Overclocking
Disclaimer: Overclocking is never guaranteed, so the results may vary depending on certain conditions and various hardware configurations. I am not recommending overclocking if you do not know what are you doing. High voltages may damage hardware and it will not be covered by warranty.
Overclocking is possible in BIOS/UEFI or in SuperO Booster software. Also in Windows 8/10 OS it’s not required to restart the PC to apply settings what’s pretty unique feature and I don’t think that any other software can do that on new motherboards. I’m used to overclock using BIOS/UEFI but I guess that Windows software will be easier for many users.
SuperO Booster also let to change fan profiles and RGB LED options without leaving the operating system.
Above you can see how settings look like in the SuperOBooster. Pretty much the same window as in BIOS/UEFI.
Using overclocking profiles we were able to set 4.8GHz. Profiles are adjusting voltages and power settings and at least till 4.8GHz we had no issues. 4.9GHz or more was causing instability and it’s probably because BIOS was setting too low CPU voltage for our not the best i5-8600K processor.
Maximum manual settings let to set 5.1GHz what was able to pass couple of benchmarks.
Below is result at stable 5GHz with memory set to DDR4-3866 using XMP settings from Patriot DDR4-3733 memory kit. Tighter memory timings are possible but we couldn’t stabilize memory at DDR4-4000 in dual channel mode. I guess that next BIOS releases will bring these improvements and we will be able to set higher clock.
Stable 5GHz on all 6 cores and memory at DDR4-3866 is pretty good result and it’s more than most gamers will need. I guess that gamers and computer enthusiasts will be satisfied but for some, BIOS/UEFI settings can be hard at first look. Those who have problems with manual settings should stick to pre-defined profiles while more advanced users can play with many manual settings which let to overclock higher but require more time to test stability. I bet that gamers would rather spend this time in their favourite games.
