ASRock Introduces SKY OC, Overclocking for Non-K Skylake
Non-K Skylake CPU's can be overclocked, though only through BCLK adjusments. It's a fine way to get a little extra performance out of your non-K Skylake CPU. ASRock just released their own utility that'll allow for easy adjustments of the BCLK, the SKY OC.
SKY OC is ASRock's solution to BCLK overclocking. Capable of 60% increase in clock-speeds for non-K Skylake.
In their own tests, ASRock has seen a 60% increase in clock-speeds on an i5-6400 installed in their Z170 Pro4, just by increasing the BCLK. That's not insignificant by any means, and since the underlying architecture is the same, non-K i5's only missing an unlocked multiplier. There have apparently been some stock shotages, according to ASRock, on K based Skylakes, so this could be a suitable alternative if you find yourself unable to find one.
If you decide to overclock this way, the iGPU will be disabled and the turbo and any other C-states will be disabled. So you'll be locked at that frequency and you won't be able to put your PC into a deeper C-state. Small tradeoff's for some decent performance gains.
SKY OC is only available on Z170 based motherboards. Below is a table of what motherboards are compatible and what BIOS you'll need to be running.
Model |
BIOS |
Z170 OC Formula | L1.92 |
Z170 Extreme7+ | L2.16 |
Z170 Extreme6+ | L1.82 |
Z170 Extreme6 | L1.82 |
Z170 Extreme4+ | L2.01 |
Z170 Extreme4 | L2.01 |
Z170 Extreme3 | L1.61 |
Z170M Extreme4 | L1.34 |
Z170 Pro4 | L2.83 |
Z170 Pro4/D3 | L1.74 |
Z170 Pro4S | L2.73 |
Z170M Pro4 | L2.23 |
Z170M Pro4S | L2.23 |
Z170M-ITX/ac | L1.83 |
Z170A-X1/3.1 | L1.31 |
Z170 Professional Gaming i7 | L1.14 |
Z170 Gaming K6+ | L1.92 |
Z170 Gaming K6 | L1.92 |
Z170 Gaming K4 | L2.23 |
Z170 Gaming K4/D3 | L1.51 |
Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac | L1.53 |
Stay in the loop
GET A DAILY DIGEST OF LATEST TECHNOLOGY NEWS
Straight to your inbox
Subscribe to our newsletter