Gigabyte GA-B85M-DS3H-A Overclocking Problem+ Naming

[Sawyer Blais]

So I just finished building a new rig my friend. Its got an i5-4690k and a Gigabyte GA-B85M-DS3H-A. Once we did some stress testing to make sure everything was working we started on an overclock. Now ive done overclock before on my FX-6300 and on a gigabyte board so I know a little bit about overclocking. I turned the turboboost off, put the multiplier to 42 set the voltage to 1.2 for a safe base setting. We boot up the computer and start up Battlefront to stress the CPU. I open CPU-Z and the clock speed is jumping around and it is only going up to about 3.8GHZ. So we went back into the BIOS and turned off all of the C states but to still to no avail. I also tried just setting everything to stock and setting the Turboboost multiplier higher but again with no success. The next logical step would be see if the BIOS needed an update, it doesn't.

But here is where my second question starts. There is another board called the GA-B85M-DS3H, note the missing A on the end. The two boards look identical and have the same specifications. Its most recent BIOS update is newer than the one for the A version and is about 2x bigger. A revision before that also says it has better K-sku performance.

Okay so now for the real questions.

What settings could I be missing that is preventing the overclock?

What does that A on the end of the name represent(ive looked everywhere with no success)?

And would it be safe to use the non A's newer BIOS to try on our board?

Thank you for helping out!!!

 

[DonkeyOatie]

The B85 chipset, unless using an old version of the BIOS from mid 2014, is locked and cannot be used for Multiplier/Voltage overclocking of a K chip. In simple terms that motherboard cannot overclock that chip. A Z97 board is needed. (or Z87). Intel has decided that unlocked chips need to be overclocked on Z boards, except for the 20th Anniversary Pentium G3258.

 

[Sawyer Blais]

The B85 chipset, unless using an old version of the BIOS from mid 2014, is locked and cannot be used for Multiplier/Voltage overclocking of a K chip. In simple terms that motherboard cannot overclock that chip. A Z97 board is needed. (or Z87). Intel has decided that unlocked chips need to be overclocked on Z boards, except for the 20th Anniversary Pentium G3258.

So this board only will overclock the G3258? That is actually retarded. No where in any description does it say that. It has the S3 in the name so that means it has overclocking abilities.

Is there anyways around that? Like with Easytune or some other OC program?

 

[TJ Hooker]

"It has the S3 in the name so that means it has overclocking abilities." Where did you hear that? For Intel mobos, overclocking support is denoted by a chipset with a "Z" prefix, e.g. Z170.

 

[DonkeyOatie]

As was said Intel names boards suitable for overclocking with the Z prefix. S3 isn't overclocking specific for AMD either. With AMD almost all boards can overclock, although I would not do it on many. There is no way around it unless you have or can find the old BIOS which allowed you to tweak a little before Intel pulled the plug.

 

[Sawyer Blais]

"It has the S3 in the name so that means it has overclocking abilities." Where did you hear that? For Intel mobos, overclocking support is denoted by a chipset with a "Z" prefix, e.g. Z170.

On gigabytes website it has the naming meanings for the mother boards. The S3 means it has overclocking unlocked.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Could you provide a link to the Gigabyte page that says that?
I found a few pages (non of which seem to be affiliated with gigabyte) that do say that S3 indicates "over clocking features". E.g. http://www.zedt.eu/tech/gigabyte-motherboards-model-naming-scheme/
But they're not official, and it's kind of vague as far as what those features are. I mean, that mobo does support XMP, which is technically an over clocking technology, so that board sort of has " over clocking feature(s)".

 

[Sawyer Blais]

Could you provide a link to the Gigabyte page that says that?
I found a few pages (non of which seem to be affiliated with gigabyte) that do say that S3 indicates "over clocking features". E.g. http://www.zedt.eu/tech/gigabyte-motherboards-model-naming-scheme/
But they're not official, and it's kind of vague as far as what those features are. I mean, that mobo does support XMP, which is technically an over clocking technology, so that board sort of has " over clocking feature(s)".

Ok you got me there. Gigabyte doesn't really have it on their website but I had found many links like the one you found. Even so that site you found lists the S3 label as overclocking features. Also to clarify none of the OC settings where locked. I could change them but it wouldn't make a difference once we got into Windows.

It is all on intels side. They used to allow OC on those chips with the B chipset but once they released the G3258 they stop OC on everyother chip than that one. Which I didn't know because even on Newegg in the Answers section people were saying it could OC the i5, those were even from just back in August and September.

Either way it looks like to OC we are gonna have to get a new MOBO.