Overclocking 65W Alder Lake processors: which boards can do it?

There are several boards supporting BCLK OC from different manufacturers, but only a few of them are worth it.

Last month, we were pleasantly surprised by the news that Intel’s new desktop platform (Core 12th Generation/Alder Lake) CPUs can be overclocked via BCLK. Despite Intel seeking to only allow OC  on the more expensive K-series enthusiast models. We took a look at which boards currently make it possible and if it’s worth it. Because whether BCLK OC helps or not depends on the cost of the overall setup more than anything else.

Overclocking of locked Alder Lake processors on the LGA 1700 platform is only possible if the board is equipped with an add-in clock generator. And that is the case of far from all the LGA 1700 options, as most of the boards just rely on the generator integrated in the processor. Theintegrated generator only allows you to raise the BCLK from 100 to 103 MHz only on a 65W processor, which can be called overclocking, but is not worth much. An external generator doesn’t have this limit and you can choose BCLK even over 150 MHz – as long as the CPU is stable at such a clock increase from the base, of course. To make BCLK functional, you need this component on the board. But because it is an extra component, it increases the price. Thus, you are more likely to find it on more expensive boards.

The community at HWBot has put up a list of boards from various manufacturers that allow BCLK, so we can see how much of an investment it requires.

The largest number so far is from Asus, but they are mostly ROG Maximus series boards, which is an expensive high end lineup. Support is present on the Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero, Apex, Extreme and Formula boards. These are boards ranging in price from 520 EUR to 970 EUR (Extreme). Probably their derivatives, like the even more expensive Z690 Extreme Glacial, should work as well.

Unlock BCLK OC option to enable 65W CPU overclocking on Asus boards (Source: Der8auer)

On these boards, it makes no sense to use BCLK overclocking of 65W processors, because whatever you can save up by buying a cheap Core i5-12400F or 12500, you end up losing by having to buy an expensive board. A much better investment for the same price would be getting some cheaper Z690 board and a more expensive Core i7 or even a i9 processor. In fact, a Core i9-12900KF costs almost exactly 400 EUR more than a Core i5-12400F, and if you select a good 200EUR board for it, you will get much better value out of the money than had you sunk that extra into a motherboard.

There are cheaper boards already. Complication: only for DDR5 memory

However, Asus seems to have already produced two B660 platform boards where the story is different. The Strix B660-G Gaming WiFi and Strix B660-F Gaming WiFi boards start at prices just under 200 EUR for the first model and somewhere under 240 EUR for the second. This is where BCLK OC starts to get interesting, even though they are still a bit more expensive models. At least if you grew up on cheap platforms a few years ago (B450 Tomahawk for 100 EUR or those X99 boards for 200 EUR…).

With these B660 boards, overclocking the Core i5-12400F or i5-12500 is probably quite worthwhile. You may be paying the kind of money that could already buy one of the cheaper Z690 chipset boards for a mere B660 board, but if you’re all about high gaming performance with a six-core, this is a pretty good way to go.

Strix B660-G Gaming WiFi (Source: Asus)

However, there is one problem: both of these boards use DDR5 memory. These are significantly more expensive than DDR4, although they have the advantage that the board is then more viable for RAM upgrades in the future. But if you don’t need something like that, it means having to spend a hundred or more euro more on memory modules today. This again makes the whole PC build more expensive and again takes away the savings you wanted to achieve by overclocking a 65W processor.

Value for money is still on the edge

The cheapest unlocked six-core (more precisely, 6+4 core) Core i5-12600K costs around 300 EUR and the KF version without iGPU is say under 285 EUR. So the premium over a locked Core i5 is only some 100 EUR, which may be about similar to the premium you pay for DDR5 memory versus DDR4.

It is therefore worth considering an alternative option which is to buy a baseline Z690 board, DDR4 memory (which you may also have from a previous PC) and these processors. They come with extra four Gracemont cores as a value, which you can use in multithreaded application software.
A later resale of this CPU in a future upgrade may also net a slightly higher amount of money. And you don’t have to worry that Intel will break BLCK OC in future BIOSes, leaving you relying on outdated firmware versions.

Other board brands have BCLK OC too

Other brands also already have some confirmed models of boards with BCLK OC functionality, but they are missing the low-cost B660 models. For Gigabyte it’s the Z690 Aorus Tachyon, for MSI it’s the MEG Z690 Unify X, which are boards around 600 EUR. MSI also has the MEG Z690I Unify, which is the only known Mini-ITX board with this capability so far. Of course, the price is still 400 EUR, so its cost is still not a good match for poorman’s overclocking.

According to Buildzoid, support should additionally be coming to the MSI MEG Z690 Ace, which is even more expensive than the Unify X though, and to the Z690 Godlike, which is priced almost like a secondhand car. And then also to Gigabyte’s Z690 Aorus Extreme, which is also a very expensive board, even though it only costs less than half of the Godlike (but still like 900 EUR). However, this group of boards does not yet have the needed BIOS (or UEFI) updates available at this point of time.

Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Tachyon (Source: Gigabyte)

From ASRock, support is so far known to be present on the Z690 Aqua OC board, which is also a superhighend SKU with water cooling support out of the box. We don’t even know the price for it yet, but it probably won’t be under 900 EUR. So again, not much point in thinking about it if you want to save money by overclocking a 65W CPU.

Some other boards from Gigabyte have solder pads ready on the PCB ready for mounting an external generator, so it is quite possible that this vendor will release some other models that will provide this feature, and hopefully in cheaper price segments. What’s especially noteworthy: this provision for the clock generator addition is also present on some models usingDDR4 memory, reportedly on the Z690 Aorus Pro DDR4 and Z690 Gaming X DDR4 for example, which costs only ~220 EUR (however, we would ideally like to have BLCK OC capable DDR4 boards with the cheaper B660).

Hopefully, especially the B660 boards with low prices will increase in number. Ideally, though, these should be models using DDR4 memory, as the Alder Lake platform is weighted by quite some premium when going with DDR5 for now. For those trying to squeeze as much performance as possible out of little money, I guess the way is still via DDR4 for now.

Sources: HWBot, Tom’s Hardware, Buildzoid, Heureka.cz/Heureka.sk

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš, original text by Jan Olšan, editor for Cnews.cz


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