I saw one report of a person getting an i3 to 120 blck on a supermicro motherboard.
Is this something others can repeat or was it some sort of quirk? I'm not sure. Time will tell.
 

Flapdrol1337

Golden Member
May 21, 2014
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If you were interested in overclocking why would you buy a non K cpu. The price difference is not that much.

If all of them would overclock you could get a 6400, which is 25% cheaper and comes with a cooler.

But only the K's have the feature that enables baseclock overclocking.
 

zir_blazer

Golden Member
Jun 6, 2013
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Timeline:

* Intel announced that Skylake could be overclocked via Base Clock since it now has two separated Clock Generators instead of only one for everything.
* Skylake launched with the K Series models first. Everything working as intended.
* When the rest of the non-K lineup started to unveil, someone reported that non-K Skylakes couldn't be effectively overclocked via Base Clock at all since they use again one Clock Generator, and everything depends on it.
* Recently, a guy managed to make a mod involving a Supermicro H170 Motherboard and could overclock a non-K Core i3 via Base Clock successfully.


Also, the Base Clock overclock isn't clear enough. We know that you can happily overclock via Base Clock a K Processor on a Z Motherboard with no issues. But, what is the standard behavior with a non-K Processor? You can overclock the Base Clock, until you hit very early a point where it BSODs or is unstable, because you're overclocking the PCIe Bus and SATA Controller, like on Haswell? Or you simply can't touch the Base Clock at all?
 

zir_blazer

Golden Member
Jun 6, 2013
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Basically, the Motherboard just supports overclocking the Base Clock, no modding involving? Amazing. We have to see how much it last considering what Intel did with non-Z overclocking on Haswell, and the microcode fiasco of the Pentium G3258 Anniversary Edition.

What Supermicro wasn't interesed to do two years ago, is adding a wider range of tweaking options to their Workstation line. My X10SAT is simply boring at that, is like an OEM Motherboard, you can't touch anything. I would love to get a C-Series Chipset, ECC capable Motherboard with Multiplier and Voltage controls so I can decide what I want my Processor and RAM to run at (Specifically for undervolting purposes). And in Skylake generation, you also require it for running Xeons E3 V5. I would be very happy if my dream of overclocking these became true.
 
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Titan

Golden Member
Oct 15, 1999
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So I dunno if it was partly in response to this thread but this came in. For those that didn't see already.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9848/bclk-overclocking-intels-non-k-skylake-processors-coming-soon

ASRock explains better here

http://www.asrock.com/news/index.asp?id=3132

I have a simple ASRock Gaming K4. Got it on newegg for 129 bucks, plus 20 rebate. They are like 109 now.

A couple things. It has to be a Z170 board. H170 will not do.

You have to get the BETA BIOS. The 2.23 on my board will do it. 2.20 will not. They are not on the regular bios page.
You might have to manually disable Turbo boost, I did.

So you can't have turbo boots, IGP, speedstep or C-states. But you can overclock baseclock.

I got an i3-6100 3.7ghz. Crazy how higher the stock speeds are than the i5s. With a modest overvolt (running at 1.35v) I am rock solid at 4.44ghz. I was fine at 4.6 but it couldn't quite handle full load. I could be stable at 4.5ish bit I went to a 120 bclck to sync my 3200 DDR4 ram to the exact speed. There are maybe 8 divider choices. I have a lot of fans and an arctic freezer 7, and at max load I get 53C (22 ambient). At 4.6ghz I was around 63C but more voltage of course.

I like that my single-threaded performance is faster than anything you can buy stock. I like that I didn't have to buy the CPU Intel said I had to buy in order to overclock.

In hindsight, I should have gotten an i5 6400. I just didn't know that base clock could reach 160. Still, I doubt that all i5s can reach 4.4ghz, even though 14nm seems really good and consistent from what I hear.

This is a beta bios from ASRock and I told them I would still like speedstep. I don't see why the multiplier can't drop down on idle for a non-K cpu. Without it, I have to be more concerned about cooling and power consumption.

I think Intel should not try to prevent this. I hope all the board makers get in on it. It seems Intel's recent marketing strategy (to not completely ignore AMD) is to appeal to the OC community even though they want to do the tablet thing too. With Devil's Canyon, and then starting Skylake with K CPUs that are now impossible to find, the ability to overclock a non-K cpu helps their image even if it does hurt their pocket book in theory. I think it will help increase sales in a world where CPUs are not getting that much faster. And if we can't get speedstep, that gives us reasons to still want K CPUs. It's fun for everyone if we can all OC Skylake, while not having to get a 200W cpu monstrosity ala AMD.
 

Burpo

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2013
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Not gonna "hurs their pocketbook"..You'll soon see an H-170 board will do just fine.. Intel's not gonna prevent sh*t.. People that think otherwise aren't too swift.. Sales are Sales..
 
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wabbitslayer

Senior member
Dec 2, 2012
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So I dunno if it was partly in response to this thread but this came in. For those that didn't see already.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9848/bclk-overclocking-intels-non-k-skylake-processors-coming-soon

ASRock explains better here

http://www.asrock.com/news/index.asp?id=3132

I have a simple ASRock Gaming K4. Got it on newegg for 129 bucks, plus 20 rebate. They are like 109 now.

A couple things. It has to be a Z170 board. H170 will not do.

You have to get the BETA BIOS. The 2.23 on my board will do it. 2.20 will not. They are not on the regular bios page.
You might have to manually disable Turbo boost, I did.

So you can't have turbo boots, IGP, speedstep or C-states. But you can overclock baseclock.


This.

So much other misinformation in this thread.



Bottom line, IMHO: if you can afford an i5 or i7, get the "K" version. If you can't, you might be able to get more out of an i3 than normal, IF you have a z170 mobo and a BIOS that will support it.
 

tornadog

Golden Member
Aug 6, 2003
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I am so disappointed. My i5 6500 would not stay even with a 1 Mhz increase in bclk. Keep getting the message that overclocking failed. Looks like the board does not really support overclocking despite the new bios :(
 

Magic Carpet

Diamond Member
Oct 2, 2011
3,477
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I am so disappointed. My i5 6500 would not stay even with a 1 Mhz increase in bclk. Keep getting the message that overclocking failed. Looks like the board does not really support overclocking despite the new bios :(
I suspect, MSI is still fixing that board. Give it time, they will sort it out eventually.