Man this takes me way back to my very first builds in high school when overclocking was primarily done this way, adjusting the base clocks instead of the multiplier. And there was a LOT of headroom to be gained. My first real build was a socket A mobile chip in a desktop that I got something like an 80% overclock on, with a $15 basically stock-replacement cooler. So many nights spent endlessly booting, adjusting frequency/timing/whatever by 1 unit at time, and running 3Dmark 2001 and 03 searching for every last frame.
@@creed5248 I remember FSB overclocking. I allowed to to play Gothic 3 on my very old computer at the time. It's just that it was risky, since it increased clocks on everything. But with my Athlon XP 2200+ I did and was scared as heck (AFAIK it only worked "safely" for 33 MHz steps on FSB rail, since at least some things just dropped their multipliers by themselves). But managed to push it past above 2.1 or 2.2 GHz. At least from memory. Now I don't remember if it was FSB or PCI rail.......... damn. I'm old and it was a long time ago. You had to be very careful with installing the cooler - since it had no IHS. So basically direct to die cooling ;)
Very interesting. I do have one question: you use CL14 RAM but that's super-premium memory so I wonder how performance would change with more budget CL 18 RAM? After all, someone at the budget end isn't going to be buying that CL14 RAM. 16 GB DDR4-3600-C18 RAM is £65 on OCUK but DDR4-3600-C14 isn't even listed at any capacity and the cheapest fast C14 kit is DD4-3200 at £190 for 32 GB (and not actually in stock).
the rated speed of a memory set does not determine the ACTUAL speed memory can achieve. You can likely buy a C16 set and provided you didn't get unlucky, run it at C14.
I bought a "cheap" kit of 32gb (2x 16) cl18 3600mhz memory. With a bump to voltage I ran the same xmp timings at 4000mhz. However, tightening the timings below cl18 even at 3600 with the extra voltage was unstable. Some memory prefers higher clock vs tighter timing as far as stability goes.
@@solocamo3654 Yes indeed, but I have in the back of my mind that one of the better-known Techtubers did a test of different CAS latencies and it made a difference. Thus I wonder about the suitability of the testing to the target viewer.
Got my 12100F at 5.33Ghz core, 4.8 cache, 6500 Cl30. It's such a little monster 😂 The issue with the Strix B660-F/G wasn't so much the cost of the board but the cost of the DDR5 they needed on top of that. I got lucky and picked up 2x8gb OEM DDR5. The B660-F and i3 12100F just took a little waiting to catch a good deal.
That honestly seems like a really poorly designed system if we are talking about price:performance:stability. Could you not have gone 12600k and ddr4 for roughly the same price? I ask because at memory express here in CAD, you certainly could and spend about the same when looking at middle of the road ddr4 vs middle of road ddr5/the board to carry the ddr5.
Not really at the time no. The board, CPU and ram were about £400 all in. It was built 50/50 for benching and gaming. For a while there the 12100F was taking 4 core global records on HWbot. The 12600k was around another £140 but I do plan to keep this rig alive by upgrading with used parts as the prices fall. Stability wise it's taken some tuning but it's solid. Tl;dr It's an enthusiast build for I...am an enthusiast 😉
@@b-rant It's all just dependent on the needs of a specific user. For instance, my needs are completely opposite from both yours and @Matt4ck. Both 12600k+DDR4 and 12100F+DDR5 are pointless combinations for me. but ~5.3-5.4GHz 12400/F + non-Tuned DDR4 instead.
@@Dogzilla07 Based on the info i can find, your setup would be roughly the fastest of the 3 for the least money from a pure gaming standpoint. That's also another hefty OC for sure.
I wasnt on a overclockable chipset but I remember doing a FSB jumper mod to push 800 MHz to 1066 MHz and that basically gave a free 33% overclock to the core clocks too. Ny E2180 went from 2 GHz to 2.66GHz just like that. With some BCLK overclocking, I could get to about 2.8 GHz but with no Vcore non-adjustable, that was my limit. Those were good times thinking back
I remember i had an e6300 which i bought in my very budget limited build its stock clock was 1.86ghz , i managed to push it to 3ghz on a giagbyte mobo with a copper chipset heatsink and a zalman cooler, it was a beast!
