ASRock Kaby Lake non k unlocker motherboards aplenty

[trents]

I thought Intel had pressured ASRock (and other manufacturers) to discontinue this practice back in the Sky Lake generation. But at least with ASRock it's back and back on a wider scale apparently:

https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/5nh4mf

I happen to have an ASRock Z270 board with this capability and a G4560 to try it on. I'll report back.

 

[EarthDog]

Yep, i recall hearing this several months ago. They did it with z170 too.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asrock-non-z170-bclk-overclocking-motherboards,31362.html

A good reminder!

 

[trents]

There were only two ASRock boards in the Z170 family that had this capability, an H and a B series class board with clock generators. They didn't sell well and were buggy as well. As far as I know they were the only x170 boards without a modded bios with the capability to overclock non K CPUs. But I could be wrong.

 

[EarthDog]

That link shows 6 b/h series (7 if you count c232).

The actual z170 stuff was before the microcode upgrade to lock it iirc????? It is all a bit fuzzy.

 

[trents]

Yes, you are right. Thanks for updating my information.

 

[trents]

Okay, I jumped the gun. Overclocking of non K CPUs is actually supported on only five Z270 boards. The dude who posted in the forum I linked gave information that was borderline misleading. My motherboard does not have the ability to overclock a non K CPU. It will only allow me to raise the bclk to a max of 102.7. So the "Full Range BCLK Overclocking" would only apply to unlocked CPUs unless the board also has "Hyper BCLK Engine II" in addition to "Full Range BCLK Overclocking."

 

[EarthDog]

5 from one manuf is 'a plenty' . Your mobo isnt listed of the 5 in the first post (the one in your sig)

I wonder if other boards with clockgens do it or if they are microcode locked down like the z170 was after the update...

 

[trents]

I would like to know that too. The post I linked is four months old. One thing I did find was that the bclk line in bios is entirely missing on at least the first two bios versions offered for my board. If I install the latest version there is a bclk adjustment but it will only let you go as high as 102.7. So it seems like something is going on there. Makes me wonder if I put in an unlocked chip if the bclk line would show up in the earlier bioses or if it would still be absent.

 

[wingman99]

So your saying for a meaningful overclock folks need a unlocked processor?

 

[trents]

So your saying for a meaningful overclock folks need a unlocked processor?

I'm leaning that way as I suspect the ability to overclock locked processors that some of these boards had in the beginning has been disarmed by more recent updates responding to pressure from Intel. Can't say that for sure as I don't have a board that has the "hyper" clock gen chip to test this but this is what happened with the Z170 boards that could overclock locked chips. If the z270 boards can still do that then the overclocking world has been strangely quiet about it.