Monday, January 24th 2022
Intel Not Happy About BCLK Overclocking of 12th Gen CPUs, Warns of Damage
You may, or may not have noticed that in certain parts of the interweb, groups of people that are generally referred to as "Overclockers" have managed to get their cheap Celeron G6900's and Core i3-12100's to run at much higher clock speeds than Intel intended and now the company is unhappy about it, as they're anticipating that they're going to lose sales of more expensive CPUs. As such, Intel has issued a warning via Tom's Hardware
"Intel's 12th Gen non-K processors were not designed for overclocking. Intel does not warranty the operation of processors beyond their specifications. Altering clock frequency or voltage may damage or reduce the useful life of the processor and other system components, and may reduce system stability and performance."
Jokes aside, the lower end SKU's of Intel's 12th gen Alder Lake CPUs seem to be phenomenal overclockers, if you have the right motherboards. If the motherboard doesn't have an external clock gen, plus support for adjusting the BCLK on non-K CPUs, then you're not going to have much luck. This means, at least at the moment, that you're looking at fairly pricey Z690 motherboard, although there are rumors that we can expect the odd B660 motherboard that will get an external clock gen, with at least three models already reported to have BCLK adjustment support via beta UEFI updates. Pro Overclockers have already managed to hit speeds in excess of 5.3 GHz with the Celeron G6900 and that is only by adjusting the BCLK and the Voltage, which is no mean feat, as the CPU has fixed clock speed of 3.4 GHz, which makes this a 57 percent boost in clock speed. Intel is said to be looking into this unintended ability to overclock these CPU SKUs and is apparently looking at locking down this ability with a new microcode update in a future UEFI release.
Update: Added a screenshot from TPU's upcoming Core i3-12100F review, showing 5.2 GHz at 130 MHz BCLK.
Source:
Tom's Hardware
"Intel's 12th Gen non-K processors were not designed for overclocking. Intel does not warranty the operation of processors beyond their specifications. Altering clock frequency or voltage may damage or reduce the useful life of the processor and other system components, and may reduce system stability and performance."
Jokes aside, the lower end SKU's of Intel's 12th gen Alder Lake CPUs seem to be phenomenal overclockers, if you have the right motherboards. If the motherboard doesn't have an external clock gen, plus support for adjusting the BCLK on non-K CPUs, then you're not going to have much luck. This means, at least at the moment, that you're looking at fairly pricey Z690 motherboard, although there are rumors that we can expect the odd B660 motherboard that will get an external clock gen, with at least three models already reported to have BCLK adjustment support via beta UEFI updates. Pro Overclockers have already managed to hit speeds in excess of 5.3 GHz with the Celeron G6900 and that is only by adjusting the BCLK and the Voltage, which is no mean feat, as the CPU has fixed clock speed of 3.4 GHz, which makes this a 57 percent boost in clock speed. Intel is said to be looking into this unintended ability to overclock these CPU SKUs and is apparently looking at locking down this ability with a new microcode update in a future UEFI release.
Update: Added a screenshot from TPU's upcoming Core i3-12100F review, showing 5.2 GHz at 130 MHz BCLK.
139 Comments on Intel Not Happy About BCLK Overclocking of 12th Gen CPUs, Warns of Damage
Intel has always bin about money.
leave me alone, don't tell me what not to do
FEARUNCERTAINTYDOUBT
yeah, please kindly go fuck yourself intel.
Unless one is crunching numbers I see no reason for a CPU to stay on a high OC 24/7.Amen! :respect:Same is true for every corporation but intel are extremly arrogant and greedy. So much in fact that they skimp even security for the sake of marketing...
If English isnt our native language, lets read their statement again:
"Intel's 12th Gen non-K processors were not designed for overclocking. Intel does not warranty the operation of processors beyond their specifications. Altering clock frequency or voltage may damage or reduce the useful life of the processor and other system components, and may reduce system stability and performance."
What part of that says Intel isnt happy about the overclock? Theyre simply saying "we dont recommend that shit and if you do, its not covered under warranty. Go do whatever the fuck you want with the product you bought."
I swear, the contributors and users here need some maturation and probably ESL classes.
That said - do expect some shenanigans and rule breaking in this topic, and totally do expect cheaper offerings to bring non-K OC to the table - even with DDR4 platform support.
CPUs like the 12400(F) and 12700(F) seem to particularly enjoy this serious uplift in performance
Intel's engineers are very very aware of this situation (take my word for it, or don't :) ), but im not sure how far they will go with preventing further board support of it.
BCLK OC was essentially open during qualification time and the guidance was to disable it for the release BIOSes and shelf products
But they will preasure everybody to stop it, make no mistake.
Companies only care about money.
Nvidia did release a driver in which unlocked 3060 mining hashrate, imagine nvidia saying to people, "hey we made a mistake of releasing a driver in which you can mine at full but if you do then there is no warranty"? not even nvidia have done that bs and intel is doing it.
On the other side of things, Intel robbed us for years, and now at least with some CPU's, since the 10400 at least they make them cheaper then AMD even with a faster product. So it just shows they are your friends when they need you, when they are down, as soon as they get themselves on top, they couldn't give a f*** about you, and swap places screwing us depending who's on top.
edited because of english
If you follow the source (der8auer and then THG) you'll see that Intel reached out to THG specifically to remind them of this, and since their policy on non-K overclocking has remained unchanged in over a decade, that is noteworthy by itself. The same author also says that the BCLK overclocking is rumoured to be a microcode error which will be patched out by Intel before too long. Rumoured, but historically it's also what Intel has done before, so highly likely.
Oh! Gee! I care about that! Said no Overclocker... ever.