If the motherboards end up being more premium anyway, would this really be a good alternative to just buying a b660 motherboard & a 12700k? The price difference between it and the 12700 is only around $30, but I'd imagine the PCIE5 variants of B660 boards would be a bigger step up in price overall. Maybe for the 12400 where there is no K SKU it might be viable, but if you buy that are you really trying to crank the CPU frequency all the way up?
The armchair experts in this chat clearly don't know that locked Intel processors have a locked System Agent ("VCCSA") voltage, which means that you cannot run a good RAM overclock on them. Why is that important? Because doing that results in achieving very healthy +10-20% Low FPS numbers, as well as potentially massive increases in Minimum FPS (stutters-b-gone). The 12600k(f) is the sweetspot of this lineup for this reason, the e-cores aren't even bad if you manage them with Process Lasso and know to increase the E-Core L2 voltage when going up in Ring frequency. (On my 12700k, the difference is a max of 4.8 ring with e-cores off, and 4.5 with e-cores on, not a big deal)
@@nostrum6410 that's the point - the video presents itself as if it was budget free performance, yet fails to address extra cooling costs which obviously add quite a bit to the cost.. And even with AiO 5.1GHz will be 90'C. So with like +$100 on cooling solution and at least +$50 on the motherboard, because don't expect this one to sell at the price of regular Mortar - you can quickly end up a the cost of R7 5800X3D
Increasing voltage is nonsense.. Users should leave voltage intact. You'll get ~4.9Ghz instead of ~5.1, but power consumtion and temps will be drastically lower..
The best part is that you have full control. You can pick the voltage that suits you and run the highest frequency that voltage allows, which means you can tune for efficiency or pure speed
I feel like i'll never get as much mileage out of a CPU as i did my Core 2 Duo E7500 overclocked to 3.6GHz. Had that gloriousness running for a decade.
now this explains why Intel heavily locked down my 12100, I can't even undervolt it on ASUS B660 mobo.😩 I was not able to return the board because I badly needed the system back then
Kudos to msi on this one. I have to say msi are by far my favourite brand motherboard because of things like this! I have a z490 tomahawk and recently found out that this board up/side graded to 11th gen cpu has gen 4 support for nvme drives, as they spent the extra money making it compatible when many other brands simply did not bother.
I'll never forget when MSI released the X370 Titanium board and charged $350 for it. Then it came out they used the exact same VRM setup on their entry level $60 boards... MSI is garbage. Just was the Gamers Nexus video on their shady business practices.
MSI is the worst mobo manufacturer in my opinion. Their software is shit, the VRMs on my X570 A-PRO have the worst temps of any other X570 and is aesthetically is so ugly, also their BIOS software is a mess of submenus with repeating items. On the other hand i got an ASUS B460 R2.0 for $60 and has a H470 chipset, 11th gen compatibility and PCI-GEN4 with memory oc support
It's funny how peoples' experiences vary. I used ASUS boards for a long time, back in the P55/X79 days (well over a dozen boards), but got annoyed with them later for various reasons. I'd avoided MSI since forever as reviews put me off. With Ryzen though, skipping the 300 series, I decided to give them a go and I was impressed, buying the Mortar Max, Tomahawk Max/II and more recently a Z490 to pair with a 10400. As for GN's video, that was just daft. Gamers are completely divorced from reality when amid a demand-driven market they insist on unchanging retail pricing while at the same time complain about black markets ("scalpers", a silly word as it implies buyers have no agency). It's stupid, such a notion is simply not possible, one can't have both low pricing and no black market when demand vastly outstrips supply, especially when induced by massive levels of state interference and free stuff. Raising retail prices is the logical and sensible response to demand spikes, because that's how to prevent grey/black markets, but people don't understand the basics of supply/demand. Funny though, the same people are then all too happy when the balancing side of the supply equation comes along and prices drop like a stone; it's two sides of the same coin. libertarianinstitute.org/articles/why-price-gouging-actually-helps-during-a-crisis/
Is there any data on the temp increase? In the end of the day, we want to know how much more we should spend in total including the motherboard and cooler price difference. If the total is >$100 more than basic b660 + intel stock cooler, then people should spend a bit more to buy 12700 with no overclock instead of 12400 with overclock mobo + pricey cooler.
