When it comes to Intel processors if you want to do overclocking you always get the “K” variant of the chip you want. That has been always been the chip that is unlocked and allows for overclocking, something like a Core i9-9900K. Following the Comet Lake-S launch yesterday ASRock has claimed that their new motherboards will allow for even non-K CPUs to be overclocked.
So how is ASRock able to do this? A slide was shared that goes over their Base Frequency Boost (BFB) technology. Basically ASRock is able to overclock non-K processors by changing the TDP of such processors. When it comes to processors they have two different power levels, a PL1 and PL2. PL1 is what Intel says the TDP of the processor is, for example 65W. PL2 is a short-term maximum power draw for a processor, which is typically much higher, say 125W. So using BFB technology ASRock motherboards will run the chips in PL2 mode.
You can see in the slide above the different speeds you could expect to get by enabling this feature. Now of course this is case dependent as your system needs to be able to handle the heat from the overclocked processor.
This tech also enabled overclocking on non-Z chipset motherboards (B460 and H470). These chipsets are less expensive and we’ve already heard of overclocking being allowed on the B460 chipset.
Via TechPowerUp!
