Asrock Quietly Brings Back Non-Z170 Non-K CPU Overclocking Motherboards

[IInuyasha74]

Asrock secretly launched its C232 BCLK overclocking motherboard and unveiled a new series of non-Z170 boards designed to overclock non-K CPUs.

Asrock Quietly Brings Back Non-Z170 Non-K CPU Overclocking Motherboards : Read more

 

[heliomphalodon]

"It should also be noted that this board does not have any video output connections, as most Xeon CPUs do not feature an iGPU. Having a few video outputs might have been nice for other CPUs that do contain an iGPU, but as this is clearly an enthusiast-oriented product, it is unlikely that the iGPU would have seen much use anyways."
IMHO the decision to forego video outputs is a mistake. There are of course Skylake Xeons that have on-chip graphics, and even in an enthusiast board the iGPU can be useful for diagnostics. Also (to use myself as an example) one might be building out a system incrementally, starting with the integrated graphics and only later (after saving one's pennies to purchase a top-of-the-line add-in card) implementing the final configuration.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Yea I always liked having the iGPU available as a backup if my primary GPU starts having problems.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Interesting. I would still be very wary of overclocking this way with my personal computer since it's brand new and there are most likely going to be unexpected issues with it.

 

[logainofhades]

Wonder how long this will last? This on, then off, then on again, with the overclocking is getting old, and a bit confusing.

 

[damric]

ASRock never really took away the SKY OC function. It was only ever available as beta BIOS to begin with, and customers certainly were never forced to update from that BIOS to an official BIOS that disables non-K OC. The clock generator is redundant, but allows non-K overclock with official BIOSes. The real gem for overclockers here is the new C232 board. Thank you ASRock!

 

[logainofhades]

Asrock didn't really remove it. I guess you could say Intel did with their microcode update to kill that one bug skylake had.

 

[Jameson Burt]

I always buy motherboards with two USB 3.0 headers (four USB 3.0 ports on computer's front).

On a Z170 AsRock motherboard I bought last year, I couldn't install Linux,
finding that I needed to ignore the four AsMedia SATA ports,
and use only the six Intel SATA ports (for my boot, anyway).
Shocked, I stopped buying *170 motherboards with over six SATA ports.
I haven't seen those extra four mischievious SATA ports on Z170 Asus motherboards.

Because I don't use testing versions of Debian Linux,
etiher Z170 or H170 motherboards' Realtek ALC 1150 audio doesn't get used (without compiling my own alsa audio or going to Debian's testing distribution). To avoid future such problems and recompilations on future replacement motherboards, I purchased an already supported USB audio adapter.

Needless to say, in Linux, I must solve enough problems with new motherboards that I don't bother overclocking. I could probably get around these problems by using testing Debian Linux or Ubuntu Linux. "New" (motherboards) means latest, means drivers not necessarily incorporated in current Linux distributions.

 

[mamasan2000]

Intel blocking progress as always. I wonder why a whole system gets unstable if you play with BCLK. Maybe built like it on purpose? Bottomline boys, bottomline.
Do what Intel says or you don't get to sell their junk.

 

[Redneck5439]

It will be interesting to see what Intel decides to do about overclocking on the non "K" chips. Intel sells their i5 6600K and i7 6700K at a premium cost because you are able to overclock them. Who will buy a i5 6600K if you can buy the 6400 cheaper and overclock it to the same extent you can overclock the 6600K? I can foresee Intel either raising the price of the non "K" chips or in future non "K" chips using poorly binned silicon (just good enough for stability on stock clocks but not capable of being pushed more than 100Mhz at best), or possibly finding another way to "lock" their processors. If this starts to effect the sales of their more expensive "K" series you know they will respond somehow.

 

[IInuyasha74]

It will be interesting to see what Intel decides to do about overclocking on the non "K" chips. Intel sells their i5 6600K and i7 6700K at a premium cost because you are able to overclock them. Who will buy a i5 6600K if you can buy the 6400 cheaper and overclock it to the same extent you can overclock the 6600K? I can foresee Intel either raising the price of the non "K" chips or in future non "K" chips using poorly binned silicon (just good enough for stability on stock clocks but not capable of being pushed more than 100Mhz at best), or possibly finding another way to "lock" their processors. If this starts to effect the sales of their more expensive "K" series you know they will respond somehow.

I'd say it is likely they will do something, but I don't think they will turn to using lower-quality silicon chips. That will lead to more RMAs, and if the overall silicon quality is too high, it will result in them pushing out too many CPUs as K processors, and not enough non-K chips, causing supply issues. I suppose they have that now, but once AMD's Zen gets here, no matter how it performs, they aren't going to want any type of supply issue that might give AMD an advantage.

 

[sharksfin]

The 4 rightmost models in the chart says "4 x DDR4 2133 MHz". Does this mean that 2400 and higher are not supported?

 

[IInuyasha74]

The 4 rightmost models in the chart says "4 x DDR4 2133 MHz". Does this mean that 2400 and higher are not supported?

That is correct, it does not have official support from Intel or Asrock for DDR4 RAM clocked above 2133 MHz.

 

[logainofhades]

They all claim to have DDR4 non z OC capability. The also have ram over 2133, in their compatibility listings. If you want to use ram, faster than 2133, it is probably a good idea to stick to the list.