@@TKIvanov why? if you actually watch benchmarks youd know its stock cooler is more than enough for i3 12100 and 12400, intel actually has greatly improved the stock cooler for 12th gen.
@@maschinen181 Stock cooler will not be enough, Hardware Unboxed showed a 150W increase on top of stock 70W for 12400F. So total 220W. Stock intel cooler is only good for ~80W sustained
hey Steve, I know very specific question but did you have any trouble enabling XMP on the MSI Pro B660M A Wifi? I got it recently based on your excellent b600 roundup and paired with a 12400f. However the uefi does not work if I change any setting including enabling XMP. Updated to most recent non beta bios but no joy. I'm using a corsair vengeance kit which I didn't check if it was on QVL list but kind of presumed XMP would just work.. Have seen some threads suggesting it's because Intel has locked voltage of the memory controller on non-K SKUs of 12th gen, so even XMP is a stretch too far
It's really great to see how we come back to old school overclocking with significant performance gain. Though with the energy crisis we have today, those 100+ watts increase will definitely take a toll on the monthly bill, considering it's mostly those budget consumers who will have a real interest in this. I don't think overclocking is a viable option nowadays for budget consumers.
I'll give Apple this: their push for untouchable levels of efficiency, even if it means mid-grade performance, is something we need right now. Here's hoping we keep getting pressure in that direction.
Actually that power consumption was in blender which is an all core workload. Games are much less power hungry and I'm pretty sure power consumption will be a lot lower.
I was surprised that Intel was okay making a 7350K dual core and 8350K/9350K quad core i3 CPUs. But when the 10 series showed up, i would’ve loved to see an unlocked 10350K, but from a business perspective, it would probably have cannibalized the 1x400 i5 sales if they did that.
Correct me if im worng but i did the math of difference in percantage betwwen the 12400 OC 5.1GHZ vs 12700 stock and i got 12400 OC is faster by 1 % than the stock 12700 .
12400 is the sweetspot. I watch this processor since it has hit the market. I think that it is the go to option with this board for gamers on a budget.
@@eye776 Why would you pair anything with a RTX 3050? £300 for a 1660, Non Ti/Super just get a 2060, 1660s or 1070 or something like £100 less and the same performance. Unless in your area the 3050 is £200 ($250)
@@eye776 No you will see minor increases, yeah its like 1% or so, but still its there if you can do it, but yeah my point was dont buy a 3050 they are shit
Finally, some good old overclocking content from HUB. Some 12600K overclocking content would be cool to see as well. It's not as close to the limit as the 12900k, it might just be worth bothering.
@@ItsJustVV The ST Cinebench R20 is insignificant compared to the core count and 1% lows the Core i9-9900K gets while gaming, same story happens for the i7-10700K SPECIALLY on Cyberpunk 2077 and Battlefield 2042. 8 cores rule over 6 for massive games like those two.
Im glad I cheaped out on my i5 12400F by pairing it with an H610 board and 3200 CL16 memory. Definitely getting this board when it releases and faster ram.
Well, the elephant in the room was the massive powerconsumption. Not that it will be for sale in 2 or 3 months. Especially now in Summer. Do you really want to sit with a Budget-system that consumes 400 Watts of Power in most likely a small room with nil Ventilation? At that point you will have 30+ degrees in your room. Yeah, have fun with that...
It would be interesting to see a performance / power use trade off curve for the i3-2100F and i5-1200F. As tested the power usage seems way too high, even on the i3, but if you could trade some of the performance by setting to 5.0Ghz / 4.9Ghz, and optimise the power draw while maintaining stability, what kind of power usage might we be able to get too?
