ASRock motherboard and X Boost SKY OC?

[ptrthgr8]

Hi, all.

Here are my system specs for the machine I upgraded back in April:

Motherboard: ASRock FATAL1TY Z170 GAMING K4
CPU: Intel I7-6700
GPU: GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1080 G1 Gaming GV-N1080G1 (just added this yesterday)
CPU cooling: Stock I7-6700 fan
RAM: G.SKILL 32GB (2 x 16GB) Ripjaws V Series DDR4 PC4-25600 3200MHz
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 850 G2

Earlier this week I was working through some memory clock issues with the above and in the process of troubleshooting I updated my BIOS - I was running version 2.90 (that's what came with my Gaming K4) and used the Internet Flash option to upgrade to version 3.10. It didn't resolve my memory speed issues (working through that on a different thread here @ Tom's), but I did notice a new option on the boot screen:

The yellow colored "Press X to enable X Boost SKY OC" was new. That option was definitely not there when I was still running BIOS version 2.90. I had no idea what SKY OC was until I looked it up... and learned that this was functionality that ASRock provided in December of last year to allow people to OC their non-K Skylake i7/i5/i3 CPUs on their ASRock Z170 motherboard:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/sky-oc-non-k-overclock-bios,30763.html

I was even then more surprised to later learn that ASRock *removed* SKY OC from its more recent BIOS updates starting in February of this year (presumably because Intel cried about it).

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asrock-removes-sky-oc,31147.html

So, now I'm a little confused. I'm not sure what happened here. SKY OC was removed by ASRock from BIOS 2.60 I'm guessing (release date was Feb 19 2016), it wasn't in version 2.90 (release date March 15 2016), and now it seems to be back in version 3.10 (release date April 28 2016).

Has anyone else noticed this? Is it worth pressing X at the BIOS boot screen to see what happens?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/asrock-killed-overclocking-intel-skylake-nonk/

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/asrock-removes-sky-oc,news-52338.html

 

[Lena__]

Escuse for bumping, is your Gaming K4's passive radiatores dimmed matte red or glossy orange?

From what I gathered on the Internet, before "pressing X at the BIOS boot screen to see what happens" take out your most pricey of the build 1080.

And perhaps not worth it with intel stock cooler.

 

[ptrthgr8]

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/asrock-killed-overclocking-intel-skylake-nonk/

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/asrock-removes-sky-oc,news-52338.html

I was aware of SKY OC's removal. I even included that second link in my original post. I was just trying to figure out why it would have returned with the latest BIOS version if ASRock had removed it a while ago.

 

[ptrthgr8]

Escuse for bumping, is your Gaming K4's passive radiatores dimmed matte red or glossy orange?

From what I gathered on the Internet, before "pressing X at the BIOS boot screen to see what happens" take out your most pricey of the build 1080.

And perhaps not worth it with intel stock cooler.

Definitely matte red.

And good points about not potentially frying the 1080 and needing a better cooling option if I were to attempt to OC. I don't think I'll press X any time soon.

 

[CyberDanz]

I can't explain the details on how it works. However, I'm running Asrock 990FX Extreme9 with the same bios (3.10) which also has xboost. When disabled, I have to wait a few extra noticeable seconds to be able to type my password AND extra boot time until my icons shows on desktop. When I hit x to enable xboost, I can instantly sign in and no wait at desktop. It does 'something' which benefits me. I can also overclock everything in Windows. So, xboost isn't an overclock, just anot her enhanced feature Asrock offers. It works for me with noticeable improvement. Keep in mind, when you press X, your system will shut down and reboot with xboost enabled. The shut down is normal, don't freak like I did. I hit my reset button a couple times and Windows had to go through troubleshooting and restore to last known successful boot. Don't panic and let it shut down and reboot completely into Windows.

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
Asrock 990FX Extreme9 mobile
ATI Radeon HD 5450
AMD FX-4300 (quad core) 3.8 Ghz
2x4Gb DDR3 memory (8Gb total)

 

[Ethen291]

So what does X boost actually do? Could it damage my PC and has you CPU frequency been automatically increased by it?

 

[Lena__]

it added +200 on cpu and ram from what i noticed. making it 3.9 and 2.4 accordingly.
i do manual bclk better) and 2.4 on 3.2 kits a waste.

and puting i3 there was a bigger waste >_<

 

[Ethen291]

So is it safe then and do you literally just press X to enable it and let the PC reboot and thats it, You have an overclock (kind of)

 

[Lena__]

So is it safe then and do you literally just press X to enable it and let the PC reboot and thats it, You have an overclock (kind of)

Safe enough to not crash upon launch) Never bothered with "burning" my components or stability test them.
Do run a Userbenchmark, cause I like it calling me technical master :3
Yes, i pressed X when suggested and PC reboots itself
Later you'll see Asrock logo with slight change & all the rest be same.

 

[Ethen291]

So are you using the intel stock cooler to do this as i want to know if thermals will be safe with it