That would be great video to watch. Hope Steve or steve(GN) get on that fast. 4.9/4.8 with few % power consumption would be great for a mid range gaming/emulation beast
Who knows. I'm running my 12100f with -0,2V offset. 18W while gaming and and Vcore goes max to 0.93V. It's really efficient. So maybe even on stock voltage you can get to 4,5-4,6Ghz.
If the board retains this feature with 13th gen BIOS updates this will be THE board to get for Raptor Lake. This would be an excellent way to take the wind out of Zen4's sails. That would be a good reason for Intel to let this slide.
If Raptor Lake has non e-core variants, I'd like to see one of those on this! Another point. Look at the reserve of performance Intel is sitting on, if Zen 4 ends up being powerful, I think Intel has some tricks up their sleeve to use. Intel probably had something to do with not having external clock generators on board, and only allowing them on super expensive boards...and waiting to allow it on a cheaper board, it would make sense, just a guess.
Actually, It might not be the same silicon. 12600/12500 use the H0 die only, 12400s can be either C0/H0, there's a performance uplift theoretically from the smaller ringbus but its yet to be seen if it makes a difference in the real world
...primary reason why Intel hasn't got any of my money over the last 4/5 years, they prevent overclocking on the locked chips. If you're build a PC from scratch, it's nice to be able to "play" with it. This is an interesting video, kudos to Debauer and yourselves
lol You weren't missed i promise you. AMD prevents it on UNLOCKED chips. Since - Zen. Don't let that X fool you. You can only undervolt and hope for 200MHz OC. A FAR cry from 500MHz+ OC's above boost clocks on Intel platforms at the time.
But hasn't Intel in recent years usually blocked these types of options after they become popular? So is there any quarantee this also works in the future. I can still remember overclocking a cheap Celeron 300A to 450 MHz by increasing base clock (and thus also memory speed) from 66 MHz to 100 MHz. Gone are the days...
Yeah, they usually even try to prevent people from running Windows with old BIOS versions that have unofficial OC features. I hope HUB makes another video if that happens again.
Intel announced BCLK overclocking during the Alder Lake preview event. It was a feature they have pointed out. Asus has done BLCK overclocking boards for 6 months now with no issues from Intel. The only drama there was is that when journalists questioned Intel about BCLK OC, Intel warned them that overclocking voids their warranty (as it does on AMD and Nvidia too). So its here to stay and Intel implemented it for board manufacturers to use.
Good on MSI to actually provide a sample to someone with enthusiasm towards the product! EDIT: also, the 12100F was already a great value option without this overclock 😆 holy shit, up to 40% faster in certain conditions is pretty awesome.
@@dariosucevac7623 We still don't know the price, but I expect like 50$ difference between those. 12400 is like 70$ more expensive so it evens out. 12400 is way better than OC 12100, and you don't have to deal with OC at all which is a huge plus aswell.
HW told it might be $10 more than the basic mortar so we will see, I am planning to buy the 12400f + 6600 or 6600xt with the new mortar max for the best value this summer. I hope the prices will plummet even more by then. 😋
The real issue here is 13400f vs 12400f overclocked. 12400f will have dropped in price to like $130. Also we won't know when or if they will have cheap overclocking for 13th gen series.
I hope you monitor BIOS versions for this board in case Intel forces them to remove this feature and blocks Windows from booting with old BIOS versions again. Might happen in a couple months, I hope it no longer happens.
its still a hard sell, lets say in a perfect world this mobo will cost 170€. So 12400 combo will go for about 360€ and if you go with bog standard 12700 combo with cheaper b560 mobo which goes for around 100€ it will go for around 430€. Now im not sure why HWU didnt show temperatures but oced 12400 is going to be a hot boy while 12700 will be relatively easy to cool, so lets calc cooling combo on top of that, 12700 should easily go by with something like 39€ freezer 34 air cooler and 12400 system will need a hefty cooler, something like nhd15 should suffice, which goes for around 100€ So lets calculate it again: 12400(190€) + mobo (170€) + nhd15(100€) = 460€ for that plaftorm 12700(335€) + mobo (100€) + freezer 34 esports (39€) = 474€ for that platform So not only you wont need to do anything with i7 system just plug and play, but also it still slightly faster in games and much faster in everything else, idk but i7 system is clear choice imo. Now with i3 part its debatable, some people might say that you gain very similar gaming perf compared to i5 or i7 which is true, more or less, but if you can afford mobo 170€ + i3 12100 126€ + mid range air cooler 60€ = 360€ combo i really dont think that adding 100€ would be terrible idea, its just going to be better system with much less hassle, but i could understand if anyone would be interested going with 12100 OC route, i cant argue with that.
12100 OC doesn't make ANY sense. You buy 12400 for like 100$ more. And 12400 is cold enough for 30$ cooler. Even with 12400 OC doesn't make sense. Yes, you pay 100$ more for 12700, but you also get more capable CPU. Realistically, for games 12400 stock is more than enough.
@@dat_21 whoever needs fast single core speed but not many cores and threads oc'd 12100 might make sense, for example csgo or valorant players could go for that setup, but i think its mostly edge case scenarios, but in general these oc'd solutions just doesnt make much sense, not to mention that you cant even get this mobo, so its all hypothetical at this point. If anyone wants to get alderlake now, dont waste your time get cheap b560 mobo and then go with your preferred cpu either 12100(f)/12400(f) or12700(f).
it's not a practical solution for the majority. its more for people that like to play around with hardware, or are really cheap. anyone that follows tech for any real length of time would avoid this and just buy the faster SKU.
well....ASrock release a BCLK B660M motherboard with 15-Phase VRM here in Malaysia. Asrock B660M Riptide and it uses DDR4. Would be interesting if Asrock decided to release the motherboard to Global though. The price? 140 usd (Converted from MYR). Goldfries did a review on this board as well.
Thanks for the great work Steve. Can you test non-K CPUs memory speed limits. With the locked Vccsa, wanted to know just how limited we are on frequency for DDR4? In Gear 1, 1T
The pricing just makes zero sense on this mobo. The 13600k + cheaper board is only like 10% more expensive than 12400f + Mortar Max. I know which one I'm picking.
My Core i7 2600 (non-K) 3.4 GHz (3.8 with Turbo enabled) can be slightly overclocked (up to 4.2 GHz with Turbo enabled). The caveat is that you need at least medium-level VRM, PSU, and cooling to keep the system stable.
No, the only DDR4 motherboards that have this feature are the MSI B660M Mortar Max and the ASrock B660M PG Riptide, both of them are only available on Taiwan
INB4 Intel does some lawsuit about this... But JFC these gains are MASSIVE for budget CPU's! Damn I miss CPU overclocking, this R5 3600 is just slap PBO+AutoOC on...
It brings back memories with my i5 6400. I did a 178 MHz BCLK OC and at 1.375V, i got a 4.8 GHz clock speed and ran under 80C on a common air cooler. (In case no one believe me, I have video proof of it on my channel)
Awesome stuff. On my riptide b760m (one of the cheapest b760/b660 boards that supported DDR5 and since it came down in price I figured I might as well) I got my 12400 to 4.7 on a NH-U9. I could handle 4.8 without my GPU and CPU BOTH maxed but left it at 4.7 for safety. If I get a better cooler this chip was able to handle 5+ single core, so maybe even all core?
Takes me back to Haswell i5 4690 with BCLK 102.7Mhz just to squeeze a tad more and 2133 DDR3+ BCLK on a ZBoard, If I got the 8 thread version I'd probably have kept it much longer but at the time budget was a concern.
If Intel didn't try to artificially limit its lower end and mid range processors, they could've completely wiped out AMD in those segments imo. However, they like to gimp their lower end chips so people pay a premium for the "better" and more expensive options, even if they never overclock.
This is awesome stuff! I would love to get this combo just to mess around with overclocking! (I love Ryzen products but overclocking them doesn't really do much and it's more cumbersome to do)
No power limits and oc are 2 different things, if you disable the power limits (most b660 boards have that option on the bios) the CPU will go to his "all core turbo speed" when not in idle, that will be 4.0ghz for the 12400
Hardware Unboxed skipping CS benchmarks again is really sad to see, which I think is a very good metric for CPU benchmarks and also good for getting an estimate of Valorant FPS
Was debating going this route for my nieces build (actually, you replied to me on Twitter regarding a part picker link of the AMD contender). Gotta try to find out how much thermal power the 12400 generates while gaming to decide if it's remotely reasonable to go with the chip over the Ryzen 5 5600/5600x. The cooler will be a 125W cooler so if the gaming power would overwhelm the cooler then the Ryzen chip is definitely the way to go. Kind of a shame really. The Mortar Max really looks like a great budget board. I know you think I should consider the i3, but I won't consider a quad core. If I was just going to a quad core, I'd slap a 7700 in her current board and call it a day.
@@tilapiadave3234 I think you're missing the point. There's no reason for me to buy a new motherboard just to get BCLK when I could just upgrade my CPU instead
This board is on general sale right now on Amazon Japan. It’s cheaper than the standard b660 mortar wifi and costs about 150 dollars. It’s a good deal might get it.
@@Owen-fn8ff OK, i just assumed that if he was told things by msi in confidence...kinda seems pointless if the product is already on shelves...why the secrecy by msi?
In my opinion this is a last throw to make people buy intel, and after a while intel will lock this possibility again. It's not like it's not happened arleady.
Such a good video analysing this feature coming! In this situation the 5600 is cheaper than even the 12100F ! 5600 (USD186) + hardware unboxed recommended MSI B550m pro-vdh (USD76 newegg) = $262. Whereas 12100F (USD111) + B660 Mortar Max (USD170) = $281. So i3 is $19 more expensive than the 5600. But looking forward to the overclock head to head video if you do make it!!
It'd be really cool to see the Pentium G7400 overclocked on this board. I'd love to see the performance gains for that CPU. I know its core limited but it'd still be really cool to see it gain what it can.
Oh my god, I'm excited for this. I bought a 12400f and paired it with an H610 and a 3060 Ti on impulse and so far I'm happy with the cost-to-performance ratio. But once this MSI motherboard comes out, I'm going to upgrade the Mobo. Those performance gains are monstrous lol.
@Raiyan I went with the Gigabyte H610. PSU is 650 watts. I did give up on waiting for the MSI Mortar Max and upgraded to an MSI Pro B660-A instead since I needed more M.2 slots. But if you don't have too many NVME SSDs, then you're going to be fine with the H610.
@@sidismo2903 did u follow the same settings as this video? im actually buying the same motherboard as urs (the pro one) with the 12400, and im curious about how it went for u
@@TsuneAi it's been so long I forgot what settings I put, put I made sure that the 12400f is running at its max power limit in my bios for the MSI Pro. No difference in performance compared to the Gigabyte H610 which I recall has no option to set a custom power limit.
The first dual core CPUs had lower frequencies than their single core counterparts. It's a shame nowadays you need to buy the CPU with the most cores to get the best single core perf..
I agree. One of the reasons why the 5950x cost so mush more than the 5900x is because they decided to bin it better rather than just lowering the clocks
Maybe they'll manage to keep this unlock for new CPU's and in the future. I personally will invest more money into a new monitor though. Currently aiming for Odyssey Neo G8 and since it's 4K there won't be many benefits.
Man, I wish Intel weren’t such assholes. There’d be no reason to buy AMD if they just let people do this, but of course they’d choose to lock 20% of their chips’ performance behind market segmentation instead.
It's not like they weren't able to release them, rather than they were not allowed. By Intel, obviously. They'd be losing tons of $ to that, most gamers on a budget would pick a non-K i5 instead of an i7.
6:15 Might be a nitpick but as a proud owner of the famous Corsair Icue H115i RGB Pro XT, I can confirm that this is not the same pump as shown in the video. This looks like a pump for one of those higher end Capellix coolers, I don't know whether the audio or video is wrong but I thought this could possibly mess with the thermals results.
90% of the videos they make which involve a 360mm AIO use the Capellix. Certainly possible they used an XT this time, so the video was probably just using existing b-roll footage.
